EME6414 Blog

 This week, the majority of my energy went towards my produsage assignment. For my project, I chose to focus on something that I can use at the middle school where I work: a lesson on literary analysis. This is a concept that can be difficult to teach, especially when you have students who hate reading. The traditional "assign a story and answer questions about it" is not engaging to this generation of students. Asking them to read independently can be like pulling teeth, depending on the class.  My project was created with the goal of combining traditional reading, writing, and analysis skills with the engagement of social media. Analysis can happen in so many forms, so I thought sites like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook would serve as great mediums for showcasing their analysis. It gives them a choice in how they would like to present their analysis: they could create a TikTok from the perspective of a character, create a moodboard on Pinterest that reflects the theme of t...

  Link to Article This week I found an interesting article on the effects social media can have on student academics. The study uses a mixed methodology of interviews, literature reviews, and data analysis of found patterns.  Overall, this article found that social media has an overall negative effect on student's grades, focus, attention span, and classroom behavior.  HOWEVER.  I find that the educators and students identified and analyzed in this article are rooted in extremely traditional educational values and rules. I think it is rather obvious that social media would not be beneficial to the traditional classroom. These methods are generally rooted in lecture, work, and assessment, with little room for choice outside of what the teacher leads. Social media does not have to "undermine learning" in high school classrooms.  The world has changed so much in the last 10 years alone. I graduated from high school in 2013, and we were just getting to the point whe...

 Note: This blog post is representative of an example of the work students are tasked with in my produsage assignment. Utilizing the blogs throughout this semester is what gave me this idea. With my background in ELA, I knew I wanted to do something related to Literary Analysis. The assignment made it clear that the lesson cannot just be writing a paper within a blog. Though that is a part of this lesson, it is coupled with chunking concepts through the blogs, and social media posts are an integral part to building the literary analysis- it is not just writing a paper within a blog. The blog also serves as a great mechanism for peer review before the final assessment: a video-based literary analysis.  Example for Produsage:  Symbolism in The Masque of the Red Death Symbolism plays a central role in Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. It is crucial to setting the story's dark and macabre tone, and it establishes the theme of the inevitability of death. The story...

 This week, I focused pretty heavily on Activism & Citizenship. One thing is abundantly clear to me: teaching digital literacy skills and incorporating Web2.0 tools into lessons is a sure-fire way to get learners engaged and possibly more involved in digital activism.  I found the #Eduresistance article to be particularly intriguing. The article made some great points about social media's ability to amplify marginalized voices, disseminate information at a rapid pace, and provide the energy to get people active within their communities. I have experienced this in my own life by following communities of action in Tallahassee, such as Tallahassee Action Community and Food Not Bombs. Seeing the events these organizations put on via social media gives me the opportunity to participate in-person as well as online by sharing links for community aid and protests happening around the city.  I also appreciated the limits that the article pointed out. There is a certain amount ...

  Youth, Digital Literacy, and Social Activism The link above is to a blog post from The Ocean Project website. I stumbled on this organization while looking for examples of youth-based digital activism and found this to be a great example.  The post touches on the link between digital literacy and social activism, touching on how teens (when teens were millenials) were different in how they learn and research due to the fact that they are digital natives. This is even more true for the teens of today, as Gen Z and Alpha are even more saturated in a digital lifestyle.  The Ocean Project is a great example of using digital literacy to enhance social activism. The following is their mission and purpose statements, taken directly from their website: "Mission, Vision, & Values Mission : We support and empower youth leaders worldwide to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate. Vision : We envision young people worldwide leading the way and colla...

 I found this article to be the most intriguing of this week's reading. Working with middle schoolers, we are always looking for ways to engage them in the political process, especially in the 7th grade when they take Civics. Unfortunately, Civics is a really dense course and they have to tackle an insane amount of content to prepare for the end-of-course exam they take at the conclusion of the year. This is a very high stakes test and factors into their graduation requirements as well as the school's overall grade.  Due to the stress of prepping for this test, I have noticed many civics teachers going through the motions: delivering content via lecture, notes, and PowerPoint presentations to ensure the students get the info they need. Unfortunately, this makes for less than engaging lessons for the students. I think incorporating lessons based on media literacy could serve as an opportunity to make Civics more engaging overall. I think it would also provide opportunities for ...

 This week's focus on design spaces for communities and performance support was really interesting. Learning communities occur in basically every form of social media there is. I am part of multiple learning communities across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit. Some of them focus on rather silly content, such as the Twilight universe and trashy reality TV, while others focus on real-life skills like cooking, baking, and exercising. These communities can offer a lot of support to their members, but it is vital that they are made to be safe spaces where people feel comfortable enough to contribute and interact.  Social media can also be used to support communities in a variety of ways. The article from this week's reading that focused on the library utilizing social media to become a more active member of the community is a great example of how social media can be used to support the community. Libraries are pillars of support for communities generally, and they were ab...

This week, I had the opportunity to use Miro for the first time. It is a tool that reminded me a lot of Padlet, but I think I might like Miro even more. I like how easy it is to personalize your contributions in Miro. There are so many options in how you can engage with the board, not just sticky notes and written contributions. Allowing GIFs, emojis, videos, and links are great ways to ensure engagement: learners love choice in their interactions. I also enjoyed how aesthetically pleasing the interface is overall. The boards are nice to look at and that encourages more interaction.  Obviously, I can see how this would be a great collaborative tool in the corporate world, but I think it could be great in the world of secondary education as well.  Examples: Brainstorming and Sessions: this tool provides a great collaborative online space to brainstorm on projects and academic work. I could see it working extremely well for history fair, science fair, and presentations across su...

 Being a middle school librarian myself, this article immediately caught my eye. I have always thought of the library as the "heart" of the school. It is a place where students and staff alike come together to collaborate and learn. Something you do not often see, however, is the use of social media in secondary-level academic libraries. There has been a huge shift in reading habits amongst the youth recently, being that they do not read and engage with storytelling like they used to. I think this shift started when I was in school, as YouTube and social media came into the limelight. We could suddenly stream anything we wanted from wherever we wanted. Books simply lost their flair for the younger generation, and with shortened attention spans, I find it to be a constant battle to get kiddos engaged with reading, especially reading for pleasure. I am hoping that the following takeaways from this article can help boost our overall reading engagement in the coming school year. ...