Conclusion to the Educational Blogs

This may very well be the last blog for P650, unless I get the urge to send my thoughts out into the world of New Media colleagues once again.
For my last project with new media--I chose to complete a video in imovie. A fellow classmate, Ms. Rust, was doing something similar with Moviemaker. I have to say I was very happy to be working next to Julie this semester. Not only could be bond as mothers but we also have some sort of "lack there of" when it comes to technology. We really aren't attached to our phones; we rarely update our facebook page; and we could always use assistance when it comes to computer work. So for this week, she was lucky to have some PC helpers in class, where as, I was left to explore imovie on my own--as Jeffery was stuck in FL or in the air.
But what I found nice was the way I could watch how she was doing things to make her movie and how that differed or related to my techniques. How did she put that title in? What ways did she cut or edit that clip. I think there was a great advantage to simultaneously watching or working side-by-side with another tech user. It is something I will take away as important when considering programs or equipment for schools or advocating for use in classrooms. We can all learn from one program, but what more could we learn if we compared/contrasted with multiple projects. Now, this may be cost prohibitive, but it really depends on the access schools have to equipment for educational purposes.
I guess my summary of this project and course, is that sharing ideas and tinkering with different programs/interfaces makes learning with new media all the more worthwhile and valuable. We need to integrate disciplines, ideas, materials, people to ensure we are providing the most we can for our students.

Arts in the Curriculum

I will have to say that I have not taken many arts classes in my K-12 experience, and it is a shame. I suppose in California art teachers were integrated into the general education and therefore, were dropped in the level of importance, unless a teacher had a special spot in their heart for art. I do remember art in middle school, but this was in a private school overseas, and art was much more appreciated, as we went to museums and created many personal peices in various media--music, plays, skits, paper, clay, trash, etc.. We displayed our arts in shows and were allowed to showcase our skills, talents, and ideas. Returning to the U.S. for high school, art once again was placed on a backburner. There were art classes taught in my high school--formal art with Mr. Caspers or photo with Mr. Morris. There was no drama and band was more for playing at the football games than for any aesthetic purpose. I did not enroll in any of these courses. I was not required to or pressured to for college entrance. What does that say about the appreciation of the arts?
I can see many valuable places where art can motivate students to pariticpate in any subject area or just be an outlet to express thoughts. When I taught in Venezuela, Ms. Koch did a wonderful job asking the high school students to use the media of the unit to represent other classes being taken. One of my students decided to do a design of a molecule. This art peice was a great form to have the student delve deeper into the content of chemistry and understand the basic form of the molecule. His personal touches were emphasized in creativity and the final product was awesome. He displayed this for the school and it created a lot of talk amongst other teachers and how this type of art-subject discipline partnership could be used in future units--where the subject teacher would aks the art teacher to help on a unit rather vice versa.
As the articles we read this week emphasized--there needs to be more research to support arts in schools and in all disciplines--not just art itself. What goes into art, like what goes into other areas, can transfer for any one student and be a value to learning. Schools need to see how all types of art: classic or digital can be integrated into the whole curriculum. I am not sure if English experts will be pushing for this integration or if the Arts experts need to be the voice in all disciplines. You'd think there would be advocates on all sides--just when it comes to external assessments I think rational thinking is lost.

How can we study New Media?

After our studio session this week--while I may not have spent much time using my new media tool-- I learned that the social aspect of working with new media is essential.
Before moving on, I would like to thank Jeffrey for his help debugging my imovie/iphoto importing process. It is with this assistance that I have found new media to be a bonding experience, not only with others but with certain new media as well. Now with a smoother process of importing movies, I can go about my business with greater ease--whereas before I was so frustrated I denied the program any attention. I know Jeffrey and I are not buddy-buddy, but there is greater appreciation for his talents (whatever simple task it was for him to fix my problem).
Now to see how this social interaction with new media can be studied--first, it would have to be through observation (to catch all the interaction details); and second, it would be through a possible debrief with both parties, or even those around us to show the effects of our debugging process. I would hope that these forms of data collection would capture the way we revolved around this one piece of new media and how it not only changed how we may work with each other in the future, but how we may interact with imovie as well.
This post seems to be too structured, but this week's studio really reinforced how important it is to work in a mini-community to ensure there are interactions amongst the constituents. We rearranged the tables this week into little pods, and maybe the way we were configured ourselves is what lent the interaction and new found faith in this new media. Julie and I had great ideas flowing, even though we were working on separate programs. But I think the sense of smaller communities within a larger one, and even larger one of IU made it more comfortable to share out and ask for assistance--so that could be investigated as well... Oh an Idea for Proposal...

Prezi vs. Powerpoint "ding -ding"

This past week I worked with Prezi and Powerpoint to prepare a presentation for one of my classes. I thought this would be a great opportunity to use new and newer media and compare their effectiveness as learning tools and ways to share thoughts. I mean, presentations are a large part of academia, conferences, lectures, etc. and are all a part of disseminating ideas or knowledge, so to find a format that fits your intentions is important. Here is what I found.
So from my last blog, you discovered that I have done some research on Johann Friedrich Herbart, an educational theorist that no one really remembers. So when it was determined that I would need to share my knowledge of this great theorist I tried to find the best way to organize my thoughts and present them in an engaging fashion. I previously had experience with Powerpoint and was new to Prezi, so I wanted to see how the two differed, and which one best fit my style--or pushed me to a better style of organizing and presenting.
I started working with Prezi over the weekend and after an hour and a half stint of trying to learn the new mechanisms and editing tools, I got fed up at not understanding how I could not do things simply or in a straightforward fashion. I was so sold on all the wonderful bells and whistles Prezi presented in its 4 minute overview that I guess I missed how to make the magic happen. In my tinkering,I remained frustrated and sadly gave up to resort back to something familiar like Powerpoint.
I completed the project in Powerpoint with ease, but thought to myself that this will just be another dull presentation. So after studio time on Monday morning, I went back to Prezi and began "Johann F. Herbart: A Return to the Threshold" for the second time. In Prezi, with a new outlook, I found that I could be more of designer (like our readings of making meaning in the area of Literacy stated). I could link thoughts together in a random manner, and design emphases with size, shape, and accents. I was able to create a narrative with paths that my thoughts followed, not a pre-determined linear slide show. I could place my ideas, images, other media within the project at any random place--there was no format and this left me to be, as I said before, the designer rather than a conformer to the template.
The learning I found from this competition of products, is that both make you think a certain way whether it be linearly with Powerpoint or more freely with Prezi. I found that I was still using my trained thought patterns for Powerpoint and placing things linerly in Prezi. I had to redirect my brain to think differently to create a flow of text. I thought about the future affordances of each type of presentation. If I were to use Powerpoint to align ideas for lectures, then I could easily retreive information on a topic by a simple search (an affordance of Microsoft?), as for Prezi I don't think I could do a keyterm search and find some idea easily. Since the flow of info can fluctuate, it may be more difficult to refer back to an idea. Prezi also, from what I found, can't be printed out or become a static piece of knowledge. Not that this is the intention of Prezi, as it is sold as a presentation tool. But it is so interactive that it may not be possible to see the whole picture even at it's widest lense. To get the whole story you would need to have the presenter go through the paths and tell you what the meaning is behind all the texts.
This is what I found to be of most interest, the presentation itself. I did present with Prezi yesterday, and I think I suffered at it tremendously. I wanted the Notes tool that Powerpoint includes. I didn't want to have notecards in my hand. From the reaction of my peers, the presentation was interesting and different, but what does that mean? Other presentations in the class were centered around Powerpoint and I think they presented their material coherently, it may not have been in an interesting fashion, but they got their point across.
I suppose the best affordance Prezi gives is that it is like a storytelling device that allows people to go through the paths of greater conceptuatlization rather than regurgitation that Powerpoint may lend. For me, I think I still need to understand all the tools that this product lends, so that I can make greater meaning out of my ideas and be able to share those with others. It is a great tool to let me really explore how I will design my ideas and hopefully it won't be similar to the way Powerpoint has formatted my brain.
So the larger question is, and an age old one: How does new media or old media design our brains to think? Do schools promote certain media to mold uniform thinkers?

What is New in teaching Multiliteracies?

The New London Group, in A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures, details a pedagogical theory for how to teach multiliteracies in which the mind, society, and learning are components to situate reform. Their goal is to have mastery in practice and they present four components that should be incorporated into a classroom setting to enrich learning of multiliteracies.
These four components resemble very much four steps of instruction constructed by Johann Friedrich Herbart, a philosopher of the mid-1800s. Herbart was a thinker who believed the mind was made up of presentations from the world. The mind worked on those presentations through a ‘threshold of conciousness’, as each idea battled for a spot to be related to another idea. Throughout the four steps students fluctuate between immersion and reflection to constantly keep the threshold active. His goal was to create a many-sided individual.

The four components in summary for each pedagogy (New London; Herbart:
Situated Practice: Immersion in experience and the utilization of available discourses, including those from the students' lifeworlds and simulations of the relationships to be found in workplaces and public spaces.
Clearness: The student is framed in a position engulfed by ideas and presentations from experiences, encounters, and instruction. Student interest must be found in presentations and ideas.
Overt Instruction: Systematic, analytic, and conscious understanding. In the
case of multiliteracies, this requires the introduction of explicit metalanguages, which describe and interpret the Design elements of different modes of meaning.
Association: To situate the ideas into one’s own understanding or into greater knowledge, the teacher would scaffold or help associate ideas.
Critical Framing: Interpreting the social and cultural context of particular
Designs of meaning. This involves the students' standing back from what they are studying and viewing it critically in relation to its context.
System: The student would make connections or links between various presentations of the branches of instruction and form a ‘circle of thought’. The equilibrium and disequilibrium found between each individual idea and link in the mind help form a system of understanding.
Transformed Practice: Transfer in meaning-making practice, which puts the transformed meaning to work in other contexts or cultural sites.
Method: The student took this system and practiced it in the world. Student would practice with system created.


As I was reading this article, I kept thinking how much it sounded familiar, as I am doing a research project on Herbart due this week. So, are these pedagogical components presented by New London Group ‘new’? No and yes. Obviously we never really reinvent the wheel, but we may reinvent it for our purpose. Who knew that we would be able to see ideas from the 1800's fit in with those of the 21st century. Although the language in the New London components was posed for multiliteracies, I think Herbart’s was too. He wanted greater understanding of all experiences and subjects. He wanted students to be many-sided and not concentrate in one effort. Meaning making, or literacy was his goal as well. So once again, I think the old and new parallel quite well. The meaning is just in a new time and space, which is how something becomes new, really.

Bouncing Off Ideas

Jenna's blog: 'blogging is not serious writing' got me thinking, which is one of the best outcomes of reading text in any form whether it be from academic journals or a blogging community. (That is my take on that). I started thinking about: convergence of University speak and popular speak and the ways that academic writings and blogging intersect (Jenkins). The power is in the ideas, and as J & J were discussing, the message can be shared in either form but the importance is who the message is intended for and how they seek out the information. For example, I may want to write an academic piece for a peer-reviewed journal. I am still having trouble grasping a concept or finding additional resources therefore I pose questions on my blog post and try to work around the ideas of which I want to publish. I think Jenna has been doing this for a while now. I see blogging as a great tool for her to practice her thoughts before setting them in an academic forum. This may seem to go along with the idea that blogging is not academic, but it really exemplifies that the ideas are of academic quality, just not in the traditional academic form (or they could possibly be posted in that form, but who would want to read that?).

People will seek the information they need or want. Blogs are just an alternative source. This is the concept I will be trying to situate this semester: New media is just a different source for learning. But which forms elicit the most learning? Does it matter or is it subjective? Can new media always be used as another source or are there fields that need to be traditionally centered to postulate learning?

How do people learn in new media?

New media has been introduced to me by texts and classmates as innovative programs and tools that can be used as creative outlets (in a broad sense; you will note by my writing that I don't always come up with the right word). For example, a podcast is a way to disseminate information in an audible or visual form. It is a tool that a creative person can use to spread their word. But how does someone learn from this form of word? or how does one learn by using this form of new media?
As we dabbled in Scratch this past week, we practiced its functions and intentions, but more than likely did not perfect any notion of its true capabilities. We played with the new media. We tried to discover how it could work in our favor. I think this is one true root to how we learn.
Others have spoken on this thread of motivation, desire, wanting to learn. To continue in this direction, I also think one must want to use new media to reach an objective. Whether that desire is in the process of playing with new media or from the expected outcome. For example, I could simply learn how to create a website and take joy in organizing and posting all my photos for family to view, but I have no desire or the time to learn the technicalities of it all (be them so simple, like this blog, I am sure). Therefore, I agree with Bers, Dewey, and many other theorists that interest is a major component of learning whether it be in new or old media (I suppose I am going to be like Julie and learn to use more media, and for myself to understand it better).
I see new media as opening up access to others ideas. Creating a larger community than anyone could imagine. There is a wider audience in a virtual world than there is in a physical one. I can talk to Japan or India instantaneously and through multiple forms through new media. I can express my opinion and others with similar interests can possibly relate. And it all goes back to interest. I have to take interest in the new media form and take interest in the community that discusses a certain topic. I have to want to learn more in order to make any progress.