4 research outputs found

    Assessing a Media Discernment Course for Freshmen at Illiana Christian High School: A Case Study

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    This case study examines the effectiveness of a team-taught mass-media freshman level course on discernment of media messages, and decision-making. By means of pre- and post- course surveys of students and faculty, this study examines students\u27 decisions about consuming mass media and how after taking the course, their media selection process became more complex, deliberate, and organized. It also examines faculty response to the course in terms of how it appears to affect the students and how it affects faculty teaching and learning

    The Topology of Harry Potter: Exploring Higher Dimensions in Young Adult Fantasy Literature

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    As one of the most beloved series in children’s literature today, the Harry Potter books excite students of all ages with the adventures of living in a magical world. Magical objects (e.g., bottom-less handbags, the Knight Bus, time turners, and moving portraits) can inspire generalizations to mathematical concepts that would be relevant in an undergraduate geometry or topology course. Intuitive explanations for some of the magical objects connect to abstract mathematical ideas. Weoffer a typology with a total of five categories, including Three Dimensions in Two Dimensions, Higher Dimensions in Three Dimensions, Two and Three Dimensional Movement, Higher Dimensional Movement, and Higher Dimensional Traces. These categories attempt to explain supernatural events from the wizarding world using mathematical reasoning in order to increase engagement in topics from topology to differential geometry. Our pedagogical goal is to pique student interest by linking these abstract concepts to familiar examples from the world of Harry Potter. Put on your Ravenclaw robe or Gryffindor scarf and join us

    Learning to See History: A Content Analysis of the Affordances of Graphic Novels for High School Teaching

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    Recent studies of graphic novels (book-length fiction or non-fiction narratives that employ the conventions of comic books to convey meaning) and multimodality have hinted that graphic novels (GNs) might offer a great deal of meaning-making potential to readers. Some studies have argued that graphic novels could be useful for English Language Learners (ELL) and struggling readers. Other studies have argued the opposite, pointing out that reading words and pictures together may require more effort on the part of the reader than text-only books. Some studies have offered analysis of graphic novels as literature, but there have been no studies that examine graphic novels in terms of what they could offer to a specific content area studied in high school. To determine whether graphic novels might be useful for high school history teachers hoping to address discipline-specific reading techniques, I studied 20 non-fiction historical graphic novels. My initial research question was: What opportunities, if any, do graphic novels afford for high school history teachers to teach contextualization, sourcing, and corroboration. During the analysis of the results, I broke that question into two analysis questions: 1. What does quantitative analysis reveal about opportunities for contextualization, sourcing, and corroboration across the graphic novels in the study? 2. What does the analysis of individual graphic novels across all categories reveal about opportunities for teaching high school history? Quantitative content analysis revealed that the GNs studied provided extensive opportunities for high school history students to engage in contextualization, sourcing, and corroboration, (three areas identified by Wineburg as being important to discipline-specific reading within the history field). Qualitative analysis of several graphic novels as case studies suggests specific multimodal ways in which GNs support contextualization, sourcing, and corroboration
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