Preparing Young Writers for Invoking and Addressing Today’s Interactive Digital Audiences

Twenty-first century technologies, in particular the Internet and Web 2.0 applications, have transformed the practice of writing and exposed it to interactivity. One interactive method that has received a lot of critical attention is blogging. The authors sought to understand more fully whom young bloggers both invoked in their blogging (their idealized, intentional audience) and whom they addressed (whom they actually blogged to, following interactive posts). They studied the complete, yearlong blog histories of fifteen fifth-graders, with an eye toward understanding how these students constructed audiences and modified them, according to feedback they received from teachers as well as peers and adults from around the world. The authors found that these students, who had rarely or never blogged before, were much more likely to respond to distant teachers, pre-service teachers, and graduate students than to their own classroom teachers or peers from their immediate classroom. The bloggers invoked/addressed their audiences differently too, depending on the roles that they had created for their audiences and themselves. The authors explore how and why this came to be the case with young writers

Writing to Learn: Blogging about Language Arts and Social Studies in a Grade 5 Classroom

Research has shown that writing to learn can support discipline-specific learning and thought development. Traditional writing strategies such as essays and journaling have been found to have a positive impact on recall of information, concept analysis and application. However, interaction with readers is not immediate with these methods. An environment where writers can immediately adapt to their readers’ feedback and become conversation partners for one another is the blogosphere. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how fifth-grade writers engaged in blog conversations with an audience beyond the classroom walls about their learning in language arts (LA) and social studies (SS) classes. The chapter also analyzes the ways in which feedback from the audience facilitated the fledgling writers’ “learning to write and writing to learn.

Overwrought Copyright: Why Copyright Law from the Analog Age does not Work in the Digital Age’s Society and Classroom

In this article, the authors argue that copyright law, conceived of in an “analog” age, yet made stricter in our present Digital Age, actively stifles creativity among today’s student creators, both by its bias toward content owners and its legal vagueness. They also illustrate that copyright law is too stringent in protecting intellectual content, because physical and virtual objects are not the same thing. They conclude with a call to revise copyright for new media content that meets the needs of both content creators and pre-existing media content owners, and that, most importantly, benefits the education of the creative and innovative mind in today’s mediacentric classrooms

Copying Right and Copying Wrong with Web 2.0 Tools in the Teacher Education and Communications Classrooms

Understanding the tenets of copyright in general, and in particular, in online communication and publishing with Web 2.0 tools, has become an important part of literacy in today’s Information Age, as well as a cornerstone of free speech and responsible citizenship for the future. Young content creators must be educated about copyright law, their own rights as content creators, and their responsibilities as producers and publishers of content derived from the intellectual property of others. As educators, we want to prepare them for responsible and ethical participation in new forms of creative expression in the Information Age. The recent integration of video and audio content, and the implementation of “Web 2.0” tools in the contemporary English language classroom has made this learning environment a particularly appropriate proving ground for the examination of current student practices with respect to intellectual property. These are challenges that communications classrooms have been facing for an even longer period of time. This paper describes an approach that we employ with English education and communications students to prepare them for such a complex subject matter

Blurred lines and shifting boundaries: Copyright and transformation in the multimodal compositions of teachers, teacher educators and future media professionals

The rapid proliferation of better quality “prosumer” equipment and powerful yet inexpensive editing software have helped erode the long-standing distinction between professional media producers and amateurs. Today’s aspiring young artists can take existing film, musical works, and other audiovisual material and transform them in varying degrees to create new work that comments on the world around them and that rivals in quality much of what Hollywood and professional musicians produce. However, this assessment is from the point of view of content. The looming specter of aggressive copyright policing by a litigious creative industry still divides the haves from the have nots. Industry monitors have been able to conduct mass takedowns of work they deem to be derived from their own, as provided for by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Both pre-service teachers and aspiring media professionals must pay close attention to the copyright implications of creative work they choose to appropriate. They must take especial care that the work they find for secondary manipulation and reframing meets the standards for fair use and transformation as provided in the Copyright Act. In this chapter, we discuss the concept of transformation and how to best use its freedoms and assess its limits in the creation of new digital media objects and creative classroom tools

Why Bad Teacher is a Bad Movie and Where the Real Crisis Is: Implications for Teachers and Teacher Education

TesisTarapotoEscuela de PosgradoReforma y Modernización del EstadoEl presente trabajo de investigación titulado “Propuesta de estrategias motivacionales para mejorar la convivencia laboral en la UGEL San Martín, 2018”; cuyo objetivo fue diseñar una propuesta de estrategias motivacionales para mejorar la convivencia laboral en la UGEL San Martín, 2018. Para ello, se utilizó el diseño descriptivo propositivo, siendo la población y muestra de 50 trabajadores de la UGEL San Martín, este estudio se fundamentó en la teoría de las expectativas de Víctor Vroom, por lo que, la técnica utilizada fue el análisis documental y el instrumento para el acopio de información fue el cuestionario. Los resultados reflejan que el nivel de convivencia en la institución es bajo; en cuanto, a la variable motivación, el 92% indicaron que su nivel de motivación es medio; llegando a la conclusión, que el nivel de convivencia laboral en la institución investigada, es bajo; lo que se traduce que las decisiones que se toman no son consensuadas, se evita el diálogo por los mandatos escritos; asimismo, se palpa la deficiencia en el liderazgo, las responsabilidades son delegadas solo por cumplimiento sin tener en cuenta la idoneidad del personal para dicha responsabilidad. En conclusión, la mayoría de colaboradores están poco motivados a cumplir con sus responsabilidades, aludiendo que todo esfuerzo laboral e identificación no son tomados en cuenta por las autoridades de la institución

Learning Language and Vocabulary in Dialogue with the Real Audience: Exploring Young Writers’ Authentic Writing and Language Learning Experiences

Purpose: To explore the potential of conversations with an authentic audience through blogging for enriching in the young writers the understanding of the communicative function of writing, specifically language and vocabulary use. Design: We situate our work in a language acquisition model of language learning where learners develop linguistic competence in the process of speaking and using the language (Krashen, 1988; Tomasello, 2005). We also believe that language learning benefits from formal instruction (Krashen, 1988). As such, in our work, we likened engaging in blogging to learning a language (here, more broadly conceived as learning to write) through both natural communication (acquisition) and prescription (instruction), and we looked at these forms of learning in our study. We were interested in the communicative function of language learning (Halliday, 1973; 1975; Penrod, 2005) among young blog writers as we see language learning as socially constructed through interaction with other speakers of a language (Tomasello, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978). Findings: The readers and commenters in this study supported young writers in their language study by modeling good writing and effective language use in their communication with these writers. Young writers also benefited from direct instruction through interactions with adults beyond classroom teachers, in our case some of the readers and commenters. Practical Implications: Blogging can extend conversations to audiences far beyond the classroom and make writing an authentic endeavor for young writers. Teachers should take advantage of such a powerful tool in their writing classrooms to support their students’ language study and vocabulary development

A Teacher Goes Gothic: Walter White, Heisenberg, and the Dark Revenge of Science

Much has been written on the natures and personalities of teachers in educational research and publications (Carter, 2009; Beck, 2012; Bulman, 2015; Dalton, 2013; Gillard, 2012; Kelly & Caughlan, 2011). However, mass media can have a powerful influence on how people see teachers. The television series Breaking Bad (Gilligan, 2007-2013) and its representation of teachers, has contributed a unique – if warped -perspective on the subject of teachers and teaching in America. In this article, we argue that three important Gothic and mythic fables from literature are harbingers of Walter White and his transformation – the Faust legend, as told by Christopher Marlowe (1604), the tale of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous character, Mr. Edward Hyde (1886). We note that the comparisons, while apt, are imperfect, and we discuss the philosophical, social and literary implications of them