Category Archives: literacy

iPhone Tracking and New Literacy Development

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So I guess the above map is about right. The location tracking for my phone only started when I switched to the iPhone 4, so the map above is indicative for a little less than a year at this point. Hey, check it out, you can see where I live:

Oh, if you haven’t heard, it was recently discovered that iPhone systems have been tracking where the phones have been and keeping a log on your computer. You can read more about this and see a visualization of your phone’s movement over here. [And since the map can be read down to street level, it is relatively easy to simply find the most frequently visited locations to deduce one’s residence, work place, hangouts, etc.]

If anything, the information here poses a couple of significant opportunities for us as educators. Several of my social studies colleagues were recently awarded a UCLA Teaching Initiated Inquiry Project grant to focus on GIS-related skills. How great could this kind of track data be to look at the movement patterns of youth in and around the city?

I can’t say I’m all that surprised that a log of where my phone has been is being maintained. Frankly, I wouldn’t even be surprised if I were to later find out that the information is being sent elsewhere – it would not be that different from targeted advertising in my Gmail or Facebook accounts. What’s important to realize here is that, once again, the notion of what we teach in terms of critical literacy is expanding. Not only do we need to teach students how to use new media tools but also to question and understand the implications of their use. The wording difference may be slight, but this is a significant change in what literacy development means.

In a sense, we are looking at a symbiotic relationship between a tool and its wielder; we rely on mobile media devices throughout the day for various functions and it too tracks and maintains a log of where and what we are doing.

Of course, the real problem is that this data becomes tied to individuals. Pinpointing migrant patterns of undocumented students, for instance, would be a serious concern. Likewise, after school locations of gang-affiliated students, congregation areas for truancy or just about any kind of published data about where someone is if they don’t wish that information to be known is a real concern. Put even more clearly, the FAQ on the iPhone Tracker site states:

The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine. Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it.

The more fundamental problem is that Apple are collecting this information at all. Cell-phone providers collect similar data almost inevitably as part of their operations, but it’s kept behind their firewall. It normally requires a court order to gain access to it, whereas this is available to anyone who can get their hands on your phone or computer.

By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements.

Literacy development today includes understanding the rights we sacrifice in stepping into the realm of participatory media. Cognizance of how search is being manipulated, of how we are being marketed to on Facebook, and of how your movements are being tracked are all new skills that need to be developed within students today. If we are serious about thinking beyond the work of New London, I am arguing here that literacy development is going to be about the underlying symmetry of use and cognizance when interacting with cloud-connected tools.

Reflections on #aera2011

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After a couple of days to recover, I wanted to share a few thoughts on another AERA conference. Though they do not represent everything I saw within the conference, I think they speak directly to what needs to be improved.

 

Lack of twitter

While I didn’t expect a twitter feed as lively as #dml2011, I was disappointed by the lack of engagement with the not-so-new medium. With nearly 15,000 people and the usual phone-book sized directory of sessions, Twitter is an ideal way to personalize the conference experience, engage in networking, and collaborate. Competing hashtags, a lack of free wifi & spotty service in the main hotels, and a limited number of tweeters made the conference generally disappointing in terms of social networking. One person tallied roughly 20-25 attendees (total) were contributing tweets from the conference.

And having a mobile app that does little more than act as a clunkier version of a directory doesn’t bring AERA any closer to connecting to a “social imagination.”

 

The problem with CHAT

The problem with CHAT isn’t really a CHAT problem at all. Instead, it is much more a problem of depersonalization and decontextualization of the research at AERA. I described AERA to several people as a giant five-day show-and-tell. While there is meaningful research being contributed, what happens as a result of AERA? More directly: we have 15,000 experts in the same place, at the same time, and all largely wanting to engage in conversations about education; why can’t AERA be productive, active, and responsive?

And so, I found myself participating in a working group that largely revolved around discussing CHAT-related sessions at the conference. Don’t get me wrong, when I understand CHAT, I find it really interesting. I’ve described it this way to a friend recently: “CHAT is a theory about everything and nothing. It’s kind of like the Seinfeld of learning theory.” In any case, geometry has never been my strong suit, and a conversation about CHAT eventually devolves into a conversation about triangles (literally). I couldn’t help but feel the tension of having flown across the country to engage in dialogue with the best of academic researchers only to have this be a conversation about triangles.

[btw, I’m amazed there is no wikipedia entry for CHAT … get some grad student to get on that!]

 

The “It’s so nice” syndrome

I spent a healthy portion of my time with the UCLA IDEA Council of Youth Research. I can say that they were the true highlight of the conference, representing both cutting edge research and calling those that saw their work to enact change.

However, I heard several conversations throughout the conference that described the research of teachers and students in ways that was tokenizing. Specifically, a conference attendee described hearing students talk in ways that matched current researcher rhetoric. The students were described glowingly and the attendee said it was “so nice” to hear these students speaking so clearly. I’ve been on the side of the discussed students before as well; teachers presenting and interacting at AERA fare little better than students. While the Council argues for students and teacher to be engaged in the process of research, we are still more subject than peer at AERA. It is difficult to imagine a research community that will treat practitioners and youth as legitimate partners if their experiences and voices are not more fully developed within the conference. I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted about this when reflecting on past AERA conferences as well.

Monday morning had one of the best sessions of the entire conference: four different youth-oriented research groups from across the country presented their findings. It was powerful and meaningful work and it was all voiced by high school students and teachers. Of course, it was the only session like this and a morning sessions towards the end of a conference (in New Orleans of all places) didn’t yield record crowds. Yes, it’s a step forward for AERA to have sessions with students, but with this sliver of a door open, it’s time to budge open full swing. How about, instead of a single, round-table session where students are literally competing for audience members, we make this a regular part of the conference. What if sessions had students and teachers as discussants? Or are we not as concerned about relevance when it comes to our work? Summarizing a question Ernest Morrell asked at the end of a session on Saturday, what’s going to be more important at the end of the day: directly interacting in research with teachers and students to improve education, or getting another citation in a peer reviewed journal?

 

The future and beyond

A non-Council of Youth Research highlight for me was seeing the members of the New London Group discuss what is in store “Beyond New London.” While the academic Lollapalooza was fun, at the end of the day, it left me curious about what’s next. When actually addressing what is “Beyond” in terms of the future of literacies, the group did little more than shrug. Likewise, the working group I was involved in, “Intervening for the Future,” while a useful group for intellectual conversation, puttered more with the concept of intentional intervention; should we or shouldn’t we? Not that I’m thrilled with a book like this, but I do wish AERA had a bit more forward-thinking, on-the-ground engagement at this year’s conference. I do see the research of my colleagues and I as moving beyond New London “stuff,” and the Council provides me with a sense of optimism and possibility for the future, but these are tangential groups and not all mainstream practices within AERA.

 

Critical Literacy’s Google Wake Up Call

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This New York Times article about search is fascinating. As much as I found the general peek into the power of a company like Google insightful, I think the article points to long-term implications for educators.

As we continue to think about the productive world that our teens are engaging within, how students navigate online, how students question the content they seek, produce, or encounter, and how students promote or validate sources is going to become a crucial part of their critical literacy development.

While traditional critical literacy and even critical media literacy engage in evaluating the power structures underlying authorship and production, this literacy is expanding to include how this information is found, suppressed, promoted. “White hat” and “black hat” optimization (whether knowingly or unknowingly as J.C. Penny claim in the article) are part of the components of critical literacy that educators could not have foreseen.

More than simply teaching students how to use critically the tools of search that are available (from Google to library catalogs to online databases like ERIC and DataQuest), we will need to engage in an inquiry into how results are yielded, how to parse metadata, and to question the programming structures at hand.  Program or be programmed indeed. Perhaps educators should be demanding a large place at the table at this summit?

Time for a new course of study. If you haven’t read the article yet, please take a look.

Redefining Romeo and Juliet: Reclaiming the “Ghetto”

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Teaching ninth graders, the past month has been one centered around themes of conflict as my class analyzes Romeo and Juliet. Over this and a couple of future posts, I wanted to share some of the work my students and I have been engaging in. Essentially, the role of the seminal, ninth grade text, has shifted. No longer can students simply read and analyze Romeo and Juliet. Instead, it is not an option to include materials that exist outside of the original text; it is an imperative part of understanding the text. I’ll return to this idea after sharing some examples.

Utilizing the Flip Cams that Peter and I used for our What Son Productions course, the students will be recreating their own versions of scenes from the play. This is not an original or a very creative idea (more about that in a minute). What is interesting, though, is the process of reading Romeo and Juliet across different interpretations. As we read a scene, we may screen a scene from the 1996 Lurhmann interpretation as well as the 1968 Zeffirelli interpretation. We are then utilizing a 4×4 graphic organizer to note key differences between the original source, two films, and our own ideas of how the scene could be produced. These products are becoming the basis for a production log the students are creating as they note where one version may fall short – Tybalt being too aggressive to Romeo in the 1996 version before Mercutio becomes a “grave man,” for instance.

As I mentioned, the concept of asking students to recreate their own versions of scenes isn’t a very new one. In fact, as more and more students have easy access to tools of production – as these tools have become ubiquitous – it’s easy to see student work samples online. However, the vast, vast majority of these samples appear to be from overwhelmingly white communities. And these versions are taking significant liberties in their portrayal of urban reenactments of Romeo and Juliet.

Over the course of a week, I began each class by screening a 3-7 minute YouTube clip. I simply searched “Gangster Romeo and Juliet” and a deluge of student-created videos showed up showing “ghetto” versions of the play. [This was inspired by a conversation about developing this unit with my colleague Peter Carlson.]

This ghetto, however, is technically the community my students live and go to school in. This ghetto is stereotyped by white students in ways that at first issued guffaws. My students found the videos funny at first. However, after a couple of days, students said they felt “mocked.” They said that the videos didn’t show things correctly, were making fun of the community, and actually lacked textual understanding of Shakespeare’s words (several of the films, for instance, abbreviated Abraham’s name the same way that Luhrmann’s did).

Often times, these videos are posing these ghetto versions in lush, rural or suburban communities:

I want to underscore that I am not using these examples to criticize the students that have made them. However, when discussing them with students, we have noticed that there are not similar “ghetto” versions made by people of color. And if they are not creating them, essentially, an incorrect truth about what the ghetto is and how people act within it is being reified. My students shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they began thinking about the messages that a critical mass of lighthearted “ghetto” student clips are sending; these paired with YouTube clips of student fights are furthering stereotypes of student behavior and expectations.

As educators, our role is changing; the power of student production is a necessary tool for critical analysis. How can these tools break down existing assumptions?

As a class, my students are thinking about how they can create videos that respond critically to the samples they’ve seen, accurately reflect a nuanced understanding of their neighborhoods & worldviews, and express thematic interpretation of the canonical text. It is the necessary hard work I am excited about seeing develop in the next two weeks.

Again, as I said in the opening paragraph, the role of Romeo and Juliet is much more inclusive than simply the 92 pages of the Dover edition that my students have each been asked to purchase. The culture and understanding of the text is inclusive of a rich body of knowledge, assumptions, and continuing dialogue with the work through writing, acting, and recording. Social networking, new media, and a changing access to technology means that simply summarizing plot and theme is disregarding the other critical skills students need to learn in an English class.

AERA Schedule

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Heading out to Denver for AERA tomorrow. I want to especially encourage anyone to attend the interactive symposium listed above. Detailing the work of the UCLA IDEA Council of Youth Research, the symposium highlights the research of more than 30 Los Angeles High School students that I’ve helped work with. The students – as well as Ernest Morrell, John Rogers, our group of graduate student researchers, and a handful of incredible teachers – will also present on Saturday at the following session:

Youth Research and Advocacy for Educational Justice: Actions for Achievement and Change

Scheduled Time: Sat, May 1 – 4:05pm – 6:05pm Building/Room: Colorado Convention Center / Room 404

Abstract

This interactive symposium, featuring university faculty, graduate students, high school teachers, and high school students, tackles the following questions: 1. How does the presence of high school youth in the project of educational research transform conversations about educational reform? 2. How does the practice of participating in participatory research shape youth’s attitudes toward civic engagement? In the first part of this symposium faculty and graduate students will describe the project and analyze the importance of youth research to the project of urban school reform. The second portion of the session will feature current high school students and their teachers explaining their research and their efforts to utilize their research to enact school reform at the local, district, and state levels.

In addition to the two sessions related to the Council of Youth Research, I’ll also be presenting at the following two sessions:

Teaching Pedagogy and the Experiences of Children of Color

Scheduled Time: Fri, Apr 30 – 12:00pm – 1:30pm Building/Room: Colorado Convention Center / Room 603

Paper Title:

Hip-Hop “Hipocrisy”: New Teacher Perceptions of Critical Pedagogy and Student Experiences in “Critical” Classrooms

Rema Ella Reynolds & Antero Garcia

Abstract

This study focuses on new teacher perceptions of critical pedagogy and attempts to integrate issues of resistance and social justice within secondary public school classrooms. Student perceptions of their teachers, student academic achievement, and the ineffective use of popular cultural literacies, revealed that teachers’ motives and desired student outcomes are not as closely tied to academic success as they are to teacher popularity. Deficit thinking articulated in teacher expectations may leave students ill-prepared for life after school. Teacher education programs can often leave teachers unequipped with the skills necessary to simultaneously develop skilled, competitive, college-going graduates equipped multiple literacies. This paper concludes with suggestions for praxis and pedagogy as it relates to teacher education programs.

and

Praxis and Problem-Posing Pedagogy: Utilizing Critical Theory as a Transformative Tool in Urban Schools Across Disciplines

Scheduled Time: Sun, May 2 – 12:25pm – 1:55pm Building/Room: Colorado Convention Center / Room 706

Session Participants

“Man, I Am Somebody”: Exploring the Effects of Black Feminist Pedagogical Practices on African American Female Students in a High School Literature Class
*Monique Lane (University of California – Los Angeles)
Una Estrofa Mágica: Décima Poetry as a Vehicle Toward Meaning Making and Educating the Self
*Karisa Jessica Peer (University of California – Los Angeles)
“Can You Hear Me Now?” Student Voice in the Battle for Cell Phone Use in a Less Than Receptive School
*Antero Garcia
Education in Crisis: Civic Learning Opportunities in Times of Political and Economic Turmoil
*Nicole Mirra (University of California – Los Angeles)
Discussant: Ernest D. Morrell (University of California – Los Angeles)
Chair: Nicole Mirra (University of California – Los Angeles)

Abstract

This session highlights research that applies critical social theories (i.e. Black feminist theory, LatCrit, critical literacy, and critical civics) to the urban classroom context in order to facilitate the empowerment of students of color. Through focusing on praxis, this panel pushes both classroom practice and social theorizing in new directions that directly benefit educators and students in urban public schools and contribute to a more complex understanding of how race, class, gender, and immigration status influence learning. By providing case studies of curricular interventions, the papers in this session seek to privilege student voices and use them to push the conversation between theorists, researchers, and educators forward in the service of students often marginalized by the public education system.

If you are going to be at AERA, it would be nice to get in touch.

(Does anybody know what hashtag AERA will be using?)

“deny me and be doomed”: Reinventing Creation Myths

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I fear that maybe in thinking about counter-narratives and the role of storytelling, I’ve been thinking too small. Maybe we need to start with a macro-vision of life in the classroom.

What would it look like for students to develop their own creation myths? In disrupting the “single story” of their neighborhoods and various cycles and pipelines that scholars say move our students around on a vast conveyer belt, perhaps it’s about having students reinvent the entire foundation from the ground up.

Travis, my SLC’s 9th grade English teacher shared with me the success he had in getting his class back on track through an introduction of mythology. Peter, our 10th grade teacher, will be starting Ishmael with his students later this year (a book also about creation myths). As my 12th graders delve into The Awakening, I borrowed a suggestion that Mark made for a different class, and showed my students this TED talk about the problems of the “Single Story;” it seemed most appropriate as a way of connecting Achebe, Conrad, and Chopin within the past month. I think also of Daye’s interest in Cargo Cults and the way they may act as a metaphor for deception in South Central.

I think the students would be properly situated in a foundation of already studied (as well as lived & experienced) creation myths. How about now reinventing them?

Aggregated Search, Phone Photos and Talkin’ ‘Bout Mobile Media

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In the past two days, I’ve received no less than five emails asking me if I’ve seen this article (I have now … thanks to each of you!). Apparently my research interests have been made pretty explicit at this point.

In any case, I was reminded of a couple of impromptu lessons I created that I’d like to share briefly, related to new media and its application within the classroom.

Google Image Search & Assumptions about Success

After a brief writing exercise in which students projected and wrote about their lives ten years in the future, we took to the Internet. As students described the careers they are interested in pursuing – doctor, lawyer, architect, astronomer, engineer, etc. – we typed each word into Google’s image search*. For the most part, the search results didn’t surprise – predominantly white, male faces showed up as the top results. (Try this, if you haven’t already.) As a class, we talked about what the search represented and why it was one that didn’t reflect our class and community demographics. The lesson was a place to continue our application of fancy words like “hegemony” and “counter-narrative” and to think about how this image search could be changed in the future.

I haven’t written this out yet, but I think a next step for us will be to simulate an aggregate search within the classroom on post-it notes. I need to tweak this, but perhaps it will be similar to an analog game like Go Fish or even Pictionary. I think if we can replicate a model where the faces of success look like the ones in our classroom, we can think more critically about applying the experience to the larger world.

* A student – based on his own “experiments” – warned me not to image search “nurse.” I appreciated his candor, but think that – in the future – that search will be ripe for discussion about gender stereotypes and sexual objectification.

Photographing an Argument

The next assignment was just as simple. Students needed to email or text me a photo they took somewhere in their neighborhood. They would then use the photo to construct an essay-length argument about their community. By the following week, students shared their photos in small groups and then hosted a class-wide curated slide show. (My students took all of the photos in this post in and around our school.)

Again, the assignment itself isn’t novel. However, I found it impressive how – other than a few students that didn’t adhere to the deadline and subsequently borrowed my classroom camera to snap shots around the school – the majority of the students were able to quickly text or email me their photos on time. That our school’s wireless network is faulty or not open to student access, that many students don’t own computers, and the many other concerns that educators have with technology didn’t stand in the way of students taking carefully constructed photos and getting them to me in a way that could be easily shared and projected. Further, if you haven’t been snapping photos on your phone lately, you’d be impressed with the quality. And hearing students discuss the angles, lighting, color, and compositional features of their pictures was also promising. Did mobile media revolutionize my curriculum? No. It did, however, validate the skills and abilities my students had and helped bridge them toward standards-aligned instruction.

A Few Summative Thoughts

Going back to the article that kick started this post, I guess my larger concern with mobile media isn’t if students are cheating or abusing their phone privileges. Instead, I’m interested in student positioning and understanding of the mobile device and of themselves as authors and creators. As we inevitably move toward the eventual acceptance of phones in the classroom, it will be useful for us to construct a foundation on which students can think responsibly about media and their role in consuming and creating it. This may sound like I’m either spewing abstract hogwash or stating the obvious to some, depending on where you stand on the tech debate. I’ll be piloting this theoretical foundation within my classroom later this year, with activities and texts ranging from cell phone ”Freeze Tag” (for lack of a better name) to diving into the words of Bruno Latour. Of course suggestions are always considered and appreciated.

“Tell Them I Am Busy”: Comics and Counter-Narrative

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One of the things that Mr. Carlson and I experimented with using during his intersession was comics. Specifically, we had students create comic strips through Pixton.

The best thing about having students create stories through Pixton is that it just happens. Other than guiding students through the registration process, Mr. Carlson and I never needed to actually tell students how to create the comics they would make. They just happen. After students made a couple in response to class discussions, films, or readings, the Pixton comics reached a tipping point with some of the class; now, students are regularly authoring comics and sharing their work with a network of other comic creators.

Because Pixton is such an intuitive interface, students are able to quickly generate stories or opinions on any part of the world they are interested in. What’s compelling is the way the medium becomes a mode for generally silenced voices to comment and critique life at Manual Arts and to punctuate experiences that are otherwise normalized through an adult lens.

Again, I can take no credit for the astute implications behind the comic below (if your browser isn’t getting along with the Flash window below, view the comic here).

more about “people’s perspective of MAHS by kflor1“, posted with vodpod

“It only jelps me which is very important. !!!”: On Blogging

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If you have a spare moment, please check out the blog a group of intersession students is currently contributing to. All posts (aside from the sporadic teacher post from Mr. Carlson or myself) are written and (possibly) edited by the students. Yes, there will be occasional typos, grammatical, and spelling errors  – isn’t that part of the blogging experience?

In any case, the goal here is for these students to practice documenting and reflecting on the world from their own perspectives. Taking ownership over the news, literally creating the importance for the outsider to the Manual Arts world is a heavy burden. And the students are taking it in stride.

Teaching an intersession elective course at Manual requires overcoming significant challenges, three of which I want to address here:

Significant Intersession Elective Course Challenge (SIECC) 1: Getting the Class Funded

Although students are regularly offered classes when they go “off-track” on our year round schedule, the classes are primarily to make up failed classes. This year, in particular due to budget restrictions, LAUSD did not fund any intersession classes other than the bare minimum of graduate requirement make up classes. Though an intersession class isn’t expensive (a teacher is compensated for 60 hours of work per intersession course) – getting Manual Arts to offer this “Broadcast Journalism” course required the approval of our School Site Council. As a result, Mr. Carlson is able to teach the students for two hours a day over six weeks (I’m helping out a few days each week, but kudos go to Carlson for steering the class).

SIECC 2: Getting the Class Filled

Because students at our school aren’t regularly offered extracurricular off-track opportunities (especially B-Track, since summer internships and programs are offered while these students are just beginning their school year), retention and getting committed students is a challenge. The commitment comes with having an engaging class (again something that deserves a tip of the digital hat to Carlson). The students are mainly coming from my 11th and 12th grade English classes. Because most of these students are enrolled in my class and have likely had Mr. Carlson in the past, we have a strong group of students with a good rapport – the class is filled and rolling.

SIECC 3: Getting Space

Because of our large student population, getting funding for a class isn’t the end of our headache. We needed a room we could routinely use to teach the class. In the past, I’ve taught intersession courses off campus at heavily discounted fees, subsidized by our school’s network partners. This year, we found that a room was available because most teachers would rather travel than use it. In a small upstairs nook in our bookroom, the students are properly ventilated (thanks to the two fans Mr. Carlson bought and the one larger room fan I “borrowed” from the math lab), the students are able to get online (thanks to the numerous laptops we bring in as well as the three desktop computers working at glacial paces), and the students are able to use the space in a timely manner (discounting the lengthy walk to the back of the campus due to construction detours for a long overdue senior quad redesign project).

Before becoming our bookroom three years ago, the room was used as an industrial (“Manual”) arts or auto shop classroom (I get mixed reports). Photos below detail the classroom setting.

A view from our room, looking down on the rows of books.

A view from our room, looking down on the rows of books.

Looking up to our classroom from the back of the book room.

Looking up to our classroom from the back of the book room.

Oh, all those unopened boxes? Those are just leftover books from when our administration brought in Talent Development without School Site Council approval. No biggie.

Oh, all those unopened boxes? Those are just leftover books from when our administration brought in Talent Development without School Site Council approval. No biggie.

Of course, I’m not mentioning other, structural challenges such as difficulties with students accessing the campus while off-track or the constant technology headaches (thanks to Daye for amazing WordPress expertise!), but those will trickle through the more regular posts to come.

As our students continue to gain confidence in their reporting skills, you are encouraged to question and comment on their posts. In the coming weeks students will be podcasting reports on lockdown procedures for schools as well as distributing DVD news reports for local South Central events. Stay tuned!

p.s. Does anybody know what this is? It’s bolted into the book room since the book room wasn’t always a book room. But what is it??