Self Reflection & Innovative Pedagogy - Equipping students and New Media

Henry Jenkins comments on media convergence are particularly resonating for me.

One thing that I have learnt, quite simply, is that I am a “learner”. Of course learning is a lifelong process, but in the context of my education practice, for the first time ever, my teaching role is in the midst of change. As Sonia Livingstone suggests; children are, for the first time in history, seen “as a source of wisdom rather than innocence and ignorance” (2009 p. 181), particularly in the areas of New and Digital Media and the emergence of participatory culture, of which film and television is still a part. The media landscape is changing and rapidly.

Back in the mid 1990s, I was involved in a short television project, funded by The Australia Council, about “Interactive television”. It was broadcast as part of a short film series on SBS and was a very exciting experience.  I remember thinking how farfetched it seemed, but at the same time I was open to that fact that this could very well be a reality. I just probably did not expect that to be in just under a decade. Now, film and television has indeed converged with online technology, and often I find myself accessing YouTube to watch long lost videos and music clips, see innovative animations from new film makers and enjoy movies. Not only can I just watch these programs, but I can comment on online communities and give my opinions to others and meet like minded audience members. In a strange way, although I may never meet these people, film and television has become a social experience other than just one I enjoy with my family in the living room or share with a class.

Teaching media literacy is at the very core of my subject area. One reason I elected to take this subject in Youth, Popular Culture and Texts was to update my knowledge in this arena, particularly as media converges.  I acknowledge that this will be fundamental content to my teaching practice and that it will also impact on pedagogy.  I use these technologies as a layman, and in my regular everyday activities, but understanding the context for its use in education and learning with young people is vital. Although I have trained in film and television and been involved in various media productions, before embarking in a career in the education field, my knowledge will always need to be current.  I am a learner in the world of New Media and as Frances Willard, an American educator of a bygone era once said:
"No matter how one may think himself accomplished, when he sets out to learn a new language, science, or the bicycle, he has entered a new realm as truly as if he were a child newly born into the world."  ~Frances Willard, How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle

My students, born as “digital natives” (Prensky 1991) are the experts.  However, as Jenkins (2009 p. 15) says “children and youths do indeed know more about these new media environments than most parents and teachers. In fact, we do not need to protect them so much as to engage them in critical dialogues that help them articulate more fully their intuitive understanding of those experiences”. Students still need adult guidance and facilitation in their learning. Another thing that is interesting is that debates about media literacy are not new, but they are no longer restricted to the media education classroom. As Livingstone (2009 p. 198) asserts “once a rather specialist issue for media practitioners and educators...media literacy is now a central issue for everyone concerned with people’s – not only children’s – critical, participatory and creative engagement with all forms of media and communications” . It is being realised, just how important media literacy is, just not in a Film, Television and New Media classroom, but across the entire school curriculum.

Given these issues in mind, this relates to a few things I would like to bring into the media education classroom. It would be fascinating to observe how a project or unit could be spread over several different media types – a thematic unit. Rather than students doing isolated tasks on each media form (such as an animation or a singular video as part of a unit in Australia film for example), it would be exciting to see how a film/video project from production practice could be made from conception to upload on YouTube and blogged in process and review.  In production practice, where students may have usually have kept a written journal of the process, this component of a task could be moved to a blog. Students could share with their production group and exchange video links and ideas. A Critique section could also be done via blog, rather than a submitted via hard copy assignment allowing students to provide actual film and television excerpts as reference. Where permission would allow, a mash up of videos could be produced for a unit like Teenage film or music video,  where students could change the meaning of a video text by mashing it together and juxtaposing different images together to create another meaning. But unlike the editing suite, they would upload this to another source for informal comment and use existing texts and share their production more widely. Blogs could also allow students to exchange and incorporate ideas like a scrapbook and provide feedback for each other. This could be particularly interesting in topics such as ‘advertising’ or ‘propaganda’. 

Another thought was to take advantage of students knowing more than their elders in some areas, and to develop a unit that focuses on this, to assess prior knowledge, to not only realise any possible “participation gaps” (Jenkins 2009) in the class, but to develop a collaborative way to teach others using New Digital Media in a peer learning environment. Additionally, it would be good to run community forum software off a school’s website, to allow students to discuss their favourite television and films and as a result, base an assessment task around an interest shared community like this. The opportunities of teaching with New Media are boundless. Collaborative learning would move beyond the classroom and online. Students could share ideas whenever they came to them, and work on production tasks with a more flexible approach. As Jenkins (2009) and Quin (2003) assert that educators have always known that students learn best through experimentation and observation – basically learning by doing, rather than by reading a text book or attending a lecture. Simulations, like those suggested above, would help broaden their experiences in learning and their understanding of various media texts.

My part of this blog has focused largely on media and moral panics, and issues that concern youth. Moral panics still occur today, and I did encounter some, via parental concern with units that I taught. Being a parent now myself, I do understand a lot more why parents may be concerned about various issues, and this unit has allowed me to think about New Media and popular culture, not just with my educator’s hat on, but as a parent as well. It is a very exciting time for education with the advent of New Media, and it something that provides boundless opportunities. Once we lay the critical foundations in place with our students through analysis and critique, the new media technology can be used to best advantage in the classroom and provide students with the resources for fantastic learning experiences.

Elizabeth

REFERENCES:
Jenkins, H. (2009) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media education for the 21st Century. United States. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. New York. New York University Press.

Jenkins, H. (Speaker) Henry Jenkins [streaming video recording] Retrieved: October 1st 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibJaqXVaOaI

Livingstone, S. (2009) Children and the Internet. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon. (9) 5 pp. 1-6.

Quin, R. (2003) Questions of Knowledge in Australian Media Education. Television and New Media. (4), 439-460.

Reflection: transforming pedagogy for boys

In my previous blog entries, I have focused primarily on the construction of masculine identities in film and television targeted at the youth market.  Boys are too often forgotten when considering the impact of media on their identity formation, yet producers “rely more frequently on youthful and teenage images as a means to tell their stories” (Call, 2009, p. 80).  As a teacher in an all-boys secondary school, using texts that present the multiplicity of masculinity is a priority, but it is often difficult to find such examples, particularly from popular culture.  Male characters in mainstream film and television tend to be reworked stereotypes or immature men who have never ‘grown up’.  As a result, it is argued that “Western society is structured through an extended adolescence” (Pomerance & Gateward, 2005, p. 9) with men struggling to find their desired role.  By focusing the lens of study on masculinity, boys can explore how film and television texts work to affirm – and occasionally contest – perceptions and expectations of gender roles.

As a first step in interrogating masculinity in my own practice, I believe that more opportunitites can be created to use popular culture as teaching resources.  In an extensive study of boys' literacy practices, Blair and Sanford (2004) found that boys read non-traditional and non-literary text types, particularly those that have emerged on the internet.  Furthermore, their engagement increases when there is a personal relationship between them, their friend and the text, precipitating a purposeful and meaningful interaction.  The convergence of film and television products with the internet and mobile devices means that the use of a simple DVD in class is not necessarily the most appealing way of engaging the students.  More social and collaborative learning environments would be more suitable.

In my practice as an English teacher, I can apply this idea by exploiting the access to streamed video and vodcasts relating to units of work.  Content available in this way is usually recent, popular, readily available and easily shared.  As such, an investigation of gender representations would be relevant and most likely aimed at the youth market.  As a teacher librarian, I will ensure that the library is well-resourced with a range of popular culture texts (in traditional formats as well as in new media).  More importantly, I will continue to collaborate with other teachers in developing learning activities that put television and film as an essential part of their study, with the specific intention (where appropriate) to question the way in which male characters, and masculinity in general, have been represented.

In designing tasks for students, the use of film and television could be both in the process and product of their work.  In other words, a film could be used as a teaching resource, a video recording could then be made for a personal reflection (ie. a vlog), and the final assessment piece could be a mash-up of different media.  In this way, students would be exposed to the experience of constructing as well as deconstructing a text, which would enlighten them about other authors' decision-making processes.  In relation to masculine identity, it is a step towards understanding that every element in front of the camera represents a decision, whether it be in the script, the acting, or the composition of a shot.  Masculinity is further constructed in the interactions between characters.

Several units of work, particularly in the English course, seem most fitting for adaptation, based on my learnings.  Collaborating with other staff, I see an opportunity in a junior year level to use television comedies (and sitcoms) as a means of examining how gender stereotypes are constructed and manipulated.  The contemporary depiction of the infantile, immature man who lives in privileged circumstances would be one specific male identity to investigate.  What Walsh, Fursich and Jefferson (2008) note about mismatched couples affirming a patriarchal worldview is particularly relevant in this context.  Similarly, The Simpsons or Glee would be a resource rich with examples of stereotype manipulations.  In another more senior year level, a unit could focus on the construction of the male hero, from its origins in Greek tragedy to contemporary film.  Reframing common assumptions about heroes would be an interesting exercise and reveal much about the expectations we have of male characters, particularly those that reflect the more traditional aspects of the gender.

Overall, a shift in pedagogy is needed not only to address the struggle with masculine identity in popular culture, but also to address the literacy needs of boys.  By incorporating film and television into the curriculum in novel ways, particularly combined with other media such as the internet, we would be promoting the development of new literacies - ones that require different reading practices and textual interactions.  It is in these literacies that there is hope for greater diversity and complexity in how men are represented in the future, so that young people are less bound to a narrow range of identities.

Greg


REFERENCES

Blair, H., & Sanford, K. (2004). Morphing literacy: boys reshaping their school-based literacy practices. Language Arts, 81(6), 452-460, Retrieved October 20, 2010, from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.125.5159&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Call, J. (2009). Review: Where the boys are: cinemas of masculinity and youth, edited by Murray Pomerance and Frances Gateward. Wayne State University Press, 2005. Quarterly review of film & video, 26(1), 80-85.

Pomerance, M., & Gateward, F. (Eds.) (2005). Where the boys are: cinemas of masculinity and youth. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Walsh, K., Fursich, E., & Jefferson, B. (2008). Beauty and the patriarchal beast: gender role portrayals in sitcoms featuring mismatched couples. Journal of popular film and television, 36(3), 123-132.