Posted by unpopular on March 2, 2008
Interesting discussion over on CIF in response to the boy Macintosh’s piece about what it might mean to be teaching literacies in the 21st Century. The thing that hits me time and time again when this kind of discussion takes place is the polarising nature of it, or at least the deeply dug-in defensive positions that the ‘traditionalists’ take up. For them it appears to be a question of defending the replacement of ‘old’ literacies with ‘new’, when actually it is about broadening the definition of what we mean by a ‘text’. I would argue that you cannot teach about blogging, for example, without reference to the broader literacy context - the vernacular of blog writing is constructed on the same basic language as a novel or a poem, for example. It’s just that the codes and conventions are different. Recognizing, defining and refining those codes and conventions is what really matters. At the end of the comments, Ewan posts a link to a YouTube video. It’s a Second Life construction of a 3D environment based on the famous Van Gogh ‘Starry Night’ painting. Ewan suggests that this video might act as a replacement for a traditional essay where a student analyses the artwork in question, but I’m not so sure. When I watch it I find myself thinking that it’s a vaguely interesting response to the work of another artist. However, on the level of being a personal response, it doesn’t include anywhere near enough of the (digital) artists’ own ideas, and as a analytical response, it merely shows that the student can extrapolate a 3D world from 2D data. There is no evidence that the student understands anything about the contextual reasoning for why the painting looks the way it does. There is no hint as to what the student thinks about the emotional impact of the painting. To use the ‘content, form, process, mood’ model, I think it needs a great deal more to really work. Perhaps a spoken word soundtrack with the students thoughts and opinions, for example, rather than the cliched use of that damn Don McLean song… Of course, I don’t think that the video was even made in an educational context, and Ewan is merely lifting it out of context and making a suggestion as to how technologies and specifically gaming technologies could be used in a learning environment. I’m just not sure that he’s necessarily picked the right example. Or maybe, given that he’s made me think about it, he has.
