Dina Paulson's Posts - Making Curriculum Pop2024-03-29T01:54:40ZDina Paulsonhttp://mcpopmb.ning.com/profile/DinaPaulsonhttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2790059624?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://mcpopmb.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=0rm81xgmr3l7h&xn_auth=noThe social significance of modern multi-media curricula: Towards construction of political awareness through global media schoolingtag:mcpopmb.ning.com,2009-05-06:2665237:BlogPost:74192009-05-06T03:30:00.000ZDina Paulsonhttp://mcpopmb.ning.com/profile/DinaPaulson
For my final project for Teach, Think, Play III: The Moving Image in the Classroom, I created a paper entitled "The social significance of modern multi-media curricula: Towards construction of political awareness through global media schooling". I supplemented my written text with a new Discussion Forum under "Best Practices and High Quality Teaching" called <a href="http://mcpopmb.ning.com/forum/topics/the-globalization-of-education">"The Globalization of Education in the Digital Age"</a>. In…
For my final project for Teach, Think, Play III: The Moving Image in the Classroom, I created a paper entitled "The social significance of modern multi-media curricula: Towards construction of political awareness through global media schooling". I supplemented my written text with a new Discussion Forum under "Best Practices and High Quality Teaching" called <a href="http://mcpopmb.ning.com/forum/topics/the-globalization-of-education">"The Globalization of Education in the Digital Age"</a>. In this Discussion Forum, I offer three curricula and resource links that address the intersection of globalization to the use of media in developed and developing classrooms. I cite Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project as an additional educational resource for teachers and civics scholars. This project aims to incite dialogue concerning general ethics inquiry through links to filmic works, blog postings and articles that regard issues of value conflict. These resources aim to promote discussion of "what is right?" through dialogic involvement of users of the site and to encourage media users to access these resources to promote verbal dialogue in community spaces.<br />
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Abstract<br />
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My paper aims to explore the relationship between our globalized and digitized world society, and the intersection of this neoteric globo-technic age to the process of identity and skill-set formation of the modern student-individual with focus to a political awareness development. I discuss the American presidential administration of Barack Obama in its affect towards defining democratic governmental leadership through openness. His administration is discussed as foil to probe the complex construction of the new literacies learner, formed through his or her socio-economic, cultural, geographic and political capital context. Learning environments are defined not only as formal schooling systems, but evident in the socio-technological capacity build of student-individuals exponentially active in social networking sites; through formalized school study of the theories and organization of Barack Obama's leadership and through the significance of the moving image in curricula to access the platform and expansive content that global works in multimedia may produce.<br />
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I cite an important development of the student-user-individual involved within social networking platforms is the reassessment of notions of community organizational and leadership accountabilities. As the younger generations form and legitimize relationships within cyber networks, as is reworked their relationship to adult-educators. The modern educator must not only aim to use methods of visual media to engage students within the pattern of their cognitive learning, but demonstrate a respect for new literacies learning and express a desire to connect with students within these platforms. Teachers must join students in their exploration of themselves as citizens, individuals and perpetual students in a perpetually globalizing and structurally redefining world society.<br />
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I conclude that political bildungsroman can be seen as inherently linked to developments of today's digital age, which invokes an internationalized diaspora of voices and images for such motives and queries of "socio-political dialogue". I offer a vision for the future idealized educated student-citizen to be an individual multiliterate, globally aware and participatory through democratic membership of global society. The function of school systems to first accept student's minds and developments as within multi-literate developed capacity, and thus build upon these skills in the classroom through construction of formal content school learnings is the vision of the future classroom.<br />
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The format of my paper addresses these developments through the following subheadings, listed consecutively:<br />
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Introduction<br />
Entrance to the modern multi-media age<br />
Composition of a technicized society<br />
Teach, Think, Play III 2009: Realities of multi-media literacy learning<br />
The media president Barack Obama<br />
The future multi-literate learner: towards development of democratic identity?<br />
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Here is my Reference list, which might convey a sense of the kinds of literature that assisted my development in these issues:<br />
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References<br />
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Adults and Social Network Websites. (2009, January 14). Retrieved April 20 2009 from<br />
http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Social-Networking.aspx<br />
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Barlow, A. (2007). The Rise Of The Blogosphere. Westport: Praeger Publishers.<br />
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Barry, E. (2009, April 8). Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter. The New<br />
York Times, A1.<br />
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Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: literacy, learning and contemporary culture.<br />
Cambridge: Polity Press.<br />
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Dowd, M. (2009, April 15). Dinosaur at the Gate. The New York Times, Op-Ed Column.<br />
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Feinberg, W. & Soltis, J. F. (2004). School and Society. New York: Teachers College<br />
Press.<br />
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Generations Online in 2009. (2009, January 28). Retrieved April 20 2009 from<br />
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Generations-Online-in-2009.aspx<br />
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Governing as Social Networking. (2009, April 22). Retrieved April 23 2009 from<br />
http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2009/12-Governing-as-Social-Networking.aspx<br />
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Kist, W. (2005). New literacies in action: Teaching And Learning In Multiple Media. New York: Teachers College Press.<br />
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Krueger, E. & Christel, M. T. (2001). Seeing and Believing: How to Teach Media Literacy in the English Classroom. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook.<br />
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Ramirez, Francisco O. & Meyer, John W. (2002). National Curricula: World Models and National Historical Legacies. In M. Caruso & H.-E. Tenorth (eds), Internationalisation. Comparing Educational Systems and Semantics. Frankfurt: Lang, pp. 91 – 107.<br />
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Retrieved April 13 2009 from http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/facebookusersget<br />
worsegradesincollege<br />
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Retrieved May 1 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/technology/01filter.<br />
html?emc=eta1<br />
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Rettberg, J. W. (2008). Blogging. Malden: Polity Press.<br />
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Said, E.W. (1999) Out of Place: A Memoir. New York: Vintage Books.<br />
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Schriewer, Jurgen & Martinez, Carlos (2004). Constructions of Internationality in Education. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (ed.), The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 29-53.<br />
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Shields, C. M. & Mohan, E. J. (2008). High-quality education for all students: putting social justice at its heart. Teacher Development, 12 (4), 289-300.<br />
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Social Networking Websites and Teens. (2009, January 7) Retrieved April 20 2009 from<br />
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Social-Networking-Websites-and-Teens.aspx<br />
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Teens and the Internet. (2009, January 9). Retrieved April 20 2009 from<br />
http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2009/Teens-and-the-internet.aspx<br />
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The Annotated Inauguration. (2009, January 21). Retrieved April 20 2009 from<br />
http://www.pewinternet.org/Commentary/2009/January/The-Annotated-Inauguration.aspx<br />
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Thank you all for reviewing my final project posting, and I would love hear feedback and commentary from our NING colleagues. During our Teach, Think, Play III workshop, the creative and informed ideas generated by our presenters and colleagues concerning media education significantly provoked my development towards this final project. I have greatly enjoyed exploring the intersections of formal schooling in the modern global and digital classroom to notions of identity construction and student-individuals' digitized intra-accountability. I look forward to being an active part of this socio-educational revolution as it evolves.<br />
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DinaReflection Paper: 2009 Teach, Think, Play III: The Moving Image in the Classroomtag:mcpopmb.ning.com,2009-04-23:2665237:BlogPost:55262009-04-23T01:00:00.000ZDina Paulsonhttp://mcpopmb.ning.com/profile/DinaPaulson
Our second session of Teach, Think, Play III, The Moving Image in the Classroom, held at Teachers College, Columbia University on Saturday April 5 2009, began with a presentation by <a href="http://continuingeducation.tc.columbia.edu/default.aspx?pageid=2526">Mary T. Christel</a> entitled “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Gender (But Were Afraid To Learn From Classic Hollywood Comedies)”. Christel presented the pedagogy of using film in the classroom through a “genre” approach towards…
Our second session of Teach, Think, Play III, The Moving Image in the Classroom, held at Teachers College, Columbia University on Saturday April 5 2009, began with a presentation by <a href="http://continuingeducation.tc.columbia.edu/default.aspx?pageid=2526">Mary T. Christel</a> entitled “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Gender (But Were Afraid To Learn From Classic Hollywood Comedies)”. Christel presented the pedagogy of using film in the classroom through a “genre” approach towards instruction for middle school and older aged learners. She focused on comedy through its basic types of slapstick, screwball and romantic form, naming “repetitive repartee” the “building blocks of comedy”. Christel discussed the fundamentals of analyzing film to identify its constructions and characters such as “pinpoint[ing] the comic premise” and roles of “comic protagonist” and “fish out of water”. We reviewed comic techniques (i.e. sight gag versus running gag) and Christel spoke to “Going Beyond Content Analysis” that examines, among other areas, mise-en-scene, setting, and physical expression of figures. In a packet for the class, Christel included resources of film excerpts, supplemental videos and print texts.<br />
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The remainder of our session focused in film clips Christel presented from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029947/">Bringing Up Baby</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025316/">It Happened One Night</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032599/">His Girl Friday</a>. These clips were our visual texts to examine the performance and structure of gender roles in America during 1930-1940. Gender prototypes of this era include female “ice queen” and male “befuddled patriarch”. Christel distributed worksheets to our class labeled “Developing Guiding Questions for Critical Viewing of A Comic Sequence”. These supplement student viewing in coordinating their responses through exploration of filmic narrative and expressive technique. In application to our sequence “The Thumb on the Limb” from It Happened One Night, we examined the “incongruent” appearances of the male and female characters’ to their situation and identified the female character at greater disadvantage given her physical attire, inclusive of high-heeled shoes.<p style="text-align:left"><img src="http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/78/77078-004-6CED10AC.jpg"/></p>
After naming the “fish out of water” we queried dialogue between characters. When the male “asserts” his knowledge how does the female “regard [these] displays”? Ultimately she 'hitches' their ride, which offers an interesting departure point for dialogue concerning the inversion of gendered power roles being discussed.<br />
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Christel advocates <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Believing-Literacy-English-Classroom/dp/0867095733/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240025809&sr=1-1">film viewing for advanced English classroom learning and literacy</a>. Chapter six includes a list of films to be developed alongside literary texts in the classroom and film curricula for complex dramas such as “Reversal of Fortune”. Christel states that film can represent “meaningful enrichment” to students considered “eager reader[s]” (2001, p. 68). A multi-literacy learning experience for the student is unique through utilizing "techniques" gleaned from both text and visual resources wherein the student applies his/her “very sophisticated insights” (2001, p. 68) cultivated through literary texts to new forms of media text. To strengthen the fusion of multiple medias in text-based classrooms <a href="http://www.williamkist.com/">Dr. William Kist</a> describes the “power unleashed” in his students when they composed work using “non-print-based media” (Kist, 2005, p. 2). In tracking developments of traditional literacy leading to defining a “ ‘new literacies classroom’ ” (2005, p. 4) he describes a vision of contemporary literacy linked to critical literacy that “disrupt[s] dominant social practices through resistant reading and writing of texts” (Rogers 2002, as cited in Kist 2005, p. 7).<br />
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To address this emerging question of reflexive versus critical literacy that film may provoke (and the interactive possibility of these learnings) Christel’s presentation directly assessed a formal educational imperative as the focus of film viewing and learning for students. It is imperative, Christel stated, that prior to creating a film curriculum an educator must query his/her intention of using film and should create a curriculum based on goals of those student learnings. The inclusion of film clips or full-length film can be considered here. As Kist invoked within his Teach, Think, Play III presentation the following day concerning the global (actual and virtual) aspect of media literacy learning, Christel reminded us that film can be taught through its representation of inherently epistemological inquiries of civilization and humanity. As such, film can be a very important tool to reflect and problematize these developments for students. The <a href="http://www.movingimage.us/site/site.php">Museum of the Moving Image</a> could be an excellent field trip resource for classroom teachers to further explore with students the histories and significances of multiple media.<br />
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As each genre of film may hold unique instructional value, Christel mentioned that tropes of her comedy curriculum can be adapted to other genres in a teaching context. For comedic film, Christel’s pressing questions include, “What makes something funny or intentionally comedic?”; “What makes [a film] classroom friendly?”, and important to the educator teaching and learning in an American classroom, “How do [films chosen] explore the American dream?”. This latter inquiry can link the exploration of multi-literacy learning to content areas of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Book-America-William-Bennett/dp/0684849305">American Studies</a>, Cultural or Social Studies, and specifically to cultural historiographies, those examining various <a href="http://anthropology.si.edu/outreach/Indbibl/bibNW.html">inter-america relationships</a>. Through these questions posed by Christel, my understanding of the role of multimedia literacies coheres neatly. It indicates student learning that results from a teaching, which values and incorporates technological complexities into the classroom, within an understanding that using human-created materials (perhaps otherwise considered "art") can hold substantial value for students' formal development in the classroom.<br />
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These materials can include print text; computer generated text; filmic narrative, and materials of aural, tactile, aesthetic sensation i.e. interpolating student learning with museum artifacts. Rather than a focus to the type of motivational learning text selected it is rather how that text is invoked and discussed with students that define the openness of learning to which students may enter. As we examined Depression era comedies, Christel commented, “Comedy can have a great deal of pathos”, inclusively reflecting “social commentary of the time”. If film can provoke questions of history, there are likely other disciplines that can benefit through the inclusion of film to promulgate class discussion. To reviewing contemporary comedy in the classroom, a critical question is how to "make bridge" from early comedy. I would be very interested to learn how Christel might consider the original Pink Panther film series (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057413/">beginning in 1963</a>) as applicable for middle or high school classroom curriculum? Could the relationship between Kato and Inspector Clouseau explore ethnic tensions and power roles in employer relationships through its use of "humor" (versus an appeal to wit) comic sequence? The series uses "violence" of their fight sequences to illustrate their relationship to often absurdist comic effect while offering a sense of "order", legitimacy and honor between the two. Could Inspector Clouseau be viewed as "comic protagonist" and studied for the comic technique used to create his character as one of the iconic comedic characters of the 1960's? An example of a possible teaching sequence could be:<br />
<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Tw_5qma0aW4&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Tw_5qma0aW4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>
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Christel shared that she initially encountered difficulty at administrator and curriculum developer levels in advocating film curricula because film was “not seen as a legit kind of composition process”. To me Christel’s persistence and development of extensive coursework in film and media studies adds to her passionate ethos as an educator. Within today’s developing new literacies, an integration of film knowledge capital to text-based skill may fuse into a new all-adapted literacy. Ideally Christel said, her work is to facilitate the student’s journey from “cinephile to cineaste”. Here is an interesting <a href="http://filmstudies.berkeley.edu/graduate.html">interdisciplinary new media PhD program UC Berkeley offers in Film Studies</a> and <a href="http://www.afi.com/education/">a link to the American Film Institute’s “Education” page</a>. These are interesting sites to review in considering the value assigned in contemporary higher education to film study and within a major national film organization in its ethos to education. A revealing of attitudes and considerations of film study today within these scholarly, organizational circles has value to its reflection on the adult world that younger scholars may be joining as they develop concurrently in cinema studies.<br />
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In our first three sessions, two dominant theories have arisen that assess the educational valuing of film. How is film perceived as a valid content area for education (film studies) and conversely as an imagistic medium to supplement non-media based learning? Our second session can be summarized through Christel’s observation of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Their-Feet-Sourcebook-Kinesthetic/dp/0965657485">“kinesthetic”</a> nature of “so many kids” today. This is where the question of how educators respond to such lively learners takes root. Christel commented that if students continue to study film they will “build [a] cultural literacy”.<br />
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This conceptualization of the contemporary classroom as the space where a teacher can grow with his/her students to create a learning environment of film appassionatos is very interesting to me, not least of all because I am a cinephile but because I see genuinely prolific and heuristic value in film. Expansive literature in education affirms the connection of formal education to the possibility of synthesized success and growth of student-individuals with motivation towards specific capital goals (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/School-Society-Thinking-About-Education/dp/0807744964/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240495955&sr=8-2">Feinberg&Soltis, 2004</a> and <a href="http://ejscontent.ebsco.com.eduproxy.tc-library.org:8080/ContentServer.aspx?target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Einformaworld%2Ecom%2Fsmpp%2Fftinterface%3Fcontent%3Da906264017%26format%3Dpdf%26magic%3Debscohostejs%7C%7CAA3D3EFB68C36A3B40C78D54581474B7%26ft%3D%2Epdf">Shields&Mohan, 2008</a> offer interesting perspectives on this). Thus there is a responsibility for contemporary educators to represent and teach within the walls of a classroom that reflect to its outside, empirical world. I am interested in what aesthetics education can offer students as a way of assessing this 'empirical world'. <a href="http://artsforchange.org/">Beverly Naidus' new book</a>, and <a href="http://islandsinstitute.ning.com/profile/bnaidus">her ning</a>, are excellent resources that explore the intersection of art literacy to frameworks of peace educatory instruction. These can be applied through any discipline approach and can certainly use new media in its curriculum developments. I look forward to continuing to explore our emerging definitions of media literacy and its purpose for world education in our final workshop session and continuing dialogue on the NING.