New Media and New Literacies By Tiana Gannon

  For this activity, I decided to play Bridge Designer . I found this game on engineering.com. The reason I decided to spend time playing this game was because of my experience designing a bridge as a kid. My father works at NYSDOT and for a long time he was a designer there. Every year they would host a “Bring Your Kid to Work” day and I would NEVER dare to miss it! Not only was it a day out of school, it was super fun! Plus, I usually was placed in the same group as this one girl and we became pretty close although we only saw each other once a year at this event.. Anyways, at this event, each department set up a station that would educate us on what they did everyday, what their purpose was, and always included some kind of hands-on activity. We got to write our own message on those huge message boards, see how they drew real plans for real jobs, explore some pretty cool and huge equipment, and one station I will never forget - bridge design. At this station that we did every ...

  Yesterday, I conducted an interview with an eighth grade student that I use to babysit while I was in high school. I asked a handful of questions about his thoughts and feelings on technology and social media. Additionally, I added a question about his thoughts on a topic I learned about last week in class, “world-changing video games”, through a TED Talk (McGonigal, 2010). Below I highlighted the discussion I had with the student on these topics. What kind of technology would you say played a role in your childhood? The student mainly uses his smartphone. His phone is his way to access different social media platforms. He also uses his phone to communicate with his family and teachers on a daily basis. He also mentioned that he uses a personal computer but only for school work. What pros and cons come to mind when you think of the access that you've had to technology in life so far - at school and at home? The student recognizes that he has had a lot of access to technology ...

  For my final project, I’ve decided to focus on the growing concern around professional development opportunities available to educators within the new literacies and media field. While new literacies and medias are on the rise, the lack of professional development opportunities continues to grow as a concern in education. The five articles below will help me introduce this topic and bring awareness to this growing concern. Article 1 :  Friedrich, L. Trainin, G. (2016). Paving the way for new literacies integration in elementary teacher education. Creative Education. 1456-1474. https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=68237   This article is a collective case study that focuses on new literacies integration in elementary teacher education. Many Midwestern student teachers who attended a public university were observed through this study. The creation of an innovative teacher education model was the product of the results of this study. The Triarchic ...

  The topic of multimodal pedagogies and multimodal play really sparked my interest. Multimodal play refers to the concept that popular culture, media and digital technologies are integrated in ways that work to promote student learning. The authors use their article to explore how through multimodal play, “educators are better able to make pedagogical connections with adolescents’ evolving literacies” (Vasudevan et. al., 2013, pg. 24). I found this topic specifically interesting because I love to find new ways to promote student learning in modern ways.  These ‘multimodal’ spaces are something that most of us are very familiar with. Have you ever played a game where you communicate via instant messaging through your avatar in a virtual world? Do you utilize “microblogging sites like Twitter” or “online video services like Hulu” (Vasudevan et. al., 2013, pg. 25). These can be examples of multimodal play spaces - mainly used outside of school. How can we integrate these spaces ...

  “what counts as literacy, how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape, and what value we should ascribe to the new forms of communication that continue to emerge and evolve online.” (Jenkins, 2009) As literacy as a whole evolves, our methods as educators and parents must also evolve. New technology is emerging and constantly changing. However, in terms of digital literacy, it can be overwhelming to keep up with and understand it fully. In my opinion, these “new forms of communication” and learning have great value to us and our students so we should treat it as such. Rich (2008) describes the concern some have with this new age of new media and literacy online. For example, Nadia, a 15-year-old that is “addicted to the Internet”, doesn’t have any interest in book reading but she does spend the majority of her time “reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies” on “fanfiction.net” (Rich, 2008). Nadia’s ...

"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives."  (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9) Literacy is a pretty broad term for pretty much anything we read, write, speak, or listen to. Literacy is constantly changing, especially now in the 21st century with many different types of new technologies that open opportunities for new ways to communicate with others as well as getting and sharing information. According to Durrant & Green (2000), “print is simply one of a range of available technocultural resources” and we must recognize this.  This quote immediately made me think about the digital literacies we have available to us today. Most students utilize some kind of technology source for their learning. We all mainly utilize our computers, brightspace, sc...