character journaling through social media

Character Journaling Through Social Media

Culturally Relevant,

Research Based – and

Banned

John Wesley White, Ph.D.

University of North Florida

© 2013, John Wesley White, University of North Florida

Presented at the Conference on English Education National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Summer 2013

See Also:

White, J.W., & Hungerford-Kresser, H. (May 2014). Character journaling through social networks: Exemplifying tenets of the New Literacy Studies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 57(8), 642-654.

Full Article available at: http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3

http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3

The Big Issue

The Promise: Social media has immense and largely untapped potential as a classroom educational tool: it is culturally relevant, interactive, multimodal, cross-genre, and inherently social; as such it reflects numerous tenets of contemporary literacy theory (i.e., the New Literacy Studies). When predicated upon strong theory and modeled after—or expanded upon—effective examples of classroom uses, social media can be an effective tool for engaging a new generation of students in explorations of literature, history, language, politics, culture, etc.

The Problem: Rather than examine ways in which teachers might appropriately and effectively use social media to engage today’s students (and to teach about social networking safety) school administrators and state legislators have instead banned social mediafrom classrooms, citing numerous but seldom justified safety concerns. The tide is slowly starting to change as administrators see that “the cat is already out of the bag.” But they need a rationale for its use and models showing how it can be used effectively.

The Project: Highlighting the shortsightedness of all-out bans on social media in classrooms, the following slides chronicle a study in which my students and I used social media as the forum for interactive and multimodal character journaling. The results of the study demonstrate that social media can engage students in a way no other media or pedagogical approach can: in ways that bring the very notion of socially mediated learning to life.


Social Media in the “Real World”

Almost half of all adults in the ‘developed world’ use social media, a trend that is spreading to poorer nations 1

Over a billion people use the two largest social media sites (Facebook and Twitter) daily, a statistic that does not account for the myriad other social media both extant and emerging.

Americans (and others) are getting their news from social media: Readership of the nation’s seven largest newspapers account for “only 36% of the average daily unique visitors of Facebook”. 2

Adolescents and young adults are social media’s largest audience by far; they access social media—anywhere and at any time—primarily through smart phones. 1

These young people are increasingly using social media as their primarymeans of communication with friends and family 3

Adolescents’ need to be in “constant contact” with peers is increasingly recognized as a unique cultural trait (rather than as a pathology) 4

Young people are already learning—albeit informally and sometimes negatively—from social media 5


Social Media in Schools

Administrators Love Social Media:

School districts encourage principals to use social media for outreach to parents, local communities, and especially for fundraising. 6

Almost all teachers and many, if not most, school administrators regularly use social media for communication, for entertainment, and for learning (both at home and at work)

Administrators Hate Social Media:

Virtually all public school districts in the U.S. have banned or severely limited access to social networking in classrooms, 7 most commonly because they:

see students’ need to stay in contact with peers as a pathology;

see social networking in classrooms as an educational distraction;

see social media as another avenue for cyber-bullying;

fear students will use social media to cheat on exams;

fear teachers and students will “friend” each other, promoting inappropriate relationships. 8


The Two Faces of Schools and Social Media

Essential Tool


Schools’ Response to Social Media in Classrooms:

Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater


A Rationale for Using Social Media in Classrooms (& especially for literacy instruction)

Social media is culturally relevant to today’s students

Almost all adolescents and young adults are already using social media

Almost all young adults have access to social media (even without computers or the internet) 1

Social Media = Marker of Cultural Identity: “The students we teach today are the products of a very different environment, one in which the ability to stay connected with others is constant” (Sweeny 2010, p. 121).



Social media exemplifies & makes use of socially mediated learning and major tenets of the New Literacy Studies

Learning influences and is influenced by social contexts 9

Literacy is an inherently social practice 10

Literacy is no longer relegated to print; the “digital turn” in new literacies and communications technologies 11

True literacy is multimodal and comprised of multiple literacies 10

Readers and learners work within complex sociocultural and polylinguistic systems to create new, varied, contextualized, and sometimes negotiated meanings from information 12

Readers and writers change discourses per contexts; characters (and all of us) engage in code switching to suit our contexts and intent 13



Practicality

Social Media is ubiquitous; it’s in our classrooms regardless of our best efforts to stop it

Students can access social media anywhere via their telephones (fewer excuses for not doing work)

It’s free (including some of the ‘school friendly’ social media sites)

Social media can give teachers a means for unobtrusive and authentic assessment of student participation, reading comprehension, understanding, etc.

Facilitates multi-genre writing and a multi-genre project

There is a pressing need to teach students about safety on social media


acebook: A Virtual Maycomb, Alabama (1936)

Alabama, 1936

Using social media as the primary forum for textual analysis (via character journaling), we created a virtual depression era Maycomb, Alabama (1936), the fictitious setting of Harper Lee’sTo Kill a Mockingbird

Assuming the role of a character and creating a social media page for that character, students spoke both through and for their characters—in thought and in language—as we read the novel.


Network Hub

Instructor (Atticus)

Student/Character

(e.g., Scout)

Student/Character

(e.g., Jem)

Student/Character

(e.g., Mayella)

Student/Character

(e.g., Tom) Posts Posts

Posts

Posts

Historical & Contextual Research

Creativity(students’ choice of

photos, artwork, quotes, music, film,

etc.)

Textual Information

Textual Inferences


Knowing One’s Character

Research:

To create each character’s social media “home” page, students first had to learn about the social and historical contexts of the depression-era south. To complete a page on social media (in our case using Facebook), students had to

1. Find photos that might represent their characters

2. Choose their characters’ “likes” (music, movies, books, political beliefs, religion, etc.) that would ‘fit’ with the era

This minor level of research provided students with additional context and prior knowledge. Many, for instance, had no understanding of the types of music or movies popular in that era before creating their pages.

See Examples, following slides


Screen shots of two student created character Facebook pages

Also see Slide #23, the Atticus Finch page (created & used by instructor)


Growing One’s Character

Close Reading & Reacting to Contexts:

Characters’ pages had to change with the contexts of the novel (in what the student/character posted in via visual and other modalities).

Dill’s profile picture changed from an image from the 1962 film to this image Mayella Ewell added this

image to back up her consistent claim that she was not racist

Scout added this image and a “Playbill” to announce her role in the school play. She also invited her peers to the play via Facebook’s “Events” tab.


Scaffolding Reading & Providing Context

Even lesser characters played a role in scaffolding reading for other students. Each character’s posts provided additional context to the story. Some posts provided actual historical context for the novel itself.

Heck Tate’s page reported information (including actual images and newspaper clippings) about the Scottsboro Nine, an event that likely precipitated the major event in To Kill a Mockingbird.


Multi-genre Writing & Writing to an Audience

By posting “status updates” as they read the novel, students engaged in multi-genre writing.

Examples:

Heck Tate spoke officially as the town’s sheriff about the need to respect and uphold the law but later editorialized about ‘legal’ injustices.

Tom Robinson pleaded to the people of Maycomb for justice—“being good Christian folk you’ve gotta know this ain’t right”—and he journaled about his anger over being falsely accused.

Mr. Ewell defended his daughter’s character while also posting information meant to “rile up” white citizens to take action on their own (a timely post immediately preceding the late night courthouse showdown between Atticus and a lynch mob).

Calpurnia maternally and forcefully told Scout how to behave, e.g., “don’t you go spreading all sorts of rumors” yet wrote very deferentially and passively in her dialogues with Atticus, Maude Atkinson, and Aunt Alexandra.

The minor character Dolphus, a man who feigned being a drunkard, posted to the general community using slurred words and confusing logic; when addressing Scout and Jem more directly, however, his words were clear (sober) and thoughtful: “To live the life I want, it’s best to let them [the townspeople] judge me. Otherwise, they’d try to control me.”


Discourse and Code Switching

Students had to represent their character via culturally and historically appropriate discourse. This meant that students had to think about and engage in code switching. In this case, they used southernisms and idioms, dialect and slang. Playing southerner characters, most students made extensive use of “ain’t.”

Students altered their discourse to account for subcultures within the south. Those playing poorer characters (such as the Ewells) used incorrect verb tenses and southernisms such as “fixin’ to” and “might should” while the Black characters (namely Tom Robinson) used a smattering of Black Vernacular: “I be mighty scared o’ dese folk and what’n they might do.” Those playing children (Scout, Jem, and Dill) incorporated the language common among southern children; their posts frequently began with “Me and…” and they often used “yeah” instead of “yes.”

Students found and used southern idioms to express their characters’ respective views. Dill, for example, noted that Mrs. Dubose was “madder than a wet hen” after her roses were trampled and Heck Tate said about Tom’s trial that “I ain’t got a dog in that fight.” Interestingly, not only did students code switch into the discourse of their characters, those characters also engaged in code switching. Scout and Jem, for instance, changed their discursive register (their “code”) when addressing Atticus, always answering him with the formal “yes” and “sir” rather than “yeah.” In short, because students using this medium had to plays role that simultaneously influenced and were influenced by other “players,” they had to alter their language to, as one student said, “be the character.” As Figure 3 represents, they adapted their langauge both for their characters and to suit the particular context; they had to communicate to and across cultures in this social realm.


Nuance and Socially Constructed Meaning

One of the most notable findings from this study was that students—because they engaged socially and were responsible for representing their characters as accurately as possible, found their views of the text, the characters, and the situation, changing per the input of others.

Most notable in this regard were students’ feelings toward MayellaEwell, the woman who falsely accused Tom Robinson of rape.

Mayella’s character posted images that showed her conflicted over the trial (a woman pulled in two directions by unseen forces)

Some students commented upon their belief that Mayella was “trapped” in a bad situation

Other students felt that Mayella had been abused or even raped by her father

Though Mayella was not seen by anyone as a good person, students gained a different—and deeper—understanding of the motives and forces that drove her character. Said one student at the end of the study: “I hated her [Mayella] at first and can’t say I much like her now…but [student _______ ] did her different (sic) than I would have. I kind of saw into what motivated her, what made her who she was.”


A Unique and Engaging Way to Analyze a Text


CHARACTER JOURNALING THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA: Steps and Considerations for Educators


Setting the Page: Preparation

Know your options (including district policies regarding social media)

Choose appropriate social media for your purposes

- Though popular and thus having currency with adolescents, Facebook and Twitter come with concerns teachers would want to address:

1) It is hard to guarantee privacy (and thus safety) via widely used social media so teachers must create and enforce very specific security settings, including getting students’ login and password for characters’ pages

2) Creation of character pages may be an infraction of that media’s policies

3) Facebook and Twitter posts “go live” instantly, severely restricting a teacher’s ability to determine the appropriateness of any given character post.

Consider “school friendly” social media.

- Edmodo and other ‘school friendly’ sites come with additional security measures—such as allowing teachers to preview students’ posts prior to them going live—and are visible only to people given access by the teacher

- Parents and administrators may have fewer objections to use of school friendly social media


Setting the Page: Expectations for Students

Create and populate a social media page for your character

- Use multimedia! Find and use appropriate images for a profile picture, for hobbies, interests, etc. and supplement page with other media (found art, photographs, quotes, etc.)

- Use textual clues to show the character’s relationship to other characters and to show her/his “likes”

- Using reasonable inferences from the text, research into the historical contexts of the novel, and your own creativity, supplement character page with your character’s favorite things such as hobbies, music, movies, beliefs, etc.

- Use the instructor’s character page as a model (see next slide)


Setting the Page: Demonstrate

Teacher/Instructor Expectations via a Model Page

Atticus Finch’s Facebook Page

This page was created by the instructor to serve multiple purposes: a) serve as a model for

student-created character pages;

b) serve as the central page through which the social community was formed;

c) provide unobtrusive access to the forum (participant observation).


Setting the Page: Playing the Part

Be your character!

- Speak for and through your character; stay in character when discussing text (using language that character would be likely to use)

- Interact with other characters as your character would

- Change your character page to reflect the changes he/she experiences in the novel and/or in reaction to other characters’ feedback

When speaking not as a character but as yourself, differentiate your writing/voice from that of your character (using all capital letters)

1) students need to have a way to speak for themselves rather than as a a character

2) some characters may not appear throughout the novel but those students should still have a way of participating in the dialogue


Assuming Roles and Becoming Characters

Role/Character Actor

Atticus Finch Instructor

Scout Finch Student (volunteer)

Jem Finch Student (volunteer)

Calpurnia Student (volunteer)

Tom Robinson Student (volunteer)

Dill Harris Student (volunteer)

Mayella Ewell Student (volunteer)

Heck Tate Student (assigned)

Boo Radley Student (assigned)

Mrs. Dubose Student (assigned)

Aunt Alexandra Student (assigned)

Dolphus Raymond Student (assigned)

Other lesser characters Student (assigned)

Students either volunteered for or were assigned roles

Students already familiar with the text tended to volunteer for major roles while newcomers to the text were assigned lesser roles.

The process of assigning roles created natural book discussion leaders—it differentiated responsibilities and scaffolded reading

The author assumed the role of Atticus Finch throughout the project.


Other Considerations

Choose a text and a social media site amenable to this approach (including “school friendly” social media). Note that in subsequent classes students and I found success in using this forum to examine historical fiction (The Book Thief), futuristic adolescent fiction (The Hunger Games), and nonfiction graphic texts (Maus and Persepolis respectively).

Give administrators, parents, and students a well-developed and clear rationale for using social media in this manner, explain the safeguards you have in place, and allow parental/administrative access to the site(s) upon demand.

Carefully weigh your expectations and rules for the project and clearly explain these to students.

e a participant/character: playing a character allows teachers an authentic and unobtrusive means of assessment and a way to pose questions, prompt discussions, and provide additional information or context.

For students who may not have access to social media at home or via a smart phone, provide time in class to post for their characters.

Provide an alternative but nonetheless interactive assignment for students who may (or whose parents may) object to use of social media.

Be amenable to change and create new rules as necessary. Adapt with the contexts of your classroom and clearly explain any changes to students.


Footnotes

1. Pew Research Center, 2012

2. socialmediatoday.com

3. Ledbetter et al., 2010

4. Bull et al., 2008

5. Ito et al., 2008; Palfrey and Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2010

6. See for example: http://www.cps.edu/pages/socialmediatoolkit.aspx

7. Cramer and Hayes, 2010

8. Bhat, 2008; Blazer, 2012; Fouts, 2012

9. Lave and Wenger, 1991

10. Gee, 1998, 2000; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Street, 1995

11. Lankshear and Knobel, 2003; Mills, 2010; Moje, 2009, New London Group, 1996, 2000

12. Hymes, 1974

13. Gutiérrez, 2008; New London Group, 1996


http://www.cps.edu/pages/socialmediatoolkit.aspx

Sources Cited

Bhat, C. (2008). Cyber bullying: Overview and strategies for school counsellors, guidance officers, and all school personnel. Australian Journal Of Guidance & Counselling, 18(1), 53-66.

Bull, G., Thompson, A., Searson, M., Garofalo, J., Park, J., Young, C., & Lee, J (2008). Connecting informal and formal learning: Experiences in the age of participatory media. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 8(2). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol8/iss2/editorial/article1.cfm.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2003). Introduction: Multiliteracies: The beginning of an idea. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New York: Routledge, pp. 3-8.

Cramer, M., & Hayes, G. (2010). Acceptable Use of Technology in Schools: Risks, Policies, and Promises. Pervasive Computing, IEEE 9(3), 37-44.

Fouts, J. (2012). Pros and cons of social media in the classroom. Online Learning Services, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Retrieved June 2, 2013 from http://ols.syr.edu/archives/780.

Gee, J. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis.Gee, J. (1998). What is literacy? In V. Zamel & R. Spack (Eds.), Negotiating academic literacies: Teaching and learning across

languages and cultures (pp. 52–59). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Gee, J. (2000). The new literacy studies: From “socially situated” to the work of the social. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton, & R. Ivanic

(Eds.), Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context (pp. 180–196). New York: Routledge. Gee, J. (2002). Literacies, identities, and discourses. In M. J. Schleppegrell & M. C.Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan.Gutiérrez, K. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164.Hancock, M. (1993). Character journals: Initiating involvement and identification through literature. Journal of Reading, 37(1), 42-50.Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). New literacies: Changing knowledge and classroom learning. Philadelphia: Open University Press.Mills, K. (2010). A review of the “digital turn” in the new literacy studies. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 246-271. Moje, E. (2009). A call for new research on new and multiliteracies. Research in the Teaching of English, 43(4), 348–362.New London Group, (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies designing social futures. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies:

Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New York: Routledge, pp. 9-38.New London Group (1996). "A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures". Harvard Education Review (66): 60–92.Pew Research Center, (2012). Social Networking Popular Across Globe. Washington, DC: Author.Street, B. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography and education. London: Longman. Sweeny, S. (2010). Writing for the instant messaging and text messaging generation: using new literacies to support writing instruction.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(2), 121-130.


http://www.citejournal.org/vol8/iss2/editorial/article1.cfm

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7756

http://ols.syr.edu/archives/780

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?searchtype=advanced&pageSize=10&ERICExtSearch_Operator_2=and&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=Sheelah+Sweeny&ERICExtSearch_Operator_1=and&ERICExtSearch_EDEJSearch=elecBoth&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_2=kw&eric_displayStartCount=1&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_1=kw&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=au&ERICExtSearch_PubDate_From=0&ERICExtSearch_PubDate_To=2012&ERICExtSearch_SearchCount=0&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&objectId=0900019b8043388b&accno=EJ900637&_nfls=false

For more information on this study or the journal articles resulting from it:

Contact John W. White

Foundations and Secondary EducationCollege of Education and Human Services1 UNF DriveJacksonville, FL 32224


See also:

White, J.W., & Hungerford-Kresser, H. (2014). Character journaling through social networks: Exemplifying tenets of the New Literacy Studies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 57(8), 642-654.

Full Article available at: http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3

mailto:[email protected]

http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=3

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