Trajectories and Reflections: Week 7 Reflective Practice

Week 7 Collage

Introduction

As part of the educational discourse in digital storytelling each week, I will conduct a reflective practice self assessment. These ‘reflections’ will serve as both formative and summative assessment to the learning goals of the course INTE 5340.

See learning goals in the INTE 5340 syllabus. See DS106 syllabus.

Requirements and Production

DS106 Assignment Bank (Video Assignment)
Creative Education Compilation: VideoAssignments1736

Response to Lankshear & Knobel “New Literacies” chapter one and selected scholarship
Social Learning Trajectories: A Response to Lankshear & Knobel Chapter 8

Digital story critique
The Cake is Not a Lie: A Critique of Portal 2 Puzzle Maker "Making Space for Physics"

Comment peer critiques (x2)
Week 7: Critique

(I only found 1 critique to examine posted by other classmates this week!)

Comment peer chapter responses (x2)
Moving Towards "Pull"- Last L&K Response

We need a remix for that books ending!

Reflective summary
Trajectories and Reflections: Week 7 Reflective Practice

What was challenging?

As usual, the assignment chosen from the video assignment bank was the most challenging product of the week. I had to search for and review dozens of YouTube videos around the focal theme of ‘the importance of creative arts in education.’ Then I had to figure out how to process these YouTube videos into something I could import into Adobe Premiere. Once imported, I made many clips from the videos to merge into a single cohesive video that synced with the music. Some parts synced better than others, although I was happy with the completed result. Another challenge this week was finding a quality ‘remix’ that I wanted to critique using Lankshear & Knobel literacy dimensions and coordinate with the focal theme. I did happen to find a great digital story about modding as used in education and synthesized with core subjects. The critique of which was challenging however due to lack of depth in the story. Overall I think many of these digital stories available for critique lack some depth because they are designed for rapid consumption on the internet. Overall, with both the video assignment and critique, I had to reach to get what I needed.

What was most enjoyable?

The most enjoyable part of the week was seeing the video I created come to life with the music. It brought me great joy to remix these videos of students enjoying creativity and the arts along with the music. This week was also enjoyable to Tweet with members of the course about looking forward to wrapping up this class. Also a couple of students created interactive, collaborative stories that were fun to read and engage with. Although I missed the boat on contributing to the story because I was very busy working, I enjoyed seeing the collaboration.

What was learned about the focal theme and what issues / questions have emerged?

What emerged this week as an issue or area of concern was brought to light by Anne Melzer in her response to the Lankshear & Knobel text. She was very critical in her response and mentioned that it may be unfair for instructors to teach who do not know how to use technology, or may be illiterate in ‘new literacies.’ My question for her was essentially, “how can we help?” As students and teachers at CU in the ILT masters program we hold a unique responsibility in our communities to, in some ways, inform others about these ‘new literacies’ and how they may be leveraged in courses and communities of practice. My concern is that there may not be ways to reach current instructors from K-12 to higher education in our communities because there are not systems set in place to inform and instruct. I can say from experience at the two year technical college where I teach, there are some workshops, but seldom to never do these workshops inform others about how to use ‘new literacies’ in their classes, and more in general, how to be computer literate. This is touchy and complicated issue because many of my colleagues are of mature age where they perhaps did not ‘learn to be’ with digital technologies. Some may not wish to learn these new technologies or simply have a hard time grasping ‘new literacies.’ My hope is within the next couple of years I can work through the systems, and build some programs to support faculty and staff better to integrate and understand current technologies to facilitate learning and engagement.

Points earned 10/10?

Although we were assigned less work this week, I still challenged myself through the video assignment and critique. I also researched potential ways to deliver the portfolio final assignment by practising with various applications. I discovered, through Emily May’s assignment in Storify, that it seems it is the best platform to produce a portfolio for this class because of the ease to leverage social media. I appreciated the awareness by Remi to drop the daily creates so we could spend some time preparing for our portfolios and produce quality and depth in our last assignments. I also noticed an increase in engagement on Twitter this week and there were some great discussions and collaborations. For continued self-criticism and engagement with others, I give myself 10/10 points this week.


Citations
New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning Third Ed by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel. McGraw-Hill Education 2011.