When taking a Digital Literacies course this past summer, I couldn't help but feel a bit guilty when working on my final "paper". I was asked to create a video about anything I wanted and it needed to be 3 to 5 minutes in length. The video would then be showcased during our final class in front of all of my peers and would be uploaded to Youtube. By creating a "how-t0 read to your children" video, I would be creating an instructional video that would fullfill the course requirement but also be beneficial the work that I do. I admit that upon learning about this assignment, I felt a sense of relief about not having to write another paper that would eventually loose itself in the hard drive of my computer. And although I knew nothing about video production, I felt confident enough about the computer skills I already possessed and knew that they would help me in the making of my first online video.
Making my 5 minute and 54 second video took approximately 14 hours. It was a far cry from what I had imagined it to be. I learned from the moment I sat down to make it, that like writing an essay, it wasn't as simple as sitting down and starting to write the first sentence . Like much of the writing I do, creating a video required that I conduct some sort of research, write an outline and edit and revise. In fact, I followed all of the steps mandated by the writing process. I also began to pay significant amount of attention to all the variety of texts that I used.
I became obsessed about the images, sounds, and words I used and the role they played in the whole structure of the video. My guilt in creating the video stemmed from actually enjoying something that I was devoting so much time to and with the fact that it would be published through an avenue that would make it accessible to millions of people.
Shimmering Literacies demands that as teachers, we recognize the time and value of the online literacy that so many students are engaging on. More than ever before, students have become part of online communities that share their same interests and where they can participate in conversations with many audiences, across many different genres. This has given literacy and pop culture a whole new meaning. Where literacy was once defined as reading and writing printed texts, it has now become part of whole new domain of resources including print, sound, images and video. Students have begun using these modalities to critique, analyze, recreate and respond to a variety of texts. As a result, students have developed their reading and writing outside of the school environment. In today's society, teachers cannot afford to ignore what this new development.
The article makes reference to several television shows that have extended interaction with its audience by providing a wiki, message boards, forums and websites where people can comment on characters, plots and even write their own parts of the show. These are just an example of the variety of opportunities that pop culture and digital literacies can offer. Aside from the ability to distribute these texts to a mass audience, this new literacy provides one of the fastest methods of production and publication.
Incorporating popular culture with these new online technologies can revamp our teaching of literacy, and can continue to cultivate our students' growing participation in multiple modes of communication.
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