Media Literacy in the European Parliament

European Parliament

On December 16th 2008, the European Parliament approved a statement that should be celebrated by people like us, who believe learning and representation are inseparable. The document approved maintains that media education activities have to encompass all citizens – children, young people, adults, older people, and people with disabilities. It points out that acquiring media literacy begins in the home with learning how to select from the media services available – stressing in this regard the importance of media education for parents, who play a decisive role in the development of children’s media-use habits – and continues at school and during lifelong learning, and is strengthened by the efforts of national, governmental and regulatory authorities and the work of media professionals and institutions. The document also notes that the purpose of media literacy is to enable people to use media and their content in skilled and creative ways, critically analyse media products, understand how the media industry works, and produce media content by their own efforts. Media literacy thus denotes the ability to use individual media unaided, to understand, and bring critical assessment to bear on, the various aspects of media as such and media content, and to communicate – irrespective of the context – and create and disseminate media content. In addition that, given the many sources available, what is most important is the ability to separate out information from the new media’s flood of data and images and to categorise that information. It is evident many of us have been very much busy trying to make students acquire the abilities to produce multimodal messages typical of the digital age. We need to attend now the critical skills necessary to understand, select and such semiotic resources. I think developing a metalanguage which can be easily applied in classroom by teachers who are not semiotisians or media professionals is one of the most important tasks we have ahead of us.

My teaching

I teach pre-service teachers the subject New Technologies Applied to Education. Something I think is very important is to be coherent, I mean, to offer my students the kind of teaching I’m asking them to do with their students. I believe learning is more meaningful when it is based on the interests of the learner, teachers should be there to scaffold the process of learning and that assessment should be done on a variety of semiotic resources produced by the students. The more varied they are, the more information teachers will have to revise their pedagogical designs. This semester, instead of teaching traditional classes, I’m taking questions to theoretical classes.

Class discussion of the suject's bibliography

My students work in groups and talk about the reading assigned to every class to produce a discussion report. At the end of the class, we have an open discussion, then I take the reports home and read and comment them. In the laboratory, they are being introduced to the development of educational webpages, blogs and multimedia educational resources. This way, I try to assure the production of digital and non digital evidences of learning and to make them not only do things with technology, but also to reflect on the “why” and “how” to do it.

Introduction to web design in the laboratory

There is nothing more beautiful than seeing them work, discussing the texts read or making decisions on their web projects. Many of the students begin the subject feeling insecure of their technical abilities or not totally convinced of the subject usefulness. It is rewarding to see them making progress each week and to move away from common knowledge such as “it is important to teach with technology” to being able to express ideas which defend the integration of technology, pedagogy and the curriculum. I really have a great time with them.

Words from experience

On December 15^th and 16^th, professor John Swales presented two seminars at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. For me it was the first time I saw him in person and I was really enthusiastic about it. Swales’ definition of genre and discourse community were central to the research I did in the Brazilian program for science initiation, my very first steps into the academic life, styles and genres.

Professor John Swales

 There were two very interesting discussion points which I’d like to share here: if there’s anybody there, please, speak your mind. 

Well, the first one was, regarding congress presentations, if the presentation part and the discussion part would be two separate genres or not. Most people in the room seemed to be convinced it was just one genre because the discussion section cannot occur without the presentation one; I said I thought there are actually two genres, because the roles of participants are different in each of them; professor Swales still thinks this is an open discussion… 

The second discussion point is related to the production of materials for ESP. Professor Swales used three drafts of a literature review produced by a student of his, Joyce, and it was clear for us the progress she had made from draft to draft and how much mastery of the genre and its register she had developed in the process. We all agreed on how useful it would be for our students to read Joyce’s three drafts so that they could see what they were and what they weren’t supposed to do. Reading Joyce’s drafts I felt personally identified with her, because her style and progress reminded me of myself. The point, however, is that Joyce does not exist. She never has. Yes, that’s what you heard. Swales made her up and made up the examples. He said among all the texts he had asked his students to produce, he could not find the perfect progression to use as an example.

 

And then Swales asked us if we thought that pre-fabricated example was a valid one. He wanted to know our opinion because pedagogical and linguistic paradigms of real world, spontaneously produced texts could argue against it. Well, we all agreed that was a good strategy for a ESP class. I even wished I had met Joyce when I was writing my PhD Theses. Reading her drafts makes so clear what is it you should and shouldn’t do, that it feels like you could save years of doing the wrong things, like not evaluating enough or being too enthusiastic towards the literature you revise.

Apart from the discussions we had the chance to engage in, what stroke me the most about professor Swales was that he seemed to be enjoying himself. Yes, that’s true, there talking to a small group of highly glocalized researchers, professor Swales was enjoying himself while he was explaining genre theory and some of his research results. And I actually enjoyed myself listening to him too. And I think this feeling is one of the few things we can use to challenge genre hierarchy in the academia nowadays and this crazy fetish for the impact factor: I don’t publish (or try to) because I have to, I don’t publish because if I don’t I will perish. I publish because I understand this is part of my job and this is a job I enjoy. This is a job which gives me the opportunity to meet people, to listen to what they know, share what I know, and come up with much more then we knew as individuals.

 Swales gave us some advice and I think he won’t mind my sharing it here. It is more than a lesson from a much experienced researcher who’s been on the road for so many years and still enjoys himself and delights his audience:

                    “Humor, respect and hedging are prime lubricants of potentially sticky moments.”

 

Ditto, Swales. Thanks a lot.

Technologies & Education at the Science Week

As part of the activities the URV organizes in the national Science Week, the Pedagogy Department presents to the public some of its research and teaching activities. I was so glad to count on the cooperation of Cristina Zamora, my student last course, who explained to all visitors, including children, mothers, teachers and our principal, her experience in the subject New Technologies Applied to Education.

Cristina Zamora, my pre-service student teacher last semester, now an in-service teacher

 All the materials created by my student teachers are available online for teachers who want to use them in their classes, in the resources section of EDUCANET. Last semester they created an educational web page, a webquest and a blog. It was a great experience because at the beginning, most students had nothing but very basic knowledge of informatics. They also were afraid of trying with new technologies. The results of their work available at EDUCANET speaks for itself. It was a very rich experience, which undoubtfully must be improved, but that has surely changed our understandings of what educating means.

Next course, I’m planning to launch an IDEAS MARKET, so that in-service teachers can demand technological pedagogical materials to my pre-service teachers. That is due to begin late January. I’ll keep you informed about it!

Cristina and I at the Science Week, Tarragona, Spain

 

The truth about the content

Guess what! This summer I was on vacation in my home town, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and, guess  who was presenting a conference in the school where I took my PhD: Gunther Kress.

No way I would miss it! In the conference at the Faculdade de Letras, UFMG, Kress presented a definition for learning in which, for those of us who have been following his work, it is possible to notice theoretical moves from previous ones. In Belo Horizonte, Kress defined learning as

“The transformative engagement with an aspect of the world which is the focus of attention of an individual; on the basis of principles brought by her or him to that engagement; leading to a transformation of the individuals semiotic/conceptual resources”

Now compare to the definition I quoted in my last post. Learning can be seen as:

 “the individual’s agentive selection from, engagement with and transformation of the world according to their principals” (Kress, 2007: 37)

So, he’s added interest as a trigger for transformation, but not of any transformation, for the transformation of internal conceptions. What Kress is doing here is to semiotize cognition, that is, he’s using the same principles he applies to think about external, tangible representations to think about internal, mental ones.

 The other day I presented a seminar in the research group I’m working at, LATE, and in the audience I had people from psychology and pedagogy. My experience is that one problem some of them will experience with multimodality is that they tend to see content as something independent from its realization – as many linguists still do. We took the water cycle, for example, and someone said:

“The water cycle is the water cycle, content is content regardless the way you represent it.”

My view is that the water cycle will be one thing or another very different thing depending on the way it is represented, the semiotic modes used to do it, the media used in the process, the people who represent it and what time of history this representation is made. Some of my colleagues argued there is something the water cycle is, its truth. My point is, however, no matter how human beings try to access that truth, they will do that through representations, external or internal ones, which are always interest driven and only close to what reality is about. Besides, who knows if we really know “the truth about the water cycle”… I mean, what if tomorrow scientists find out something not known to the day… Actually, a scientist’s understanding of what the water cycle is is surely different of mine, and even if he knew everything that is possible to know about it nowadays, nobody knows what he could find out tomorrow.

I came home after the seminar thinking about so many people who did not live to send photographs instantly over their phones, to call other continents for free on their computers or to know the sea urchin and the human genome have so much in common. Maybe I misinterpret the theme, but if the content were always the content, independently of its representations, some kind of eternal truth, either it would never change or we would never have access to it. I think the option of semiotizing cognition is an interesting one. And I am aware it is what it is, an option: as interest driven and limited as any other form of representation is.

New Lecturer on the block

My dear friends,

Let me share with you some good news which make me very happy: I’ve recently got a job as a Lector in New Technologies Applied to Education at the Spanish university Rovira i Virgili. Stemming from my present research on how Science web page has changed over the last 10 years or so, I am going to dedicate my future research at the university toward the educational potential of some of Science’s interactive resources, specially the material made available by the journal in April, 2007, The Macaque Genome. I’m preparing a new web page and I’ll keep in touch. Wish me luck!

What is a language?

Maybe it’d be appropriate to begin this blog speaking about the way I understand language, so that we can take off from common ground. For me, you can’t speak about what a language is without speaking about how you use it. I think, to a great extent, using a language is like playing cards.

If you’re familiar with any cards game you know not always the one who’s got the best cards wins. Good players are those who can administrate the cards the have, sometimes good, sometimes bad, paying at the edge of the game rules, but also taking into account the other players’ behaviour. A player who has excellent cards but doesn’t observe his partner and his opponents will probably loose. A player who is not very lucky, but who can make the others believe he’s got good cards may be a winner. So, becoming a winner doesn’t depend only on how long you’ve played that game, how much you know about it, the cards you have in a given moment, what you think the other players have, how good you think your cards are or how good you can make other people believe they are. Being a winner depends on all those things. And above all, it’s something that doesn’t last long. You win or lose a round, a match, a game… but there will always be another opportunity to win and to lose again.

Well, what I mean is that I believe when we speak a language we use it to make sense of what is going on in the world –with the other players and within ourselves too-, to make others believe things – like that we have good cards, like we know the game rules-, and to structure our moves in a strategic way, a way people can understand and connect with us. Of course some people can do that better, but the point here today is that it is language the one thing that allows all of that. You call it a miracle, you call it a system, you call it whatever you want. For me a language is a resource to live better, more deeply and more beautifully. It’s a key that opens cultures to you. And the more keys you have, the more doors you can open, the more intensively you can experience the contact with people, what they know and believe.

I hope this introduction will help us know each other. Let’s play together and have fun with linguistics, critical discourse analysis and social semiotics.