Teaching our kids offline:
exploring the digital native/immigrant discourse in the classroom
(a multi-media project)
ETEC 540: Text Technologies
by Cathy Miyagi
August 2018
Click [[START]]This course has covered a range of topics related to technologies from scroll to codex, primary & secondary orality, remediation, hypermedia, and multimodality (just to name a few).
A salient topic I wanted to explore for this multi-media assignment was on Prensky's concept of digital natives and digital immigrants.
In starting this assignment, and given the various concepts introduced in this course, I had to look up what was meant by "multi-media".
See [[Ong's explanation]]
See [[a general definition]]Multi-media:
"computer-controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and moving images (video), animation, audio, and any other media where information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally" (Marshall).
This multi-media project will unpack the digital native vs. immigrant debate through the use of this Twine interactive storytelling platform, text, images, and a podcast.
Click [[NEXT]].Ong's Orality and Literacy was written in 2002. Perhaps "multi-media" wasn't a term at the time.
In treating the technologizing of the word, Ong avoids the term media because the term can give a false impression of the nature of verbal communication: "Thinking of a 'media' of communication suggests that communication is a pipeline transfer of units of material called 'information' from one place to another (171)".
Get it?
[[👍]]
[[👎]]Well then you're a smart 🍪!
(I must admit I had a very difficult time following Ong's readings for this course).
Click [[NEXT]].Me too.
(I must admit I had a very difficult time following Ong's readings for this course).
Try unpacking this one:
"Unlike members of a primary oral culture, who are turned outward because they have had little occasion to turn inward, we are turned outward because we have turned inward (133)."
Perhaps it's better to go back [[here|a general definition]]Bayne and Ross challenge this binary opposition in their research paper, "The digital native and digital immigrant': a dangerous opposition".
The premise is that young people have grown up with computers and the internet, and are naturally proficient with new digital technologies and spaces, while older people will always be a step behind/apart.
Do you agree?
[[🙆♀️]]
[[🙅♀️]]
[[🤷♀️]]I agree that digital platforms create a different approach to learning for "the Net generation".
So what impacts is this having for the "professional development agendas in an enterprise culture within our education system"?
I asked a teacher for her views. Click [[here|podcast]].You may argue that this is oversimplistic, essentialistic, or deterministic.
There is an underlying bias here that the "immigrant can never become native" (Bayne and Ross).
I asked a teacher on her views on the issue [[here|podcast]].Our understanding of technology (and therefore learning), can vary significantly according to socio-economic background (Bayne and Ross).
I asked a real teacher about current trends in her classroom [[here|podcast]].The challenge I had in this course was taking in academic material, distilling it, and reconfiguring it into something more interesting.
It is in line with my job in media... To take something ambiguous or complex, and make it into something relevant and relatable to a broader audience.
So, to begin to understand the relationship between today's teachers, students and technology, I just called up a teacher friend. I wanted to experiment using old media in new ways (ie. taking a phone call and rip, mix, & feeding it into a performance interview-like podcast).
Enjoy!
(link: "Podcast")[(goto-url: 'https://soundcloud.com/2cats-piano/no-screen-pilot/s-ZEsWP')]
THE END.
[[References]]Bayne, Sian and Jenn Ross. "The digital native and digital immigrant: a dangerous opposition." University of Edinburgh. December 2007. Retrieved http://www.academia.edu/827541/The_digital_nativeand_digital_immigrant_a_dangerous_opposition.
The New London Group. (1996) "A Pedagogy of Multi-literacies: Designing Social Futures." Harvard Educational Review 66(1), pp. 60-92.
Marshall, D. "What is Multi-media?",
https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marshall/Multimedia/node10.html. Accessed July 25, 2018.
Music by Lee Rosevere, "Max Flashback". Retrieved http://freemusicarchive.org/tag/podcast/.
Prensky coins the terms "digital natives" and "digital immigrants" whereby digital literacy is defined as a sort of revolution that has created a distinction between the haves and have-nots or those "in the know" and those that are not.
Dobson & Willinksy lean on Bolter's concept of remediation that digital literacy is just a by-product of remediation, an evolution of traditional print.
Let's unpack this [[binary opposition|The Binary Opposition]]