Podcasts...a New Way of Sparking Discussion

 The 1619 Project, Episode 4: How the Bad Blood Started is a podcast focusing on the racial health disparities plaguing the United States since the end of slavery. This podcast is a mixed set up of a dialogue and storytelling. It captures the listener first with someone sharing their story of how the lack adequate health care SEVERELY negatively affected a very close family member.

Once this story is shared this speaker then goes on to have a conversation/tell a story with another individual about the history of the health disparities focusing around one woman's journey of becoming a doctor and helping her community. They use archived recordings and background music to help evoke emotion from the listener.

Being an eighth grade math teacher I struggle to find a way in which I would be able to use this form of media to help me teach my curriculum though I have seen a podcast being utilized by the English teacher on my team. For this particular unit the students were listening to the Serial Podcast that focused around the murder of a high-school senior, Hae Min Lee, and the arrest of Adnan Syed for the crime.  For the lesson they had to become investigators themselves, take a stance on whether or not Syed was guilty, and back it up with evidence from the podcast. The level of engagement in this unit was ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. Conversations that started in her class spille
d over into the hallways and my class after, so much so that I decided to listen to the podcast to stop the fighting help facilitate the sometimes heated discussions when it was obvious they weren't able to focus on anything else. Students were going home and listening to the episodes before they were assigned and writing letters to people involved to share their thoughts (all outside of assignments).  Years after, former students still emailed her when more information came out about the case. This past school year the excitement around the assignment kinda fizzled because of additional information that came out but she is actively looking for another podcast.

I think that podcasts can be a great educational tool to get students interested, engaged, and thinking critically/problem solving. I am still unsure how I would use it in my math class but I think creating an SEL lesson with my advisory would be a good place to start.

"Drinking the Disney Kool-aid?"

 What is your relationship to Disney culture? How does Christensen validate or challenge your views?

As a female child born in 1990 I would imagine it to be an almost impossible task not to have Disney influence any part of my childhood.  In talking with my parents, my mom specifically remembers paying $50 for The Little Mermaid right before I was born because of The Disney Vault.

I remember dressing up for halloween as a princess and almost breaking an ankle on those awful plastic heels with the clear jelly strap over the top of your foot. (Currently looking for a picture of me in said halloween costume and I will update if I find it but a picture of the shoes like those I'm referring to below for now)

While the Disney brand specific merchandise didn't come out until after I was out of my princess phase, Disney does still make appearances in my life even now as an adult and I am sure will continue to as my kids grow.

- having a subscription to Disney+

- watching Marvel movies in theaters

- dressing up as characters for halloween at school (Inside Out, Halloween 2019)

While I have known of "the secret education" of Disney for awhile, it admittedly stopped at very surface level issues like "women needing a man to save them".  Christensen does push my thinking on how deep and widespread these varying stereotypes truly are and I can see a connection to S.C.H.W.A.A.P where Christensen says " and often the world depicts the domination of one sex, one race, one class, or one country over a weaker counterpart" (p175). Men are the "saviors", white people are the main characters, the rich "save" the poor, etc. 

The terrifying truth is that it isn't just Disney pushing a certain narrative but all for-profit companies. Every single person is a consumer and the marketing departments in all companies will do anything to keep getting business or "save face" to not let things affect their bottom line.

I do agree with Christensen that we need to look at our world with a critical lens and question the motive behind certain media. (Which connects to a point that Mike Wesch was making where true learning isn't about the content that can be "dumped" in students' brains but the questions we leave with). All of the information we gather and retain affect how we interact with the world around us and understanding the motives behind the sources of the information help us identify biases from the source or maybe even unknown biases we may have.  A quote that really stuck out to me was that of one Christensen's students that said "True death equals a generation living by rules and attitudes they never questioned and producing more children who do the same" (178). It's not enough just to identify the biases. Other than educating our children about these biases and teaching them how to think critically, what can we do in order to make real change? Is there any way to stop media from including biases or is this always going to be a continuous loop of being a critical consumer just with different hidden messages?

I don't know, more questions with no answers for now.

"Digital Native" vs. Competent Digital User

After reading tonight’s chapter from “It’s Complicated” by Danah Boyd, multiple times admittedly trying to understand the varying points being made, I often find myself connecting with the positions of Boyd instead of Prensky. I think that I struggled a little with this reading because of the divergent positions of both authors and trying to find the overlaps and/or opposing views of each to fully understand.

Pensky claims “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.” (pg. 179) But isn’t this a little true of all generations? As we grow as a society the way that people process the world is different based on experiences and their exposure to different media, like the propaganda posters mentioned influencing previous generations. 

Yet just because a person is born in a certain generation doesn’t mean they PROCESS the information differently, just that the mode in which they are receiving or choosing to receive the information CAN be different. There are so many other factors influencing how individuals' brains work.  Even as a “digital native” myself I still choose a physical copy of a book or article rather than a digital copy. The abundance of information delivery methods does allow more of a sliding scale of technology use for each person seen in “Scott Noon’s 4-Tier of Teacher Training in Technology” picture below from class. But technology use doesn’t go hand-in-hand with technology competency. Just because I am proficient in using Google Docs does not mean that I have to use this in my classroom.

I think this is why the term “native” can be problematic in conversations because of  some individuals' preconceived notions that because someone is technically native of something means that they are competent in said area. I had a student last year who was a native Polish speaker, however since moving here has lost the majority of the language and would not be considered proficient. Which leads to the point that Boyd was making that “teens will not become critical contributors to this ecosystem simply because they were born in an age when these technologies were pervasive.” (pg. 177) My mother, a “digital immigrant”, is worlds more proficient in Google Suite applications than I am yet has never, and probably will never use social media.

There are so many factors outside of age that influence technology competency/usage such as social status, wealth, exposure, etc. The information given in class from the PEW Research Center 2022 highlights some of these really well; like the 19% difference between white and black teens using TikTok or the 19% difference in suburban and rural teens using facebook.

While I did find this chapter frustrating at times it was extremely thought provoking. I also enjoyed the trip down memory lane of my Myspace coding days (and super glad when I tried to look up this profile it is no longer there).

First Post!

Hi! My name is Haley Lamoureux and I am taking this class for my masters in TESOL.  I am an eighth grade math teacher in Woonsocket and I am looking forward to incorporating what I learn in this class to my teaching.

Summer only started last Thursday for me but when I am not in school I enjoy reading at the beach and chasing my toddler around during our various adventures. Getting ice cream and going to the zoo are a couple of our favorites!