Digital Composition

 Alas, we are at our final blog of the semester. This time we went had two short readings in the same book for our final post on digital composition.

To begin, a section of this chapter that caught my attention was "Using Digital Tools for Responding to Texts". When I think of digital composition, and digital literacy in general, I tend to think of modes in which technology can aid in the classroom, but this section of the book focuses on different programs that already exist and how to use them for educational purposes. One section titled "Online discussion/social media sites" caught my attention first. I would have never thought of using social media as a form of discussion sharing because of its common uses outside of the classroom. In the text the author states, "You and your students can also employ social media tools such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, or Facebook for sharing responses to texts as well as for sharing teaching ideas" (Beach, R, et. al 105) and continues later by stating, "Students can also employ digital tools to share their responses with audiences beyond the classroom" (Beach, R, et. al 105). Using social media for education will allow students to use a platform they are familiar and comfortable with all whiles sharing their thoughts and work. Not only will this be an easy outlet for them to share with their peers, but as the authors said, it will allow them to reach those beyond the class putting their work into a wider audience that may find it beneficial. Teachers also gain benefit from social media in this way. The author mentioned how you can share ideas amongst other teachers, and in the chapter also brought up how teacher Michelle Falter uses Instagram to share her ideas with preservice teachers and coworkers (Beach, R, et. al 105). It is clear that social media is not just an entertainment/social platform, but something that can be useful in education in used in the right way. Another section that was interesting was "Using Video for Responding to and Creating Literary Texts". In this portion, the authors explained different avenues for educational video creation like creating video book trailers, recreating scenes from class readings, and mock documentaries that could be beneficial for students (Beach, R, et. al 106). They also brought up a statistic that 94% of 12th graders they had preferred creating multimodal responses rather than a traditional written essay (Beach, R, et. al 106). I personally loved recording a video for our podcasting assignment and would have LOVED doing more digital work like this in my high school experience. It is something that isn't foreign to adolescents nowadays, so we need to keep evolving education to fit their preferences.

Furthermore, the authors talk about teaching students how to be smart and critical when it comes to resources in media. In "Critiquing Stereotypical Media Representations", the authors talk about critical analysis of resources that impose stereotypical ideas to groups of people like women, people of color, working-class, and the LGBTQ community (Beach, R, et. al 114). It is important that students be taught to question the way the media portrays groups with less power. Some of the questions that were mentioned include, "Where do these representations come from?", Why are they producing these representations?" and "What is missing or who is silenced in these representations?". All great questions that could be applied to not only underrepresented groups. Being Hispanic and Native American, this portion of the text really stuck out to me because I think that all people need to be understanding of these portrayals. There are so many people who refuse to accept people as people and treat them all equally, so it is great to see these students being taught critical analysis about topics like this at a younger age. Going back to the attention-grabbing social media, the authors reflect on how critical analysis is also important in this aspect. In this chapter it says, "Jeremy Hyler cites the example of his middle school students not interacting with him face-to-face about missing homework... He also notes the problem of students responding to or posting messages prematurely, particularly on social media, without reflecting on the potential effect of those messages on their audience" (Beach, R, et. al 105). Being conscious about your footprint online is something that ALL students young and old need to be aware of. The environment of social media only evolves with each day, and anything put on their can be found by anyone. I think that social media/online etiquette is necessary to inform students about. I wish I had teachers, or my parents, pound this into my head more while I was younger. Although my digital footprint isn't bad, I just wish I was more aware when my first exposure to social media came about.

This link is an article that talks about technology and literacy, and ways to implement it into the classroom. It covers some of the same things that were gone over in the reading, like video annotations and online discussion, but also provides different programs or extensions that can be used in tandem with the assignment to make things go smoother.

Integrating Technology and Literacy

To conclude, digital composition has a wide range of avenues, like video recordings, social media responses, audio applications, and more, all mentioned in the book. With this extremely vast new learning medium, though, also comes with the not-so-great back end. Stereotypes, social media usage, news, and other media sources all need to be looked at with a critical eye in order to be smart about the information you are receiving and using in the classroom (for both teachers and students).

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