The first reading "Traveling, Textual Authority, and Transformation: An Introduction to Critical Digital Literacies" showed the different ways teachers can bring critical digital literacies to the classroom. Avila and Pandya explain that "critical literacies provide skills and tools to address social and educational inequalities and assist us in continuing to read the world". We want students to think critically about their surrounding as well as view social justice and culture within their own classrooms and build a connection to the world. It's also mentioned that "Critical digital literacies are those skills and practices that lead to the creation of digital texts that interrogate the world". By doing so students would have a better understanding of what goes in their own neighborhoods and even go further and look into their own states and so on. They also mention that "critical digital literacies have the potential to reach learners who might be otherwise reluctant to engage in print-based critical literacies work". Going back to what we have learned, this type of engagement becomes beneficial as we want students to become engage in the classroom. By bringing in topics we can get students to "critique the cultural worlds they inhabit". Avila and Pandya do a great job in explaining why it’s beneficial to incorporate Critical Digital Literacies in the classrooms. Critical literacies provide a gateway to a student’s self-identity in the world as Avila and Pandya mention "we need to teach intentional authoring in multi-modal design so that learners can develop their own senses of who they are in the world in relation to others". We keep hearing and reading that as future teachers we should be able to engage students in the classroom and by bringing such social and cultural dynamic to the classroom. It would engage students to think about the world and how it can be either connected to them or to other people.
This then brings the use of such technologies. We are in a world that consist of technology so what better way to engage students to think critically about the social justice and look into the different culture within their school. As suggested in the reading “the use of blogs, iPods and mobile media, videos, and digital storytelling” become handy in providing the tools to engage the students to the world. The article explained how to use such devices and I do think it's a good way to show students how the world is perceived. But I began to wonder how could this be incorporated within a Math discipline. Or more specifically how can Math teachers provide students with right tools to critique the cultural world and engage them in social justice?
Hello Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post this week! Your first image was very clever and adorable. Your second image summed up all the information from this week very nicely. I really enjoyed reading Avila and Pandya's reading. I feel that we most definitely want our students to be critical thinkers in and outside the classroom. Social justice issues appear all the time especially right now in regards to the election. The quote from the reading about critiquing the cultural worlds we inhabit is so important to focus on when we think about designing our future curriculum. Teaching students how to be critical when reading is essential in having students therefore make the necessary connections and think critically in the world around them. The use of technology is essential in helping achieve this. We live in a digital age. I never realized how helpful these types of texts were until I started working on the text set analysis assignment. It taught me that these gave students a different way to engage with material they could be reading in a textbook, but that digital text may be the one thing helping the students stay interested, focused, etc. We need to have diverse texts when designing our lesson plans. As math teachers, we can teach students how to analyze different statistics revolving around the election possibly, or other main events going on. I feel that is difficult to find material in current math classes to help students to critique the cultural world and engage them in social justice, but if you collaborate with other teachers, I am sure it can be incorporated into the curriculum.
Hello Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post about critical digital literacy this week, and I agree with you that "we are in a world that consists of technology so what better way to engage students to think critically about the social justice and look into different cultures within the school". Living in such a cultural melting pot, we need to find the interaction and connection with one another to treat with our social justice and different cultural backgrounds, so the digital literacies can be a good way to make students engage with interaction with students from different cultures because the digital texts can quickly and easily show the social cultures which the printed critical literacy cannot really work with. Living in such a digital era, how can we live without the digital technology? When I was young, my parents and teachers told me that I could not use digital technologies within and outside the school because I would be addicted to using and playing the digital devices so that it would affect my learning and concentration on thinking problems. Even though it could be influential, with the limit of reaching digital literacy, I sometimes could not see what happened in this world and engage with the expansion of some concepts relevant to the real world. Thus, I do agree that teachers should bring critical digital literacy into the classroom and also outside the class so that students can get the benefits of digital literacy just like what your first image showed above.
I enjoyed your blog post as you have a lot of great points. I agree as teachers we should bring culture and social justice into our classrooms. We need to bring technology into the classroom as well with digital texts because it is another way of engaging students. I also agree that we need to be able to help students connect their self-identity to the world around them. This would help them understand critical literacies better and they would be able to engage more with texts by connecting to it. I think using technology appropriately in the classroom can help with student learning and engagement because we are in an age of technology and we should be incorporating that into our lessons.
ReplyDeleteHello Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your blog post and the images that came with them, i thouht they were a great way to sum up our readings this week. That being said i do agree that we should include these critical lietracies in the classrooms more often, especially since this is one of the best way to observe this tech filled world. This would be a great way to include all students because you could do so much with these literacies that we as teachers would be able spark some kind of interest in students. I liked the examples of the kinds of digital litracies because it does provide a wide variety of things that we as teachers can not only use but expand upon. As for your last questions on how a math teacher can implement this technique in their own classroom i would advise to get students involved with things llike statistic of a certain topic, like in politics, homw oner ship of even race. These things could lead to a more cultural conversation for students depending on the root of them. I would also suggest adding some econonmic articles for your math class because there are several economies in the world that can reveal a lot to those who really take the time to learn about them. I think incorperating these things as digital literacies would really be benefical for math teachers as well as for you students.
Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteI think that the graphic that you chose for the eight elements of digital literacies is super helpful! I think it does a good job of making it more clear what we need to be cognizant of when employing digital literacies in our classrooms in order to make the most of our digital texts. For math in particular I think that critical digital literacies will be crucial because they allow for a more in depth contextualization of the concepts that students study. I really like how Fabiola built upon the question you left us with in regards to the social justice that we can attribute to math as a discipline. In our present situation, the US needs students to be interested in math and the sciences more than ever-- giving students real world examples of applications for the units and topics is always a concern of students'. Students have a hard time seeing the value of math concepts, therefore giving them applications to engineering and statistics in particular can strike their interests and help interest them in career areas that they might not have even thought achievable in the past.
Hi Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteI find critical digital literacies are rather important. In today's day and age it is important for our students to really understand the importance of analyzing the world around them. Especially with our current political situation it is necessary for students to learn as much as they can and develop tools that can help not only themselves but our society. We live in such a digitally dominant world that it seems almost impossible to go on a day without touching a computer. These literacies are indeed critical because we widen a students mind by exposing them to different forms of explanation and understanding. These literacies help us create students that cannot only make an argument but can give different explanations as to why they chose such argument. To answer your questions I think that we can best use this in Math if we expose students to different sources. We must not just teach students textbook curriculum but curriculum from different websites, real world situations, and surrounding problems. Only by doing all of the above can we truly teach students how to excel.
Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post this week. I really like the images you chose to include in the post, thought they really added to your whole idea in the post. The post itself summed up the readings of this week very well. Our students should be critical thinkers in and out of the classroom, at least that’s the hope. I also agree that as teachers, we should try to incorporate culture and social justice in our classrooms, especially with the use of technology. Technology is growing more and more and the use of it in the classroom is so important. Your post also does a great job explaining the benefits of digital literacies in the classroom.
Alejandra,
ReplyDeleteI find it so easy for us to say that we will support the critical thinking mind of our students and how we are going to embrace the benefits of the use of technology in their education. However, what do we do when that critical thinking mind is not in alignment of how we think. Or that method of technological learning requested is not what we feel is beneficial for the student. Do we embrace their way of thinking or learning prior to understanding their ways? Or do we put it on standby until we understand it? Avila and Pandya says "Pedagogically, power relationships between learners and teachers are made fluid in many critical digital literacies contexts ---learners frequently outpace teachers, or even arrive knowing more at the outset." What is your view of that and method of approach if you believe to be true?
Mike