Blog Post #1 All About Me... and Jenkins, and Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz, and DeJaynes & Curmi-Hall

    For our first post in Curricular Applications of the Internet, we are reflecting on our personal experiences with social media and digital composition to connect with others and promote social action! When I learned that I'd be taking this course, I was ecstatic. Largely because I've had a pretty neutral digital footprint and I know I'll have to know a lot more to keep up with our future students. Of course, I was raised (and socialized) online like most people born in the 2000s, but I had the fear of digital attachment preached into me by my hippie mom. I remember sitting for hours trying to come up with a Webkins name, "anything but yours," and the fear that struck her heart when I found my first 'internet friend'. As a queer kid, of course I've used Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, and now Tiktok since the beginning of my adolescence to connect and engage with the world, but I've never been attracted to the idea of influencing others online or gaining online traction. The internet feels pretty scary and strange these days, and most of my accounts where my personality genuinely exists are private. Because of this I've also rarely had to learn and keep up with the evolving world of digital media. 

   Oh! how could I forget that when I attended Washington Park high school I was a part of a small online literary magazine called The Tortoise for a couple of years because I was the editor-in-chief of our Writer's Club. It no longer exists anywhere due to limited school resources, but I would have loved to have linked it here. I was able to use that opportunity to have some poetry published in a literary journal called Brown Bag Online, and be awarded in the UW-Whitewater creative writing festival, all of which shaped my understanding of the way media can foster creative opportunities and connect communities. None of this would have been a reality if not for a team of educators who opened doors for me, and if not for my creative writing teacher sitting with me after school and teaching me how to search for independent publishers, one-by-one.

  As our texts this week have illustrated, there are potentials and pitfalls to utilizing digital media in an ELA classroom, and infinite possibilities for application. In Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Henry Jenkins discusses an internet-driven participatory culture that encourages artistic expression, civic engagement as well and informal mentorship, but mostly a feeling that independent contributions matter socially. He describes this culture as, "a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter school and the workplace" (3). The texts highlight the disparities between access to this curriculum and demands that educators ensure equal access to information and skills that shape students' "practices as media makers in online communities" (4). The perspective of this 2006 work is interesting to me because there is a consciousness of the actively shifting digital dialogue, and an insistence to prepare students to interact with this digital culture rather than just consume and digest it.

 

    Similarly, Haddix & Sealey-Ruiz discuss the empowerment that students, in this case, adolescent males of color, deemed 'at risk' can experience through digital literacies, but only after confronting criminalization and policing. In order to encourage a love for reading in urban environments, Yolanda builds academic confidence in her class by utilizing culturally relevant texts and encouraging digital composing (even on a cell phone, gasp). In many districts, however, these tools are censored, and the use of digital tools is sometimes viewed as, “dumbing down” students’ literacy skills or practices. In other words, by using word-processing software, students are not developing necessary literacy skills" (190). This article frames digital curricula as a framework to empower the over-policed voices of Black and Latino students, placing "a framework for freedom" in the palm of most student's hands, (191).

    Finally, the article Transforming School Hallways Through Critical Inquiry: Multimodal Literacies for Civic Engagement examines the critical inquisition that young people use to navigate cultural, intellectual, and mediated social worlds. In the investigation of characters that are women of color and their relatability, student researchers held "critical conversations about race and gender" through multimedia platforms (DeJaynes & Curmi-Hall 1). The article notes that getting students involved with modern and even experimental forms of communication create opportunities to challenge "prevailing cultural narratives and promoting engagement in 'connected civics,' in which youths leverage their interests and passions for 'civic voice and influence' (Ito et al., 2015, p. 11)" (2). The project culminated in a hallway takeover of multimedia artistic representations of their findings, including a film, word collage, and portraits.