Week 3 Assignment

Learning Activities:

Enter a reflective journal entry post on your blog. Pick a topic or issue from the readings that struck you as interesting, important, confusing, etc. and reflect on it in by responding to the following prompts:

1. What is / are the tools and techniques (or new skills) being put into practice?
2. What is / are the key issue(s) outlined in or underlying the text (think in terms of Green’s model: operational, cultural and critical)?
3. Why do you think Green used the visual model to represent his ideas of the 3 dimensions of Literacy.  How does the relational visual "hierarchical structure" serve the taxonomy of levels?  How might you use visually structure Jenkins "New Digital Literacies" ?  How many times have you laid out information in a relational conceptual representation to clarify meaning? Share some examples.
4. Be sure to reference the reading including author and page number.

     To be honest, I am a bit confused. I do find the reading to be a bit overwhelming and difficult to follow, at times. I find that I learn much quicker by listening and by doing rather than reading. So naturally, I enjoyed listening to Mr. Jenkins speak; his video was easy to follow and understand. I like how he walked us through many years of change and how participatory culture has needed to grow and develop with all of the new media and literacy change. Some of the new tools and techniques he spoke of included; social networking (facebook, myspace etc, etc), learning through popular culture and groups that are created based on a unique interest (Harry Potter / bowling) that develop into something greater. The Harry Potter lovers developed into a large community that supported a huge donation mission to Haiti. 

     Kress and van Leeuwen talk about the many different charts, graphs, images and diagrams that are used throughout our world. Things started to click for me when they said, "In other words, the identity of an individual (or a species) is represented as being "subordinate"to its "origins" or "ancestors" in the same way as specific concepts are subordinated to more general and abstract concepts, and lower employees or local bodies to managers or central organs" (pg. 82). When they broke their explanation down like this is started to make sense to me. Many images are broken down so that when you look at them the "powerful" or most important thing is on top and then the less important images are on the bottom. I beleive this is why many flow charts and organizational charts were used to resemble this thought. They start at the top with the most important thought or image and trickle down with the less imoportant images or ideas. I believe this way of outlining and breaking down images is important and easy to follow. I am a bit touched with OCD and like when things are "just so" and have an easy to follow structure. 

     When you look at Green's diagram; "approach to literacy" you don't see a "top to bottom" or "trickle" down flow. This leads me to believe that each component (Operational, Cultural, and Critical) of the diagram should be considered equal. The three circles are overlapping and that, to me, shows that they are all linked to one another, somehow. Green states that, "the interface of those three overlapping concepts creates a meaning of Learning" (pg.1). Green uses this diagram to show equal parts that combine to create learning, using and analyzing but Jenkins could definitly use a hierachical structure when it comes to outlining the New Digital Literacies. He used a chart showing how little we had in he 1850's (toy printing press) all the way to current times (web and radio). He could organize his ideas about participatory culture and how it has grown over the years due to change in technology by using a hierachial structure; he could have the internet at the top and then trickle down the structure with technologies that have been used in the past (the bottom would have the printing press). 

     Over the years, as a teacher, I've used many structures such as the ones Kress and van Leeuwen talk about. Breaking things down into a visual is very helpful to my students (and me) especially, my special education students. Many of my children have been visual learners and need the graphs, diagrams, venn diagrams and charts to learn. Seeing the information rather than just hearing it is very helpful. In my current classroom (Universal PreK) I've used several as well; bar graphs, venn diagrams and charts. We just recently created a mitten vs. glove chart to see who wears what in our classroom and then from this we were able to determine whether more children have gloves or mittens in our classroom. Just goes to show that you can use these visual literacies in many areas; as sophisticated as with Jenkins or as simple as with my prek classroom.

References:

Green. (n.d.). Graphical representation of GREEN's approach to literacy. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from https://moodle.esc.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=821667

Jenkins, Henry. "TEDxNYED - Henry Jenkins - 03/06/10." Online video clip. Youtube. Uploaded on April 13th, 2010. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa0XRlw. January 30th, 2015.

Kress, G., & Van leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammer Of Visual Design (2nd ed., p. 312). Routledge.