The social significance of modern multi-media curricula: Towards construction of political awareness through global media schooling

[Dina Paulson]

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 "The Globalization of Education in the Digital Age". 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.

Abstract

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.

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.

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.

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The format of my paper addresses these developments through the following subheadings, listed consecutively:

Introduction
Entrance to the modern multi-media age
Composition of a technicized society
Teach, Think, Play III 2009: Realities of multi-media literacy learning
The media president Barack Obama
The future multi-literate learner: towards development of democratic identity?

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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:

References

Adults and Social Network Websites. (2009, January 14). Retrieved April 20 2009 from
http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Social-Networking.aspx

Barlow, A. (2007). The Rise Of The Blogosphere. Westport: Praeger Publishers.

Barry, E. (2009, April 8). Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter. The New
York Times, A1.

Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: literacy, learning and contemporary culture.
Cambridge: Polity Press.

Dowd, M. (2009, April 15). Dinosaur at the Gate. The New York Times, Op-Ed Column.

Feinberg, W. & Soltis, J. F. (2004). School and Society. New York: Teachers College
Press.

Generations Online in 2009. (2009, January 28). Retrieved April 20 2009 from
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Generations-Online-in-2009.aspx

Governing as Social Networking. (2009, April 22). Retrieved April 23 2009 from
http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2009/12-Governing-as-Social-Networking.aspx

Kist, W. (2005). New literacies in action: Teaching And Learning In Multiple Media. New York: Teachers College Press.

Krueger, E. & Christel, M. T. (2001). Seeing and Believing: How to Teach Media Literacy in the English Classroom. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook.

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.

Retrieved April 13 2009 from http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/facebookusersget
worsegradesincollege

Retrieved May 1 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/technology/01filter.
html?emc=eta1

Rettberg, J. W. (2008). Blogging. Malden: Polity Press.

Said, E.W. (1999) Out of Place: A Memoir. New York: Vintage Books.

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.

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.

Social Networking Websites and Teens. (2009, January 7) Retrieved April 20 2009 from
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Social-Networking-Websites-and-Teens.aspx

Teens and the Internet. (2009, January 9). Retrieved April 20 2009 from
http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2009/Teens-and-the-internet.aspx

The Annotated Inauguration. (2009, January 21). Retrieved April 20 2009 from
http://www.pewinternet.org/Commentary/2009/January/The-Annotated-Inauguration.aspx

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.

Dina