musing on morphing reflections on teaching and learning through second life and facebook
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Musing on Morphing: Reflections on teaching and learning through Second Life and Facebook.
Carolyne Ali-Khan John W. White
University of North Florida
The Information Fluency Conference
(February 26, 2014)
+Words, words words….
Facebook Second life
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Questioning cyberspace
How are facebook and Second Life used in formal educational spaces?
• What do they bring to our classrooms and pedagogy?
What should we worry about/ look forward to? ?
+ Second Life
Simulacra for real!
+ Smearing myself into the virtual
Cyber selves, avatars and dopplegangers. Are we there yet?
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Teaching and learning in Second LifeA rose by any other name (in a rose garden)?
+Sprites, Hallucinations and Thespians
+ The pixilated classroom
Being and belonging
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For More Information For more information on Second Life, education and Shakespeare, see:
Ali-Khan, C. (In press). ‘More things in heaven and earth Horatio’ - Seeing and believing in Second Life. In C. Milne, K. Tobin, and D. Degenero [Eds.], Sociocultural Studies and Implications for Science Education: The Experiential and the Virtual. Springer Science + Business Media.
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Social Networking as PedagogySocial networking is not only ubiquitous, it is also:
Culturally relevant
Inherent in literature (Gatsby used it for his purposes)
An example of situated literacies and the new literacy studies
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Social Networking as PedagogyState and school district policies send students, teachers, and parents a mixed—and hypocritical—message on the value and purposes of social networking: they encourage its use for fundraising and for school-community connections, they encourage teachers to teach about social networking/social media safety, but they ban social networking in classrooms.
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Social Networking is Nothing New: It is and has always been central to the “Arts,” to History, to Science, etc.
We can and should teach and encourage connectedness—and demonstrate it as a metaphor to the workings of the ‘real’ world—rather than ignore it. Social networking is a means toward achieving this goal.
+ Social networking can exemplify socially-mediated learning and allows
for multi-genre presentations of student understanding/learning
Social networking makes extensive use of the concepts of situated literacy, the negotiated and contextual nature of meaning-making, and can encourage the use of code switching, consideration of audience, and the use of multiple forms of literacy and expression.
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The Choice: Social Networking as Pedagogy or Social Networking as Null Curriculum? Our research shows that social networking can be a collaborative, constructivist, and culturally relevant learning tool. As educators, we can try to harness some of its power for learning or we can continue down a reactionary (and sensationalistic path), thereby further distancing schools and curricula from students’ lives and interests.
VS
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For More Information For more information on using social networking to teach literacy, see:
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).
or visit http://johnwesleywhite.net/wordpress/?page_id=529
+Final
Thoughts
Are we there yet?
Bodies once removed
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Discussion questions
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For more information
John W. White: [email protected]
Carolyne Ali-Khan: [email protected]
Also See:
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.