English that matters presentation
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Transcript of English that matters presentation
2010 Global Education Conference Session
By Terry Heick
English that Matters: Increasing ELA Authenticity
through Media
Agenda
1. What’s wrong with the ELA that we’ve got?
2. What underlying assumptions support these ideas?
3. What exactly are “media” and “authenticity,” and what do they have to do with ELA?
4. What is schema, and how does it fit in here?
5. What does a “reformed,” media-driven ELA unit look like?
6. Questions
ThesisWhile we focus on the minutiae of education, we're
forgetting the inseparable social components—or
social arena--of authentic learning.
The process of innovating an increasingly
irrelevant ELA curriculum can be initiated
through a focus on the art and science of media
design.
Current Challenges
1. Increasingly awkward, dated, and irrelevant
standards.
Common Core, Grade 8: “Acquire and use
accurately grade-appropriate
general academic and domain-specific words and
phrases; gather
vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or
phrase important to
comprehension or expression.”
Current Challenges
2. Accordingly numb curriculum and curricular resources.
Current Challenges
3. “Professional Learning Communities” that
“unpack” said uneven standards to ensure
“proficiency” on end-of-the-year exam.
This renders institutionally-centered learning, not authentic, student-centered learning.
Current Challenges4. Intervention models to “support” students to
“master” a model of school that remains sterile and
non-authentic.
ConclusionEducators must be fluent users of complex and
modern media, and seamlessly merge those media
forms into rigorous, student-centered learning experiences.
Not Technology. Authenticity.
Moby Dick is Dead.
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
-Mark Twain.
Fortunately….
Modern media can also effortlessly bring “classic” (read: culturally detached) media into focus.
“Intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct.“
Sir Ken Robinson
Are our schools?
Is our Curriculum? Our instruction?
Our methods of measuring success in schools?
Defining Authenticity
Broadly, Authenticity refers to differentiated work that meets the needs of learners. This can be in regards to curriculum, curricular resources, instructional strategies, or social and physical environment.
More specifically, let’s consider a framework.
Ten Underlying Assumptions of a 21st Century ELA Curriculum
1. Authentic learning should result in personal and/or social change.
2. Our current system of education is inadequate.
3. ELA—roughly put as “reading and writing”—provide foundational skills and
concepts within any system of learning.
4. ELA should therefore provide leadership in innovating curriculum.
5. The legacy of ELA is tied to works and thinkers that have been dead for
centuries, and/or that is written in single-media forms not commonly or
“seamlessly” consumed by modern learners.
6. While new forms are undoubtedly necessary, it will likely require reform to get there.
7. Rich ELA curriculum is media-centered.
8. Changing forms of media are a byproduct of rapid technology progression and innovative user adoption.
9. Media now has significant social dynamics.
10. Merging classic and modern media forms to mine their considerable potential can not only improve learning, but provide scaffolding for ELA educators as we seek out new forms of learning are sought.
Ten Underlying Assumptions of a 21st Century ELA Curriculum
Existing Forms
R e f o r m
New Forms
Examples of Merging Classic and Modern Media
Sample PromptRobert Frost was very clear about the need For spaces in
life—both physical and emotional. In some works, he
explored the grandness of solitude, while in others
emphasizing the interdependence of the human
experience. If he were alive today, Robert Frost
would not “like” facebook.
Sample PromptAs a modern pop star, one could say that Lady
Gaga symbolizes the intellectual superficiality
and bankrupt morality of our culture. If she
were alive today, Emily Dickinson would not
have Lady Gaga on any of her iTunes playlists.
Sample PromptWendell Berry, perhaps our nation’s greatest living
writer, was known to criticize what he called
“dispossessed living.” With this in mind, Wendell
Berry would have no problem shopping at his local
Wal-Mart.
What is “media”?
Media: A vehicle enabling the intentional communication of a thought or idea; a showcase for a message.
ELA = The Art & Science of Media Design
The science of powerful communication lies in using specific “components” that can be independently and interdependently manipulated.
The art lies in design decisions of how to effectively use
these components, often in innovative ways to convey a compelling message to an intentional audience.
Technology constantly evolves the interdependence of media.
(single media multimedia social media)
However, media is media; one supplements, detracts from, challenges, ignores, or builds upon the next.
This is the fertile ground of a 21st century ELA curriculum.
Tone
Theme
Diction
Literary Devices (Irony, Metaphor, etc.)
Persuasion and Propaganda
Mood
Author Purpose
“What’d they say and how’d they say it?”
Literary Elements (setting, characterization, etc.)
Thinking about Media Patterns
Complex Thinking about Complex
Media
Complex Thinking about Simple
MediaSimple Thinking about Complex Media
Simple Thinking about Simple Media
Media: Static and Dynamic
Static (Silently Interactive) Dynamic (Overtly Interactive)
NovelsPoemsGraffitiEssaysLettersMuralsSignsSpeechesEditorial CartoonsTelevision & “Web 1.0” videosPhotographs and PostersPaintingsTimelinesMusicRSS feeds
VideogamesWebsites BlogsGlogsterInteractive Timelines Youtube videos (annotation,comments)DiscussionsTwitter streamFacebook newsfeedEmails & Text MessagingZune/Ping/playlist.comWord Clouds/TagxedoiTunes storeStumbleupon, Digg, etc.
The current trend of media is one of convergence and interactivity. This makes modern media a gold mine for extracting and showcasing current national standards and tangent initiatives (ACT, SAT, Common Core, P21, NCTE)
Convergence of Media
from the Appendix: Selected NCTE/IRA Standards for English Language Arts Pertaining to 21st Century Literacies:
1.Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world.
A strong case could be made that this is not a single recommendation of 12, but the heart of ELA.
Why does Media matter?
Schema.
SchemaSchema refers to a cognitively native framework for
making sense of ideas.
Roughly put, existing old stuff we already know
helps us to make sense of new stuff we don’t.
By using native media, we’re using “stuff” they’ve seen before so that they might master skills and concepts they haven’t via transfer.
Media leverages existing learner schema.
Schema
Schema
Integrating Authenticity
How?
“Integrating these skills when deep into the
curriculum mapping process is a natural way to
ensure their genuine development in the
classroom.”
Heidi Hayes Jacobs
Upgrading the Curriculum,
Curriculum21’s “Essential Education for a Changing
World”
Standards
Curriculum
Instruction
Forcing authenticity
Literary Music Videogame
“Everything Rises Must Converge” (F. O’Connor) Lil’ Kings (Frank Walker X)"I Have A Dream" (King)“I Hear America Singing” (Whitman) "I, Too, Hear America Singing" by (Hughes) “Let America Be America Again” (Hughes) “The House on Mango Street” excerpt (S. Cisneros)
"America" (Nas) "Black Zombie“ (Nas) "This Ain't Livin" (2pac) "Po Folks“ (Nappy Roots) “Brown-eyed Girl” (Van Morrison)“American Pie” (Don Mclean)“The Invisible Man” (Public Enemy)“Southern Man” (Neil Young)“Sweet Home Alabama” (LynyrdSkynyrd)
Grand Theft Auto 4 The SimsFallout 3Metal Gear Solid 4
Websites, Blogs & AppsThe American
Experience
Non-Fiction
http://tiny.cc/wordclockhttp://www.google.com/trendsiTunes music store
“Racism and the Economy” (Wendell Berry)“Dreaming America” by (J. C.Oates) “Dreams of my Father” (Obama)“The Souls of Black Folk” (Dubois)
Podcast Video Social Media
http://tiny.cc/NPRPodcast“This American Life” podcast series
“The American Dream” (G. Carlin, youtube) Niko Bellic, Grand Theft Auto (youtube)
http://tiny.cc/appalachiafb
Conclusions1. ELA is, fundamentally and perhaps unwittingly, the art
and science of media design.
2. Media is diverse, dynamic, and social.
3. Media leverages schema, encourages transfer, and supports meaningful differentiation.
4. Technology constantly evolves media. ELA, therefore, must evolve in parallel.
5. This is not an either-or proposition of technology-based media versus novels and poems. Because of the schema, media can endorse and otherwise bring into focus seemingly irrelevant, dated single-media texts as we seek out new forms of learning.
12 Next Steps1. Close examination of media forms
2. Deconstructing the “21st Century ELA Framework”
3. “Personal & Social Change”: A Closer Look
4. Common Core standards in a 21st Century Classroom
5. Media-Culture relationships
6. Technology and Self-Directed Learning Models
7. “Education Reform” vs. New Forms of learning
8. The Media-Supports-Assessment Model
9. Project, Problem and Inquiry-based learning
10. Media Best Practices
11. Barriers to Media Adoption
12. Rethinking Differentiation
Questions?