Dalila Hasanagic- New Media and New Literacies

The game I chose to discuss is Blooket. It is similar to Kahoot, but seems to have more features. Students are encouraged to participate in games with rewards for answering questions. Blooks are the block characters that students can unlock as they play more. Teachers can create their own question sets unique to their curriculum or choose from pre-made sets. Teachers can also choose different game themes, the game you will play is the Cafe theme. The Blooket website states, "However, Blooket isn't just fun, it's also incredibly effective. By creating memorable experiences with classroom content, students learn the information without even noticing (and without paper cuts)" (2023). Blooket is a handy tool because it doesn't always need to be completed as a class! You can assign question sets as homework and have students work on their own time. It can be an early-finisher option for those students who are looking for the next thing to do. As I write out this blog p

 My interviewee is a junior in high school. The student used their screen time information from her iPhone to help me with accurate responses. When asked what she uses her phone for the most, her screen time report told her it was clearly TikTok. The most shocking answer came when I asked how many hours a week she spends on social media. 40 hours! I then asked her what pros and cons she experiences with social media. She said she gets sick of it easily, but it gives her something to do to save her from boredom. I asked her if her parents limit anything she is allowed to use or for how long she can use it, and she informed me that she has no restrictions but does get her phone taken away for poor behavior and grades. I connected with her through this question because I grew up the same way, full freedom or no freedom. Without social media use when she doesn't have access to her phone, she said all she feels is boredom. Surprisingly to me, she does spend some time on the phone or Fac

For my research project, I want to research misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. More specifically, I want to research ways in which I can help my elementary students become media-literate citizens. Just from creating this annotated bibliography, I have learned a lot about how media literacy plays a role in civic engagement. The idea for my project came to me because my students are currently working on animal research writing projects. Before the animal topic, they researched historical African-Americans. On one of our research days, one of my students asked me why three different websites had different numbers for the weight of their animal. This made me realize that my students had very little concept of researching true and factual information. They also relay a lot of questionable information to me that they have seen on YouTube or TikTok. They blindly accept what they see as real and true.  Auberry. (2018). Increasing students’ ability to identify fake news through info

     This week, our readings focused on multimodal pedagogies and remixing literacy. Remixing literacy is the act of taking available content and resources and creating something new. The authors discussed the issues involving defining digital literacy and incorporating it into the classroom in a meaningful way.      The section that stood out to me was Mr. Cardenas and his journalism students. He gave the students so much support, assistance, tools, and freedom to take on the role of true journalists. His students, even the ones who weren't initially interested in journalism, admired him for letting them "learn how to fly". The author,  Stephanie Schmier, stated: I (Stephanie) interviewed one student, Casey, about her experiences in the class, she shared how she appreciated the way Mr. Cardenas respected the knowledge that students brought with them into the classroom and didn’t “waste time” teaching the students skills they had already learned outside of school" (2

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books (Rich, 2008, pg.2).     In my literacy debate response paper, I wrote about how I feel as though digital literacy is a supplement, rather than a replacement for critical and developmental literacy. The following paragraph is directly from my paper.      " One example of digital literacy being supplementary to foundational literacy is debating online, whether through websites or social media. To have a healthy debate, rather than a dysfunctional argument, people must possess and practice skills such as critical thinking, understanding different viewpoints, summarizing, and asking questions. These are all skills that children build through reading books in school and for leisure. Therefore, readi

  "The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" (Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9).        Before the job I have now, I never realized how much our personal lives affect how we process and make sense of texts. I grew up in a largely populated city with small, rural towns surrounding us. I was so used to all the different cultures, races, and languages I was engaged with. I never realized how little diversity other kids in smaller towns are being exposed to. Now, I work in a small, rural school and I get to see the difference first-hand in the way they process texts and media based on their life experiences.       With children growing up in a world of social media and technology, I am interested to see how digital literacy will play a role in their ove