Constructing meaning

I do agree with Gee on the idea that video games can create the environment in which children and students can critically think about what surrounds them. I think what gives these games this advantage is the ‘fun’ element. When both children and students get involved in these games, they do not feel the formality of classrooms. On the contrary these games will be “serio-ludic” activities which can motivate them to learn.

In addition, these games present input not as direct assignments that tease students’ minds, but as semiotic images and sounds that stir their thinking.

I have already experienced the use of visual rhetoric in classrooms. My experience was with a video I created in order to prove how meaning would be culturally constructed. I presented this video to fulfill the research paper requirement for 515 class. The purpose of presenting this video is to show how Gee’s principles from 1 to 7 can work.

First see the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AttelKBKHAE

I constructed this video depending on Stuart Hall’s idea of representation, which means the way objects are arranged in order to convey meaning. My video has been made to lead the viewers to understand some of natural signifiers that have particular significance in the Arab world such as mountains and rivers. “These signifiers were organized in such a way that they expressed the three stages of being a student: the stage of applying to the graduate school, the stage of being admitted and the stage of starting studying; the signifiers that represent these stages are: the children and the buildings, the greens and the trickle, the sea and the wharf, the river and the green mountain. All these signifiers represent blankness, purity and the quest, pleasure and knowledge, a new, long academic life, pleasure mixed with difficulties, respectively.

If you see the video and try to explain it, you will find yourself indulged in learning about the first seven principles that Gee made. Please see the video and signifiers and try to get the meaning. Give it a try.

Online Discussions

Doubtless synchronous discussions are used as an alternative for face-to-face discussions in education. The tenet of these discussions is based on the fact that students can form an online community in which they can elaborate on the materials they have already taken in class. Originally synchronous discussions were created to enable unavailable teachers to communicate with their students. Later on, the idea was so attractive because teachers who already practiced it found out that all students actively participated, even those considered as introverts. Our online discussion yesterday was a good example of them. Although our experience was “a disaster” as Dr. Arola put it, it will be unfair to generalize its results to this type of educational practices.

I think that one of the positive things about our yesterday discussions is that they motivated less “talkative” students to show up and take turns. I am one of them. Since I am a foreign language learner, I sometimes find it difficult to call in appropriate vocabularies or complex syntactical structures. The case was like our lagging yesterday. There had to be a silent interval between what we wrote and its appearance on the board. I can attribute this memory lagging on my part to our traditional teaching back home. We used to communicate in English in classrooms by using writing and reading skills. In the case of other less talkative students, I think they found it a good opportunity in that sea of various ideas to cast their opinions. It was easy for them to draw one opinion and comment on it. The nature of online discussions was also helpful for them since they were not required to write in depth.

What I saw as negative about our discussion was the absence of organized ideas. And here two reasons are at play. First, most students responded at the same time since there were no instructions to tell them when to respond. Second, it took all of us one or two minutes to think, write and post, which made responses appear random and irrelevant.

I think that the use of online discussions requires some instructions. First, teachers should prepare their prompts or ask students to do that. Then, they should let students answer each prompt. Students, then, should read their comments and respond to one another by using the phrase @.... so that everyone knows which comment goes with which response. And they do the same with other prompts.

Distance Learning

Distance learning is one of the promising forms of education which is the result of the technological advancements in our time. Like classroom based teaching and learning, this new educational tool has its own advantages and disadvantages. Peterson’s the Debate about Online Learning and Brandy’s Fault Lines in the Terrain of Distance Education clearly addressed the success and failure that some students and teachers faced when they got involved in these academic spaces their institutions created. Both articles focused on and blamed the base (economical practices) for being the real source of difficulty raising in distance learning classes. The major problem for teachers and students alike was their inability to get access to technology because they could not pay fees for Internet Service provider or buy computers.

Although I believe that economy plays a significant role in our life and constitutes the backbone of education, I agree with Brady that there must be other causes. Brady argues that

distance education recreates different kinds of material and social access chasms even as it promises to bridge gaps of time and space. We need to reconceive our and students’ roles in the work of education, especially if we are to understand the implications, possibilities, and power of technology and use it strategically (356).

In this paragraph, Brandy points to the role other social practices and forces might play in distance learning classes. Take cultural practices as an example. Students coming from other societies which confirm gender differences might find it difficult having on-line classes since such societies put constraints on privacy and male-female relationships. The idea of exchanging emails with teachers and students from the other sex infringe these social codes as they believe. The same holds true for gay and lesbian students who usually prefer to contact their peers.