Olivia Sweet: Digital Media Literacy

Regarding Turkle's 2012 ted talk, I agreed with a lot of her points. When she says that we deny our feelings and "go into our phones," I saw my students "checking out" of class and going on their phones. I am guilty of doing this myself. Checking texts, emails, social media, while in class or at work. I am terrible at multitasking, but I do it anyway, and it's stressful, but as Turkle said, I want to be in charge of where I direct my attention. If I'm bored in class, or frustrated at work, I take refuge by looking at my phone. I can escape the boredom in class or the anxiety at work by looking at pictures of celebrities on Instagram . Turkle argues that this is problematic, and it definitely is. Rather than reflecting or sitting with my feelings, I am escaping them and distracting myself. I see my students do it all the time. Students spend entire classes scrolling on their phone because they don't want to "be" in class. They're phy...

 I chose this chapter because I have heard of this phrase before but could not remember it's significance in detail. Soon after reading I recalled watching the ted talk by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie. This chapter's title is alluding to Adichie and her theme that “The single story creates stereotypes... and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”  It was so powerful to read Christensen's recount of what people would say to her based on the fact that she was a white woman teaching in a predominantly African-American school. As a white teacher in Providence, I can relate to Christensen. When in spaces with other white people, they comment on how I must feel so unsafe to teach where I do or that they can't believe that I teach mostly Hispanic students- how do I do it?? they ask. I never, for one moment, thought about sharing these horrible statements with my students of co...

  Newsela is an excellent resource for educators who teach a variety of reading levels in one room. You can teach the same article/content and vary the reading level/target language to individual students. Tutorial: Newsela can be accessed through the URL linked above or through clever, an app used in Providence (not sure about other districts). I find it easier to access newsela through clever because my google account is already linked as well as my google classrooms, so when assigning content, you can post it easily via google classroom on the clever app. Once you have clicked on the newsela app, you can see that you have the option to sync your classrooms. I recommend doing this step so that when posting content, you can differentiate accordingly for students in targeted classes. After you have selected the classrooms (this is really just a step for middle - high school teachers), you will be prompted to choose the grade levels/reading Lexile's that you want accessible for stu...

  This ted talk makes me think about how young people in school today (my students ) constantly ask me- why do we have to know this? Why do we have to learn math when we carry calculators in our pockets? Why does handwriting and grammar matter when everything is typed and there is autocorrect? It was interesting to hear that how we determined what children must be good at dates back to 300 years ago. According to Mitra, students needed to be good at handwriting, multiplication, and division. It is interesting that these skills are outdated in today’s digital world, and yet the criteria for determining what students should be good at has not really changed… Mitra says, “a machine that no longer exists.” He also touches upon education building identical people. This notion has been explored many times in my teacher education classes, that rather than fostering individuality, traditional education can conversely crush individuality and teach one way of thinking or one way of operatin...

  The podcast begins with an introductory personal narrative about the speaker’s uncle Ed that draws the listener in and evokes familial nostalgia. In my opinion, this is an effective way to begin. It also allows the listener to feel more connected to the speaker, and evokes a tone of vulnerability that lasts throughout the podcast and I honestly felt very sentimental as a listener, feeling very upset and angry for uncle Ed and his niece. This use of pathos to engage the listener in a serious, devastating issue in our country was effective.  The hypocrisy within the podcast introduction is heartbreaking. Hannah-Jones says, “ So it took, literally, my uncle getting a death sentence before he was able to get health insurance.” If he received appropriate medical attention when he first sought medical help, he would have had a chance to fight against death. Structurally, breaking up between speakers and offering various storylines regarding the same issue really highlights the sev...

  In her chapter, “Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us,” Christiansen’s metaphor of popular culture colonizing people’s minds, especially young people, is really powerful and enlightening. She writes, “Our society’s culture industry colonizes their minds and teaches them how to act, live, and dream.” I, too, watched Cinderella and other famous Disney fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and romanticized the idea of women carrying out traditional female gender roles in the home (or under the sea) and waiting to be “saved” or “chosen” by prince charming. In undergrad, I took a literary analysis class on Fairy Tales through URI. This was genuinely the first time (at 20 years old) when my mind was floored by how the original fairy tales written by the Grimm Brothers were altered by Disney to fit American stereotypes and gender roles and “American Dream” unrealistic societal expectations of beauty, romance, and heterosexual relationships. The original story of Sno...