CURR 501: Digital Media Literacy

  Kahoot Tutorial Kahoot is an educational platform that quiz games to teach students about various subjects. Teachers can either use pre-made quizzes or create their own quizzes on virtually any topic. The game can be played through computers or through smartphones. Each game usually takes around 10-15 minutes and is the perfect short activity for students who are eager to compete against each other. Being in a special education classroom, this resource has been great because most quizzes can be modified easily and can be good for students when they need a break from regular instruction. Kahoots can be used to give out rewards like snacks, gift cards, certificates or any other kind of prize.  It is also a popular platform among teachers because they have many resources for free, although many teachers also get premium features through their paid accounts. Towards the end of a lesson, students are usually begging me to let them play a Kahoot so they can take their minds off o...

The (Many) Problems with White Saviors The white savior trope in movies is one that's widely known. There are many videos making fun of how Hollywood is so obsessed with making white savior movies clearly aimed at making white people feel better about systemic racism. Not only that, but these kinds of movies about teachers often avoid actually key issues. I chose to discuss the chapter of Rethinking Popular Culture & Media  titled Freedom Writers: White Teachers to the Rescue because the topic of white saviorism in teaching and how it's portrayed in movies and in real life is something I've thought a lot about this past year. So what is a white savior? According to  Savala Nolan, author of  Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body  and the director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law, white saviorism is " an ideology that is acted upon when a white person, from a position of superiority, att...

Final Media Project: Digital Drop Box I believe that students learn best when they are able to, at least to a healthy degree, process and let go of the stressors that are weighing them down. This could be a hardship at home, in school or even inside the classroom. I believe when students are giving an opportunity to release that stress by sharing it with a trusted adult, it helps them share the burden of achievement. I also believe that students learn best when the adult they are learning from is someone they feel connected to and who they feel understands them. In terms of technology, I believe that our digital lives allow us to connect with people in a way that feels safer when we are behind a screen. For my final project, I proposed creating a digital dropbox to allow my students to have a space to express and thoughts or concerns they may not want to voice in front of their peers. This came to mind not only from my own experience as a student, but also from my experience as a teach...

Encanto Review When I started watching the Encanto film, I was admittedly skeptical. I never really got into the Disney film fandom in part because I was so turned off by the whole marketing of raising girls to be like Disney princesses. That was never something that appealed to me. Having two parents who worked in advertising, I have always looked at Disney with a critical lense and a money-making machine designed to manipulate their consumers. But they do it well. In fact, they teach us many of the lessons we've learned in this class - like Baby George, it's okay to fall and try again. Which is something that happens often in Encanto. Like many young girls, I didn't see myself in these Disney princess tropes. As author Linda Christiansen writes in Unlearning the  Myths that Bind Us ,  "My waist didn’t dip into an hourglass; in fact, according to the novels I read, my thick ankles doomed me to be cast as the peasant woman reaping hay while the heroine swept by with he...

Final Project Ideas  As explained during class, I will be creating a news blog for my students to fill out every week. This is based on my beliefs that students learn over time and with reflection and that students like to learn and think in public, but specifically using technology. My students are much more willing to share and expand on their thoughts using technology than speaking face to face. While this is something I'm working on improving with my students, I want them to be able to think critically in a space that is comfortable for them. They will be asked to select a news article and discuss things they notice about it: what do you know about the news source, news topic, how the article was put together, how they cite/explain evidence and other elements that bring a news story together. I also want them to practice regularly reading/digesting the news. I will not require them to do specifically an article. If they want to use a video or podcast, they can do that. It's...

Turkle & Wesch As discussed during class, there is a clear connection between Turkle and Wesch's work. Turkle argues that while technology is a great thing that connects people from all over the world and brings people together, it also keeps people from making deeper connections. Technology makes it too easy to keep these connections surface level. Turkle write, " In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay . We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right." They explain that " People get so used to being short changed out of real conversation, they are willing to dispense it all together.” Similarly, Wesch talks about how many think that if teaching is happening, then learning is happening. But pedagogical connections require so much more than that. As Wesch explains, " Focusing on the qua...