Blog+Selections

=Blog Selections:= =__ Selection #1 __= ==== This blog entry was an assignment to take a picture and describe it using the Languacultures/discourse analysis language from Gee and Burke (the frog handout). This was my first attempt at describing a picture in this manner, and I was not very comfortable doing so. I also include the comments made after the post, as they help demonstrate a shift toward True North. It was posted July 14. ====

[] Here are three MATSLeras in the common room of Paris-Borden. The room itself is sunny which gives the impression of being a warm and welcoming space. There is a place to sit and eat in the bottom right corner of the photo. There is a space to sit and talk comfortably on the couch in the background. There is also room to stand and speak, as these three are. Lucrecia’s stance, with weight on one leg, suggests her comment, their conversation is informal, a conversation among friends. Also, Amy’s hand in her pocket lends to that assumption as well. The way they are standing in the space suggests familiarity with each other as well, they are facing each other, they are fairly close in the space, their posture is not rigid.

Peterjones3000 comment: PS Are you going to jump up to the conceptual categories of discourse/languaculture?

Peterjones3000 comment: One possibility is to generate alternative interpretations--even temporarily crazy ones if you want to, and see how they might hold up. Or not so crazy. When people have their hands in their pockets, does that sometimes signal discomfort, e.g.? you have it linked to informality, but could it be 'informal plus slightly ill-at-ease"? Are there any other signs of that could be interpreted that way? Holding paper up in front of one's body with two hands? One person looking at the camera? All this could it suggest awareness of the need to slow down and let the picture be taken? How is this camera technology, thus, altering how people do such basic things as stand, look, hold?

matslallison comment: Perhaps the camera caused Paula to stop what she was doing just before this picture was taken, since she's looking directly at it. Many times people (I'm thinking specifically of a cousin of mine) will really "ham it up" making goofy faces or otherwise changing their stance/action which has been completely altered by their purpose when they see the camera (e.g. trying to be funny or get noticed). All of those things, the change in their purpose which causes a change to stance and action can really even change the identity of the person in the picture, or cause the person viewing the picture to give the actor a different identity than they may have given if the actor in the photo had not been aware of being photographed. Paula noticing the camera and looking at it may have changed her purpose in the conversation which in turn changed the activity from three people talking to two people talking and one not paying attention. The relationships between the speakers change also, perhaps giving Amy and Lucrecia different identity roles in it. If Paula and Amy had been the principal speakers and then Paula left the conversation because of the camera, that made Lucrecia a more central figure in the conversation.

__**Discussion:**__
As stated in the introduction to this blog entry, I was not comfortable discussing a picture using the language from Gee and Burke. I did not understand what relationships, politics, sign systems & knowledge, activities, identities, connections and significances I was supposed to see, and how I was supposed to be interpreting them without putting my preconceptions in with the description. As evidenced by Peter's comments, I almost missed the point of the assignment entirely. But, because we are members of a community of thinkers, his comments helped me reflect on what I had not considered upon describing the picture the first time, and gave me time to revise my own ideas about the assignment and the languaculture we were developing in our community of thinkers and comment to further my understanding of those concepts. I was able to go back and think about what identities the three women in the picture may have had, giving different possible interpretations, as well as thinking about their possible relationships and how the camera may have changed their identities and/or relationships. I only talked about relationships and identites because I those were the terms I was most comfortable with this early in my journey toward True North. At this point I was feeling a cool breeze, but only needed a light jacket.

=__ Selection #2 __= ====This selection describes how my Day of the Dead blog entry assignment (the previous post on my Tumblr blog) fits or does not fit the criteria of a meaningful blog assignment as discussed in class and posted on Peter's blog. It was written July 16.====

Creating a meaningful blog assignment (7/16)
The previous post asks students to watch a video of a woman describing Day of the Dead in Ecuador and then reflect on the question “How do we remember our family?” There is a further requirement of relating it to Latin American culture, which they see in the video. The reflections are the product from the students. I think the assignment would fit really well in a unit about almost anything, but specific ideas that come to mind are memory, dealing with grief, cultural identity, familial relationships. In asking students to relate their own experiences with what they previously know and also see in the video about Latin American culture is a much more intellectual purpose than just watching the video and saying: “This is a Latin American tradition that remembers deceased family members.” It asks students to explore their own familial traditions and relationships as well as cultural traditions and then connecting it to a culture and people that are different than they are familiar with, building a connection to that culture which is much stronger than it would have been simply watching the video with no reflection. This asks them to think about their own identity and then relating it to another cultural identity which helps them understand the significance of the Day of the Dead in Latin America. It wasn’t really difficult to meet most of the criteria, it maybe could be more intellectual, but I was thinking of using this in level 1 or 2, and so that would probably be intellectual enough for those levels which have a lower ability in Spanish at that point in their acquisition process. Although, it could be designed with a more advanced level as well, using perhaps a question similar to, “How does the celebration of Day of the Dead reflect the Latin American perspective?” I think one criteria that may not be present in the blog explicitly is that it is an activity that could be tweaked to suit various students in various levels of language acquisition. There is also an option for students to choose a subtitled (in Spanish) or unsubtitled version which would afford them the opportunity to take a chance and listen to either version, or the version the teacher asks, making it more or less difficult to understand the speaker on the video. So perhaps a criteria could be that it is possible to use an activity for different levels of ability with the language?

**__Discussion:__**
This blog entry is evidence of me inching toward True North in various aspects. I am thinking critically about how technology, in this case, use of a blog and video on the Internet about the Day of the Dead in Ecuador can afford foreign language learning and how that use of technology is helping to produce a community of thinkers, but I don't really explain very well how the class will become a community of thinkers through this assignment; I am more concerned in this entry with how this blog entry assignment will afford students the opportunity to learn and make connections to another culture's practices and perspectives about death and remembrance and comparing and contrasting those practices and perspectives with their own culture. With this entry, I am beginning to walk northward but I have not considered how to create a community of thinkers with this assignment, which now that I reflect on this reflection and critique of the blog entry lesson, the lesson calls for students to post their comments on the entry with the video, and so it would really promote a community of thinkers if students had to also take into account what others had said previously and comment more than once, developing a better understanding of the perspective and practice of this Ecuadoran tradition. Now I need a parka. = = =__ Selection #3 __=

Informal webquest assessment
Thinking together using technology requires interaction with students afforded by technology. Students should have a task that is oriented and promotes critical thinking but that also is made easier through the use of technology. Many times research is quicker through the use of the Internet and the wealth of resources that are posted on various websites. A webquest basically requires students to discover for themselves information related to a specific topic. This alone does not create a community of thinkers, but students working in conjunction with each other and the webquest to create new knowledge through their discoveries about the topic affords the students’ thought process, helping them to evaluate what is important, interpret the information they find and how it relates to the task at hand, and reconstruct meaning in their existing schema. I think that webquests can be very useful tools in creating a community of thinkers, but those I have come in contact with thus far have not impressed me as much as I had hoped. Mostly they require students to find out the “tourist” information of a country, the superficial facts that only focus on the products and occasional practice of the country, but never the perspective. In this way, it is difficult for students to think about the people of the country outside the box of stereotypes (both positive and negative) that we impose on their cultures. Another way in which the webquests I have seen thus far fall short of creating a community of thinkers in the classroom is that they are normally written in English, and including the webquest I thought was interesting and could promote a community of thinkers in a Spanish 3 class was also written in English! How I wonder, does this promote foreign language learning? The webquest requires students to find a pair of criminals who have stolen the Hope diamond from the Smithsonian with clues from a letter written to their daughter about the city they are in. The students have to create a warrant for the arrest of the couple. I love the idea of this, I just wish it had been written in Spanish. Here’s a sample of directions students are given: @http://chalk.richmond.edu/education/projects/webquests/spanish/policereport.html The Warrant Request must be submitted to the DCPD and is necessary for the suspects’ arrest. It is a description of the suspects and the crime they committed and should include the following: • Suspects’ Names • Ages • Address • Object stolen • Location from which the item was stolen • Evidence o Why are they the suspects? • Where they are located o Within this category, you must give your reasons for how you know where they are. o Include the clues from the letter and how you interpreted them. Each person must contribute to this part explaining how the clues are related to the city you decided upon. • Detectives • ***You are not limited to these guidelines, so use your imagination to include other facts! Ex: How the letter was discovered, past crimes committed by the Cruzes, information about their daughter, etc.
 * All of this information (i.e. ages and address) was not given to you, so use the other information about the couple to be creative. Also, do not forget that your warrnat needs to be written in Spanish!*

As I said previously, this seems to me to be a worthwhile activity that could potentially create a community of thinkers, but if students are given directions in English, their tendency would be to continue thinking in English and not in the target language. If the directions and some of the resources were written in Spanish, there would be a greater possibility that students (especially at this advanced level-Spanish 3) would talk amongst their group in Spanish and think about their conclusions in the warrant and rationalizing how they know which city the couple must be in. So, if I were to use this webquest in my own classroom, I would first want to translate everything into Spanish before giving it to my students to begin thinking and discovering information about the cities given in the task. The task does ask students to think about the letter and the clues given to deduce where the couple are through the information they find about the country; each student is given a different “expert” role which would aid in students knowing where to point their focus and therefore each would be contributing to the deductive thought process of the group. They need to evaluate what is important, what contributes to the end goal of the task and reconstruct meaning about the clues given in the letter and how those clues and the information they gather about each city allow them to make a judgment about which city the letter was written about. All of these help build a community of thinkers, but in my view, the task as it is on this particular webquest would create a community of thinkers in English, and I want to create a community of thinkers in Spanish. @http://chalk.richmond.edu/education/projects/webquests/spanish/

**__Discussion:__**
This selection shows more progression toward True North because I explain how this webquest does help create a community of thinkers, albeit in English. I also explain that I think in order for it to be a true community of thinkers in Spanish, one would first need to translate the entire webquest to Spanish, especially since it is for a more advanced level (Spanish 3). Through this assessment of the webquest, I constantly talk about how it would help create, shape or transform the community of thinkers. Although I tried to limit myself to describing the warrant assignment that was part of the webquest, the other tasks that lead up to this final task of creating a warrant for the arrest of the criminals all afford the community of thinkers and give opportunities to learn from each other, the webquest, and the other resources found there or found by students on the Internet in general if they go beyond the boundaries set by the webquest. In this artifact, more than the other two above, I show my greater understanding of what a community of thinkers is and how technology can be an affordance in creating, shaping or transforming that community of thinkers to collaboratively construct meanings surrounding a larger theme, in the case of the webquest discussed, how to discover what city is being talked about by clues students can infer from the letter and looking for those clues on the Internet. I did not discuss the different roles the students have in their groups and how those roles would affect the relationships, politics, sign systems & knowledge, activities, identities, connections and significances of the group interaction, but it is almost there implicitly toward the end of the entry, and I ought to have explicitly defined those discourse features and how those would contribute to the specific languaculture of the group working together to create a mini-community of thinkers within the larger community of thinkers in the languaculture of the entire class. I see a polar bear!