Turkle argues that we have come to expect more from technology than from each other and our reliance upon technology has created loneliness and isolation when we were seeking to create community and connection. There is no doubt that advancement in technology has increased our reliance on innovation and reduced our dependence on face-to-face social interaction. During the pandemic, technology was the only way we were able to engage with much of our otherwise in-person lives. School, work, and socialization all happened through our screens. If it weren’t for technology, the pandemic experience would have been very different.
For me, this increased dependence on technology felt much like Turkle described in her article The Pandemic Made Us Strangers to Ourselves in Time magazine. It felt like an ongoing state of transition. Every day presented new challenges in trying to figure out how to use technology to accomplish the same tasks we were custom to doing through other means. This experience created new rituals, expectations, and practices. Now, in the post-pandemic world, we are in a position to figure out how to reimagine life and move forward in a space where everything is different but also the same.
The pandemic made me feel more comfortable and adept with technology. At the same time, it created a dependence on technology that has outlived online schooling and stay-at-home orders. I see myself working to balance between how it was before to how it had to be during the pandemic.
In Part 4 of Rethinking Popular Culture and Media the fourth chapter, May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor: Teaching class and collective action with The Hunger Games (p.234) by Elizabeth Marshall and Matt Rosati, describes a series of lessons that use The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins to help students explore oppression as a byproduct of social classes and the power of the collective action of young people.
The Hunger Games presents a critique of economic injustice and capitalist ideals and a version of a large collective led by youth. This emphasis on organized youths coming together to force change and fight oppression creates relevancy for my students that have experienced and/or witnessed real-world examples of this. In their lessons, Marshall and Rosati had two goals: challenge students’ stereotypes about social class and encourage students to see connections between the class struggles that exist in the novel and the class struggles that exist in society.
The initial activities described in the chapter were designed to support students in developing a foundational and agreed-upon understanding of social class, the stereotypes associated with different social classes, and the implications of social class from their diverse experiences. After establishing the necessary background knowledge, Marshall and Rosati used the students’ knowledge of the social structures and characters from the novel to have students analyze real-world class conflicts that influence modern society. Students read about a labor strike from the early 20th century and were then asked to consider how a similar situation would unfold in the context of the novel. To wrap up their lessons, Marshall and Rosati asked students to reflect on the decisions they made on how the characters would behave. In these reflections, students connected back to their understanding of social classes and their influence on power, both real and perceived.
How do we ensure students are provided a relevant and purposeful education in an age when they have instant access to all information and the need to know is superseded by the need to learn? In his Ted Talk Build a School in the Cloud, Sugata Mitra points out that our education system was designed in a time when the objective of formal education was to disseminate information. Now, that need can be satisfied through a few clicks, a youtube video, or a quick Google search. To progress education, we need to move away from the ideology of propagating information and move towards a school of thought that values problem-solving, inquiry, and discovery. Mitra convincingly suggests that traditional learning environments are obsolete and detrimental to real learning. He believes that self-organized learning environments are how we can innovate education in order to allow education to match the rapid evolution of our digital world.
A self-learning environment is one where the learner is provided with access to technology, collaboration is valued, and encouragement is offered. In this environment, the role of the teacher is to guide student questioning, encourage exploration and discovery, and support learner collaboration. This shift moves away from the traditional model where the teacher is the content expert and holds all the answers. It creates a space where an effective teacher must be skilled at supporting the development of positive relationships, modeling the design and refinement of inquiry, and introducing tools and resources to support students’ natural inquisitiveness. A classroom teacher in this environment is a facilitator and a guide. Their role is to create an environment where self-learning is possible.
Episode 4 of the 1619 podcast discusses the impact of race on access to quality healthcare. In the podcast, we hear the voices of the podcast creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, her interview with expert Jeneen Interlandi, and archived recordings from historical interviews. The episode begins with Hannah-Jones telling a story from her personal history that has a deep connection to the discussion topic. This establishes a context for the historical and political discussion that follows. During this, the podcast blends expert commentary with first-person accounts and interviews to tell the story of how race has impacted access to adequate healthcare. The podcast closes with the reading of a short narrative piece from Ghanian-American Novelist Yaa Gyasi. By incorporating various modes of spoken word and storytelling like interviews, fictional and nonfictional, narratives, and historical recordings, the podcast is able to tell an important truth about how the country has failed Black Americans.
I use podcasts with my Emergent Bilingual high school students. In an English language development classroom, there are many benefits to incorporating podcasts into teaching and learning activities. Podcasts can support EBs in developing listening and speaking skills, provide foundational or background information on new topics, and provide a real-world context for new topics and vocabulary. When I do incorporate podcasts, I provide different scaffolds to support learners at different stages of English language development. Some of those scaffolds include providing complete transcripts or cloze versions of transcripts, pre-teaching vocabulary, activating prior knowledge, listening guides, note catchers, and visual supports. I use podcasts to support the comprehension and analysis of class texts but also as the class text. I think podcasts are a great tool in education. Depending on the pod, they are scripted to an extent while maintaining a conversational authenticity that is lost in other media. I find some students struggle with the audio-only format so I often accompany listening with a task that supports active listening or present the pod in chunks with activities woven in.
Here are some podcasts I’ve used in my teaching:
Before becoming a mom, the only Disney princess movie I saw in its entirety was the 1989 version of The Little Mermaid. My fourth-grade teacher showed the film in class as a reward for our good behavior during her extended absence. It was selected by a majority vote. It was not my pick.
My younger self thought the Disney narratives were boring and too girly. I was a tomboy. I wore hats and boy’s clothes. After making my first communion, I embarked on a boycott of all skirts and dresses. It lasted 17 years. Disney, and other media portraying similar archetypes, did not make me feel like I needed to be a certain type of girl but it did make me feel like I wasn’t the right type of girl. From a very young age, I had a sense that some part of who I was challenged what others thought I should be. Luckily, I was strong-willed and this did not impact my behavior but, in retrospect, it did influence my self-esteem and confidence As Disney diversified their characters I began to enjoy Disney movies more. They became more relatable.
Christensen’s critique of Disney culture validates my views. In her chapter Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us: Critiquing fairy tales and cartoons, Christensen begins her discussion by pointing out how, from a very early age, we are manipulated to accept the world as it is represented: male-dominated, influenced by wealth, valuing whiteness, prioritizing Christian ideals. It is from these representations that a sense of how the world works begins to develop. Without exposure to alternative narratives, young people are left to create ideas and beliefs about the world and themselves based on the hierarchies and inequalities portrayed in popular media.
Christensen provided her students with the necessary tools and challenged them to view children's tv, film, and literature through a critical lens. Their takeaways were lasting and meaningful. They developed new, actionable ideas about children's media and its role in society.
I decided to use what we learned through our work in CURR 501 to develop a personalized learning project for my Newcomer Elective class. ...
