As you may have noticed, I did not have a graphical representation of the patterns although I did discuss it in my last blog entry. I tried that yesterday but it is a really hard nut to crack.
So, I tried to do it again this morning. Sadly, I did not manage to do so but gladly, I have discovered a few new points in the process of trying to create my graphical representation that I would like to share.
Images:
- The first two images index friendship or the lack of while the third image(Tanya) index true friend. This part, together with the voice over serves as the Abstract(Labov).
- The graphic that contains skeleton index death but together with the words No Fear superimposed on the graphics, this transforms the meaning to what the voice over says "facing death give her more strength to live." This part, together with the voice over serves as the Orientation(Labov).
-image of two garden chairs index lack of friendship
- multiple images of Tanya's work which changes the pace of the stroytelling via images collectively indexes the determination, strength and Tanya's cause.
I believe he CODA is the drawing at the end, which unfortunately, I do not understand....
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Looking at digital stories
The digital story that I have picked is Tanya by Monte Hallis http://www.storycenter.org/stories/index.php?cat=2
The author grabbed my attention with her opening line that she never had a lot of friends. As she said this, the viewer sees a picture of an empty swing. The swing reminds me of childhood, a time when friends are made easily, and friendships are innocently genuine and unpretentious. An empty swing is hence a simple and yet powerful picture that symbolises the lack of true friends, which unfortunately seems to become a fact of life as one grows older. This clever combination of verbal words and image, which I have come to know as synaesthesia, had me hooked on the story immediately. There were several instances of this clever combination throughout the story. To name another one - the following picture of a central frame that is surrounded by many smaller repeated pictures as she spoke about being shy and confusing friendship with popularity. How apt!
However, I did not finish watching it the first time round even though it was only one-and-a-half minutes long. I think I lost interest because I had to put some effort to listen to the voice over in order to follow the story. The storytelling relied rather greatly on the voice over, which were difficult to hear at times with the loud background music. So I gave up midway through the story.
I went on to look at other stories but somehow, I decided to give Tanya another chance. I looked at it again. This time, I made an effort to try to make out what Monte Hallis said from beginning to the end.
Now, besides the first part that was well executed as shared earlier, Monte Hallis made clever use of silence in her storytelling. The silence is almost like the silence of her disbelief that Tanya knows her middle name. To me, it is also a revelation of the true friendship that they had.
While I did find the music a little too loud, I found that the timing for the line, “Ooh I hate to see her go” when she stopped speaking. That tells me that Tanya had passed away when Monte Hallis put this story together.
I did a search and found that Los Angeles Times carried the story about Tanya Shaw who first tried to find adoption for her two daughters. When that failed, she decided to set up Tanya’s Children, an agency top help single mothers with AIDS find adoptive parents. So I think Monte Hallis could possibly have created this story to recover emotionally from the loss of her friend, to remember the true friend she had, and to help her friend to continue her work in setting up Tanya’s Children.
I could not understand the meaning behind the drawing that ended the story and the one shown when she spoke about Tanya’s dream. Perhaps she could have added a subtitle or text over the drawing so clueless people like me could have some leads to draw conclusions from. Contrasting this with “Lyfe-N-Rhyme,” I see how useful the subtitles are and how they can serve as “visual boundary signals” that “marks the plot.”
With regards to larger semiotic patterns, I think the author used images to anchor every main point that she wants to put across. This is consistent throughout the story except the part when the author spoke about Tanya telling her story. Here, the change in images took a faster pace. I also believe that the length of the voice over and the number of pictures were decided upon based on a key criterion that both should stop as the singer sings the line, “Ooh I hate to see her go.” So, graphically, we can almost look at each picture, and one key point that is put across using one or two lines through the voice over, with the music running along until that crucial line, as shared earlier, during when everything fades out into a white screen.
The author grabbed my attention with her opening line that she never had a lot of friends. As she said this, the viewer sees a picture of an empty swing. The swing reminds me of childhood, a time when friends are made easily, and friendships are innocently genuine and unpretentious. An empty swing is hence a simple and yet powerful picture that symbolises the lack of true friends, which unfortunately seems to become a fact of life as one grows older. This clever combination of verbal words and image, which I have come to know as synaesthesia, had me hooked on the story immediately. There were several instances of this clever combination throughout the story. To name another one - the following picture of a central frame that is surrounded by many smaller repeated pictures as she spoke about being shy and confusing friendship with popularity. How apt!
However, I did not finish watching it the first time round even though it was only one-and-a-half minutes long. I think I lost interest because I had to put some effort to listen to the voice over in order to follow the story. The storytelling relied rather greatly on the voice over, which were difficult to hear at times with the loud background music. So I gave up midway through the story.
I went on to look at other stories but somehow, I decided to give Tanya another chance. I looked at it again. This time, I made an effort to try to make out what Monte Hallis said from beginning to the end.
Now, besides the first part that was well executed as shared earlier, Monte Hallis made clever use of silence in her storytelling. The silence is almost like the silence of her disbelief that Tanya knows her middle name. To me, it is also a revelation of the true friendship that they had.
While I did find the music a little too loud, I found that the timing for the line, “Ooh I hate to see her go” when she stopped speaking. That tells me that Tanya had passed away when Monte Hallis put this story together.
I did a search and found that Los Angeles Times carried the story about Tanya Shaw who first tried to find adoption for her two daughters. When that failed, she decided to set up Tanya’s Children, an agency top help single mothers with AIDS find adoptive parents. So I think Monte Hallis could possibly have created this story to recover emotionally from the loss of her friend, to remember the true friend she had, and to help her friend to continue her work in setting up Tanya’s Children.
I could not understand the meaning behind the drawing that ended the story and the one shown when she spoke about Tanya’s dream. Perhaps she could have added a subtitle or text over the drawing so clueless people like me could have some leads to draw conclusions from. Contrasting this with “Lyfe-N-Rhyme,” I see how useful the subtitles are and how they can serve as “visual boundary signals” that “marks the plot.”
With regards to larger semiotic patterns, I think the author used images to anchor every main point that she wants to put across. This is consistent throughout the story except the part when the author spoke about Tanya telling her story. Here, the change in images took a faster pace. I also believe that the length of the voice over and the number of pictures were decided upon based on a key criterion that both should stop as the singer sings the line, “Ooh I hate to see her go.” So, graphically, we can almost look at each picture, and one key point that is put across using one or two lines through the voice over, with the music running along until that crucial line, as shared earlier, during when everything fades out into a white screen.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Impact of multiliteracies
The New London Group article is a long and rather heavy one to me. Long not just in terms of length but also in terms of the number of ideas and concepts put forth, which adds to its weight as well. Nevertheless, I still ploughed through it. In the end, the portion that hit me most was captured rather early in the article. It's the part on changing working lives.
The Group started by describing how the social relationship of work is changing from the "old Fordist organisation" to one that is informal and interpersonal, hence proclaiming "a new language of work". At this point, I was not convinced at all as I have personally witnessed and experienced corporate culture that is still very much formal and procedural.
The Group went on to state that "Replication of corporate culture demands assimilation to mainstream norms that only really works if one already speaks the language of the mainstream." I think there is much truth in this as the ones who do well are often those who can suss out the norms, work within and around those norms, and still find ways to be innovative and creative. I am starting to see the point that The Group is trying to make. However, as I read on, I was still not sure how this part on changing working lives applies to education even though it has the greatest impact on me, as I had mentioned earlier. This only started to come to light after the discussion in class and when I read the article a second time after class.
I can now see the relevance and the impact that multiliteracies has on our role as educators. There are two lines in the article that seemed to sum it up for me. They are "However, it may well be that market-directed theories and practices, even though they sound humane, will never authentically include a vision of meaningful success to all students." and "An authentically democratic view of schools must include a vision of meaningful success for all, a vision of success that is not defined exclusively in economic terms and that has embedded within it a critique of hierarchy and economic injustice."
We should leverage on the affordances of multiliteracies to help our students approach their lives and their learning from a much wider perspective, through different means afforded by the various technology that best suits their strengths and needs, to achieve variety of goals that may not be limited to economic gains alone.
The Group started by describing how the social relationship of work is changing from the "old Fordist organisation" to one that is informal and interpersonal, hence proclaiming "a new language of work". At this point, I was not convinced at all as I have personally witnessed and experienced corporate culture that is still very much formal and procedural.
The Group went on to state that "Replication of corporate culture demands assimilation to mainstream norms that only really works if one already speaks the language of the mainstream." I think there is much truth in this as the ones who do well are often those who can suss out the norms, work within and around those norms, and still find ways to be innovative and creative. I am starting to see the point that The Group is trying to make. However, as I read on, I was still not sure how this part on changing working lives applies to education even though it has the greatest impact on me, as I had mentioned earlier. This only started to come to light after the discussion in class and when I read the article a second time after class.
I can now see the relevance and the impact that multiliteracies has on our role as educators. There are two lines in the article that seemed to sum it up for me. They are "However, it may well be that market-directed theories and practices, even though they sound humane, will never authentically include a vision of meaningful success to all students." and "An authentically democratic view of schools must include a vision of meaningful success for all, a vision of success that is not defined exclusively in economic terms and that has embedded within it a critique of hierarchy and economic injustice."
We should leverage on the affordances of multiliteracies to help our students approach their lives and their learning from a much wider perspective, through different means afforded by the various technology that best suits their strengths and needs, to achieve variety of goals that may not be limited to economic gains alone.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Are we doing the students justice?
The question that Dr Nelson raised last week, almost at the end of class, was whether we are doing the students justice. My sentiments exactly....
There was one line in Bennet and gang's article, "This is not to say that educational games might not be effective, but simply questions the assumption that their apparent popularity in everyday life makes them directly and unproblemetically applicable to education." (p. 779) One of the issues that I see in making lessons into games is the preparation, or the lack of preparation, for working in the industry if we do so. As teachers, we are all too familiar with the mundane administrative work that we have to do. This is the case for almost every job out there. Should students expect work to be like a game? Or should they expect their future employers to be sympathetic of their learning styles? I am quite confident that I know the answer to these questions...NO!
There was one line in Bennet and gang's article, "This is not to say that educational games might not be effective, but simply questions the assumption that their apparent popularity in everyday life makes them directly and unproblemetically applicable to education." (p. 779) One of the issues that I see in making lessons into games is the preparation, or the lack of preparation, for working in the industry if we do so. As teachers, we are all too familiar with the mundane administrative work that we have to do. This is the case for almost every job out there. Should students expect work to be like a game? Or should they expect their future employers to be sympathetic of their learning styles? I am quite confident that I know the answer to these questions...NO!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
digital literacy descriptors
It does seem like we cannot get through a day in Singapore without being digitally literate(to a certain extent). The example that Lyna raised about how we do not drop coins anymore when we take the bus says it all. I suppose at least 70% of the people in Singapore take the public transport on a daily basis. And drivers cannot get into most carparks without a cashcard in the IU. So, something as basic as getting around involves using technology. BUT does frequecy of use qualify one as digitally literate. Well, based on last week's readings, there is definitely very much more to it than that.
Somebody raised the point that technology is very much part of our lives because we want to be more efficient. Then again, many people jump straight into typing in powerpoint when they need to do presentations because it seems to be more efficient to just start than to stop and think. Is that being fast or making a good presentation? Could it be neither?
In that case, are we computer-savvy, defined as having the ability to imagine and to use things more creatively? I think not many of us are. Some of us may be pulled in due to the need to be digitally functional and accountable, while some are enjoying the ability to communicate across time zones and space, and others are enjoying the freedom to be entertained and to have fun anytime, anywhere but really, how many of us can, will or have the time to think of ways to make up for the sacrifices that may have been made due to the adoption of technology? I think we are a nation that is always quick to soak up any new innovation. Just look at the rate that we change our handsets....
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Possible plus for using ICT in language teaching
Thanks for your comments on my last post:)
Yes-perhaps we are using ICT to move towards a more student-centred learning. As Siti and SU also mentioned, there is an emphasis on students' ownership of learning in the exercises that they did with their students through the use of ICT. As I was "sleeping on" my questions, two terms came to my mind. They are experiential learning and multiple intelligence. Perhaps ICT is a good platform to promote experiential learning indoors and it can cater to different learning styles of different students. ;)
Yes-perhaps we are using ICT to move towards a more student-centred learning. As Siti and SU also mentioned, there is an emphasis on students' ownership of learning in the exercises that they did with their students through the use of ICT. As I was "sleeping on" my questions, two terms came to my mind. They are experiential learning and multiple intelligence. Perhaps ICT is a good platform to promote experiential learning indoors and it can cater to different learning styles of different students. ;)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
