Online Content Construction: week 5: 7710 Readings

Online Content Construction:

While I agree that students can have limited abilities and comprehension skills when reading print text yet show higher abilities when it comes to media literacies, I have an issue with the idea that these are interchangeable literacies. Maybe it’s the English teacher in me. While reading O’Brien’s “At-Risk” article I was struck by the example from his study, particularly the story of “Dan and His Diary of a Madman”. While a agree with and appreciate Dan’s display of media literacy with his documentary of Ozzy Osbourne, I can’t help but notice he still showed no evidence of learning through print/reading. I think these are two different areas of literacy, just as much as Science and History are different subjects. I feel as if Dan is still a “struggling” reader based on the information given to me in the article. I feel as if O’Brien was trying to say that Dan was not a “struggling” reader, or shouldn’t have been identified as such. Dan clearly showed competence in the area of media literacy just like I’ve had students who were labeled Special Ed., for learning disability but were great artists or athletes. I feel as if these two literacies, print and media, are two different areas.

Having said that, I appreciate and use these literacies in my class to build knowledge, especially with struggling readers! The case of the “The Violence Project” is a good example of something I would use with students. However, I might assign something like that to support or explain a common theme in stories we’ve read in class. I just find myself thinking that my students still have to understand printed text to be able to utilize media text effectively in my English classroom.

And, I totally see the relation to Remix Culture and Kirby Ferguson because these students took something from someone else and remixed into their own, original and creative piece. At first I was not agreeing with the ideas brought up in the video but I am beginning to agree that it’s a valid point and we all remix material to create our own!

Here's an example of remixed material. I used to read this story to my 6th graders when discussing point of view. We first read The Three Little Pigs and then this version. This was perfect for teaching point of view and I thought it fit perfectly into this blog supporting how everything is remixed or taken from someone else's work. In this specific example the same plot is discussed from the Wolfe's perspective! A creative recreation of the same story!