Literacy in Stop Animation

Literacy in Affinities by Pascal

Namely:

(a) Where is the ‘literacy’ in what you did? That is, what is it about the practice you engaged in that makes it a kind of (new) literacy practice? What are some of the main dimensions or aspects of its ‘literacyness’ and what examples from your data can be used to illustrate/argue for this view?

(b) How did you (start to) become ‘literate’ and ‘fluently literate’ in and through the ‘doing’ of (participation in) the practice you chose to engage in? Here again, you will use the data collected to identify significant aspects of learning how to engage in the practice and becoming more of an ‘insider’ to the practice.

Through the process of learning and the creation of a stop animation movie I was involved in a literacy rich learning practice that reflects the skills and interests that today’s learners are involved or participate in.  These 21^st Century Learners are part of a digital culture developing traditional literacy rich skills, social collaboration, critical thinking, analyzing, sharing, creating, recreating, customizing, and self identity through many online places and activities.  These online spaces or affinities offer opportunity for the learning to be voluntary and quite sophisticated.  It is at this early stage that the literacy becomes apparent in this type of media rich project which is mostly self generated by fans, however it is understood that our stop animation project was justly a vehicle for the learning to occur.

Our data points to what/how?

“Yet, the new participatory culture offers many opportunities for youth to engage in civic debates, to participate in community life, to become political leaders, even if sometimes only through the “second lives” offered by massively multiplayer games or online fan communities.”
(White Paper: Jenkins page 11)

This is where the literacyness of online fan communities, like affinity spaces, such as stop film animation web sites, or chat rooms provides the insider information needed to successfully produce a digital artefact on a particular style of animation, for support of creating these movies, and mash ups, which further develop the participant’s literacy skills.  By being a participant in this type of  participatory culture activity, today’s youth are far more willing and able to develop their reading and writing skills, their social skills, research skills, technical skills, critical analysis skills which are all learned outside of the typical lecture style of teaching in the classroom.  This less modern method of learning involvement or setting with the students being far less engaged in doing the work and more engaged in listening to  the teacher lecturing to the students; referred to as the broadcast approach by Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital.

As the students are more involved in participatory learning because of them being engaged in participatory activities, due to their enrolment in their affinities of their own interests.  Today’s youth, with the 21^st Century skills, enjoy and actively participate in online collaboration, through many digital means, such as, fan fiction web sites.  Their collaborative literacyness and other literacy skills develop in a less formal, more open, environment or platform than in school-in the traditional sense.  These online web sites offer opportunity to create, share and develop literacy skills with a global audience on a more personal, individual, diverse, custom level that these learners are familiar with due to the very fact that they participate in these out of school online activities.  These online areas where youth ‘hang out’ provide many opportunities for learning to occur as needed, commonly referred to as just-in-time learning opportunities.  This type of online social behaviour assists youth in their learning of traditional literacy (Jenkins White Paper, page 4).  This open online collaboration according to research from Black supports the fundamental equality, racial equity, social status equality that is found very often among these online affiliations or Affinity Spaces: “Experts and novices share the same activities and participate in the same space.” (Fan Fiction & Affinity Spaces: Black page 14) It is important to keep in mind that space refers to “…the idea of a space in which people interact rather than on membership in a community.” (Situated Language and Learning: Gee page 77)

Affinity Spaces – Do they represent ideal learning environments?

(While thinking about what ideal learning means and using this as a beginning point to this argument) that yes,

Affinity spaces do represent an ideal learning environment as these spaces offer a digital space for participants to be a “part of” their own learning.  I draw many connections to my own personal learning through the use of such tools as a computer to access the internet and search for pieces of published articles and how to manuals for many aspects of my ongoing learning.  For example the use of the internet in such as ways as conducting information gathering searches on Google to search out how-to instructions for creating our stop film movie as an artefact from our learning.  As well as participating in online fan fiction sites collecting information for the enhancement of the movie.  According to Jenkins and Gee:  “Affinity spaces offer powerful opportunities for learning, Gee argues, because they are sustained by common endeavors that bridge differences in age, class, race, gender, and educational level, and because people can participate in various ways according to their skills and interests, because they depend on peer-to-peer teaching with each participant constantly motivated to acquire new knowledge or refine their existing skills, and because they allow each participant to feel like an expert while tapping the expertise of others.” (White Paper: Jenkins page 10)  Due to these environments of online collaboration there are no boundaries therefore “everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced.” (White Paper: Jenkins page 10)

While participating in these affinities the literacy becomes the vehicle for the learning of the content.  Technology offers many more opportunities to expand learning beyond the classroom, through the use of this participatory culture learning can be enhanced connecting learning to what students are doing outside of school  or ‘after school’.  This is “where youth voluntarily engage in sophisticated learning and literacy practices.” (Fan Fiction & Affinity Spaces:  Black page 27)

(introduce prior knowledge?)

Students involved in online ‘literacyness’ after school hours facilitates their learning and the mastery of the ‘procedural knowledge’ and ‘digital literacy skills’ that will propel these students in their future employment opportunities, as well as their continual growth in education-being lifelong learners.

 “The teacher is essentially a broadcaster: the transmitter of information to an inert audience in a one way linear fashion.  In today’s world and for today’s students this model of “broadcast learning” is anachronistic if not obsolete.” (Macrowikinomics by Don Tapscott: page 160)

Perhaps, it is because students and youth are naturally very adaptive that they have just realized the lack of ‘in touch’ education they are receiving from their teachers and school.  Because of this they seek out the information and experiences needed to complete their personal expressions, like a fan fiction poem or alternate ending to a novel or movie. The digital skills, creativity and adaptive skills needed for building these samples of digital media artefacts shared online directly relate to the skills needed to succeed in their future life.  Due to the lack of connectedness provided by education, students may detach themselves even more from school, more than what they may already be thinking, such as, school has little relevance to the Skills (digital 21^st Century skills) that they ‘know’ they really need to succeed.

“With today’s technology, it is now possible to embrace new collaborative and social models of learning that change the actual pedagogy in more fundamental ways.” (Macrowikinomics by Don Tapscott: page 160) These new digital skills that today’s students must have to succeed in the work force are developing outside the traditional classroom paradigm.  In fact they are reinforcing the student’s learning globally in a space where they are willing to learn without pressure, and be involved and make choices which influence their discovery of learning.  “What counts more is your capacity to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize, contextualize, and critically evaluate; to apply research to solving problems; to collaborate and communicate. This is particularly important for students and employers who compete in a global economy.” (Macrowikinomics by Don Tapscott: page 160)

Discussion points to follow:

1.  Designed by completing this task to a level of understanding-...

2.  How was data collected?-online collaboration, face to face discussion, mucking about, affinity spaces

3.  What makes the data pertinent to the question?-new Literacy  is  laced all through the activity with many different dimensions

4.  How and why the data were analysed (they way we did it)?