2010 Global Education Conference Session

By Terry Heick

English that Matters: Increasing ELA Authenticity

through Media

Agenda

1. What’s wrong with the ELA that we’ve got?

2. What underlying assumptions support these ideas?

3. What exactly are “media” and “authenticity,” and what do they have to do with ELA?

4. What is schema, and how does it fit in here?

5. What does a “reformed,” media-driven ELA unit look like?

6. Questions

ThesisWhile we focus on the minutiae of education, we're

forgetting the inseparable social components—or

social arena--of authentic learning.

The process of innovating an increasingly

irrelevant ELA curriculum can be initiated

through a focus on the art and science of media

design.

Current Challenges

1. Increasingly awkward, dated, and irrelevant

standards.

Common Core, Grade 8: “Acquire and use

accurately grade-appropriate

general academic and domain-specific words and

phrases; gather

vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or

phrase important to

comprehension or expression.”

Current Challenges

2. Accordingly numb curriculum and curricular resources.

Current Challenges

3. “Professional Learning Communities” that

“unpack” said uneven standards to ensure

“proficiency” on end-of-the-year exam.

This renders institutionally-centered learning, not authentic, student-centered learning.

Current Challenges4. Intervention models to “support” students to

“master” a model of school that remains sterile and

non-authentic.

ConclusionEducators must be fluent users of complex and

modern media, and seamlessly merge those media

forms into rigorous, student-centered learning experiences.

Not Technology. Authenticity.

Moby Dick is Dead.

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

-Mark Twain.

Fortunately….

Modern media can also effortlessly bring “classic” (read: culturally detached) media into focus.

“Intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct.“

Sir Ken Robinson

Are our schools?

Is our Curriculum? Our instruction?

Our methods of measuring success in schools?

Defining Authenticity

Broadly, Authenticity refers to differentiated work that meets the needs of learners. This can be in regards to curriculum, curricular resources, instructional strategies, or social and physical environment.

More specifically, let’s consider a framework.

Ten Underlying Assumptions of a 21st Century ELA Curriculum

1. Authentic learning should result in personal and/or social change.

2. Our current system of education is inadequate.

3. ELA—roughly put as “reading and writing”—provide foundational skills and

concepts within any system of learning.

4. ELA should therefore provide leadership in innovating curriculum.

5. The legacy of ELA is tied to works and thinkers that have been dead for

centuries, and/or that is written in single-media forms not commonly or

“seamlessly” consumed by modern learners.

6. While new forms are undoubtedly necessary, it will likely require reform to get there.

7. Rich ELA curriculum is media-centered.

8. Changing forms of media are a byproduct of rapid technology progression and innovative user adoption.

9. Media now has significant social dynamics.

10. Merging classic and modern media forms to mine their considerable potential can not only improve learning, but provide scaffolding for ELA educators as we seek out new forms of learning are sought.

Ten Underlying Assumptions of a 21st Century ELA Curriculum

Existing Forms

R e f o r m

New Forms

Examples of Merging Classic and Modern Media

Sample PromptRobert Frost was very clear about the need For spaces in

life—both physical and emotional. In some works, he

explored the grandness of solitude, while in others

emphasizing the interdependence of the human

experience. If he were alive today, Robert Frost

would not “like” facebook.

Sample PromptAs a modern pop star, one could say that Lady

Gaga symbolizes the intellectual superficiality

and bankrupt morality of our culture. If she

were alive today, Emily Dickinson would not

have Lady Gaga on any of her iTunes playlists.

Sample PromptWendell Berry, perhaps our nation’s greatest living

writer, was known to criticize what he called

“dispossessed living.” With this in mind, Wendell

Berry would have no problem shopping at his local

Wal-Mart.

What is “media”?

Media: A vehicle enabling the intentional communication of a thought or idea; a showcase for a message.

ELA = The Art & Science of Media Design

The science of powerful communication lies in using specific “components” that can be independently and interdependently manipulated.

The art lies in design decisions of how to effectively use

these components, often in innovative ways to convey a compelling message to an intentional audience.

Technology constantly evolves the interdependence of media.

(single media multimedia social media)

However, media is media; one supplements, detracts from, challenges, ignores, or builds upon the next.

This is the fertile ground of a 21st century ELA curriculum.

Tone

Theme

Diction

Literary Devices (Irony, Metaphor, etc.)

Persuasion and Propaganda

Mood

Author Purpose

“What’d they say and how’d they say it?”

Literary Elements (setting, characterization, etc.)

Thinking about Media Patterns

Complex Thinking about Complex

Media

Complex Thinking about Simple

MediaSimple Thinking about Complex Media

Simple Thinking about Simple Media

Media: Static and Dynamic

Static (Silently Interactive) Dynamic (Overtly Interactive)

NovelsPoemsGraffitiEssaysLettersMuralsSignsSpeechesEditorial CartoonsTelevision & “Web 1.0” videosPhotographs and PostersPaintingsTimelinesMusicRSS feeds

VideogamesWebsites BlogsGlogsterInteractive Timelines Youtube videos (annotation,comments)DiscussionsTwitter streamFacebook newsfeedEmails & Text MessagingZune/Ping/playlist.comWord Clouds/TagxedoiTunes storeStumbleupon, Digg, etc.

The current trend of media is one of convergence and interactivity. This makes modern media a gold mine for extracting and showcasing current national standards and tangent initiatives (ACT, SAT, Common Core, P21, NCTE)

Convergence of Media

from the Appendix: Selected NCTE/IRA Standards for English Language Arts Pertaining to 21st Century Literacies:

1.Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world.

A strong case could be made that this is not a single recommendation of 12, but the heart of ELA.

Why does Media matter?

Schema.

SchemaSchema refers to a cognitively native framework for

making sense of ideas.

Roughly put, existing old stuff we already know

helps us to make sense of new stuff we don’t.

By using native media, we’re using “stuff” they’ve seen before so that they might master skills and concepts they haven’t via transfer.

Media leverages existing learner schema.

Schema

Schema

Integrating Authenticity

How?

“Integrating these skills when deep into the

curriculum mapping process is a natural way to

ensure their genuine development in the

classroom.”

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Upgrading the Curriculum,

Curriculum21’s “Essential Education for a Changing

World”

Standards

Curriculum

Instruction

Forcing authenticity

Literary Music Videogame

“Everything Rises Must Converge” (F. O’Connor) Lil’ Kings (Frank Walker X)"I Have A Dream" (King)“I Hear America Singing” (Whitman) "I, Too, Hear America Singing" by (Hughes) “Let America Be America Again” (Hughes) “The House on Mango Street” excerpt (S. Cisneros)

"America" (Nas) "Black Zombie“ (Nas) "This Ain't Livin" (2pac) "Po Folks“ (Nappy Roots) “Brown-eyed Girl” (Van Morrison)“American Pie” (Don Mclean)“The Invisible Man” (Public Enemy)“Southern Man” (Neil Young)“Sweet Home Alabama” (LynyrdSkynyrd)

Grand Theft Auto 4 The SimsFallout 3Metal Gear Solid 4

Websites, Blogs & AppsThe American

Experience

Non-Fiction

http://tiny.cc/wordclockhttp://www.google.com/trendsiTunes music store

“Racism and the Economy” (Wendell Berry)“Dreaming America” by (J. C.Oates) “Dreams of my Father” (Obama)“The Souls of Black Folk” (Dubois)

Podcast Video Social Media

http://tiny.cc/NPRPodcast“This American Life” podcast series

“The American Dream” (G. Carlin, youtube) Niko Bellic, Grand Theft Auto (youtube)

http://tiny.cc/appalachiafb

Conclusions1. ELA is, fundamentally and perhaps unwittingly, the art

and science of media design.

2. Media is diverse, dynamic, and social.

3. Media leverages schema, encourages transfer, and supports meaningful differentiation.

4. Technology constantly evolves media. ELA, therefore, must evolve in parallel.

5. This is not an either-or proposition of technology-based media versus novels and poems. Because of the schema, media can endorse and otherwise bring into focus seemingly irrelevant, dated single-media texts as we seek out new forms of learning.

12 Next Steps1. Close examination of media forms

2. Deconstructing the “21st Century ELA Framework”

3. “Personal & Social Change”: A Closer Look

4. Common Core standards in a 21st Century Classroom

5. Media-Culture relationships

6. Technology and Self-Directed Learning Models

7. “Education Reform” vs. New Forms of learning

8. The Media-Supports-Assessment Model

9. Project, Problem and Inquiry-based learning

10. Media Best Practices

11. Barriers to Media Adoption

12. Rethinking Differentiation

Questions?