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TRANSFORMING FROM INSIDE OUT
The process of meaning representation through technologies encounters itself in a range of possibilities which enable students to act significantly aiming at social changes. This process involves building of knowledge and negotiation – locally and globally. Technologies provide an environment prone to learning and meaning making, as well as giving tools for transforming our environment.
From my experience teaching academics I notice that students sometimes feel lost in the midst of so many possibilities given the myriad of hyperlinks of such multimodal environment. The point here is not the amount, but how to deal with it and to act critically towards this diversity of options. That is when, in my view, theories of critical literacy together with pedagogy of transformation apply. Our challenge as teachers/ professors/learners is to engage these students into a reflection of the world and if possible into changing the reality around them.
)_20Foto_20de_20F_C3_A1bio.png "Fábio Bezerra")
Hi Fernanda. Someone on the posts talk about confort zones of teachers/learners. I disagree that it is merely a question of confort zones but I thik that we need to form teachers and learners to new literacies in the sense of Lankshear and Knobel work. Even in my classes at the university not all students are prepared to do that outside of familiar spaces like social web or mails. I try to do that in the collaborative app Prezi and it is not easy to lead them to effective collaboration. Regards!
Hi Fernanda!! I teach a discipline called Estudos Sintáticos to second period undergraduates in a Letras-Inglês course, and most of the time I teach them in a very didactic way, focusing on standard forms so as they can learn them in order to be able to teach them eventually. Of course, I don`t feel very comfortable doing that, and so, what I usually ask them to do after we finish studying each course unit is to search for non-standard forms in web texts, but, guess what?? They always come up with instances of standard uses, probably because they can`t think of ways to search for the non-standard ones... Best regards!!
Hi, Fernanda! I could not agree more with your post! I also see my students - and even fellow colleagues - sometimes lost in a world of new technologies, multimodal languages and diverse possibilities. That is why I believe - just like you and Leina said - that critical literacies have such an important role to play, especially today, I mean, when we have easy access to all kinds of information and, at often times, it is not easy to discern critically into what should be taken seriously or not. Teaching and helping our students to be able to disagree, deny, reject and question the fixed discourses they face everyday on the Internet, for example, is our challenge, I guess. This is something I am usually very emphatic about, with my students: do not accept as a given all the things you read, see, and listen, which is completely related to the ability to make informed choices, as Leina pointed. Anyway, really good reflections! See you all on Monday!
Thanks Leina! Appreciate your contribution. When I was writing teachers/professors/learners, I asked myself, is there anything else to say? and yes, I left behind one of the core things which involve this process, of being a citizen. I'm really glad to make part of this group, sharing and engaging myself and others through this dicussion. Let's meet on Monday! See you.
Dear Fernanda, I completely agree with you when you mention our challenge as teachers/ professors/learners (and I would add, citizens), that is, to engage ourselves and, in this case, our students into a reflection of the world and, if possible, into changing our/their reality. As you mention, the infinite amount of possibilities we all have makes it hard for us to choose, that is, it's hard to know what to read, believe, trust, follow, etc. I think critical literacy theories may help us, as teachers, as learners and as citizens, to learn to make informed choices.