The Navigation and Sailing Report #3
Port Name: ETEC 531
Port Section: 64A
Port Website: http://met.ubc.ca/etec-531
Port Time Frame: (Sep-Dec 2012)
Port Specialty: Curriculum Issues in Cultural and Media Studies (elective course)
Port Director: Dr. Franc Feng
Port Administrator: David Roy
Description
This course focuses on understanding media and associated freedoms of cultural expression and the press for learning, teaching, and public pedagogy. Media studies is a dynamic discipline tailored to exploring youth, culture, and education through concepts or techniques such as articulation, framing, regulation, remediation, representation, and transcoding. In addition to understanding culture, media, and the process of meaning-making, this course focuses on making and managing media across formats, cultural expression, and civic engagement. Making minimal distinction among (the) media of, on, and in education, the course provides a survey of media studies and new media with an emphasis on media education and literacy. Media education and literacy are among the most relevant challenges to “official” knowledge and represent key movements in the sociology of curriculum. Hence, this course balances practice with ethical, legal, and theoretical aspects and emphasizes the design of curriculum and courses for teaching media studies and for integrating media literacy across the curriculum.
Artifact #1: Media Project #1-Vblog: Am I an artist, a scientist a technologist?
Am I an artist, a scientist a technologist?
Since I was a child, I have always enjoyed singing, drawing, sketching, painting, clay modeling, construction, etc. Luckily, in Grade 8 my linocut won the elementary school thematic art contest and ended up among the 50 best works among 8 graders in the former Yugoslavia. At 15, I entered the world of art as a raw beginner, then as now, just for the sheer joy of doing it.
During my teen years, popular music completely occupied me, so I put lots of time and effort in learning how to sing and play guitar.
Nowadays, I mostly write and play my songs, sing karaoke, play covers, author and produce multimedia, video, music and digital photography projects.
Occasionally, there is time and inspiration for some other artworks, though most of them still wait to be captured and materialized.
Slowly but surely, my collection grows, therefore, I am an artist.
I like the power of science too. As a child I was mesmerized by the power of mighty machines, as well as power of electricity silently flowing through the wires, lighting various bulbs and running electric motors. In high school I studied electronics and computers, and fell in love with that mystical world of fluxes, currents and the laws governing them.
As a life-long learner I still study, research, experiment and practice today.
That education and experience gave me a solid base and lever for understanding, researching application and managing of electronic and computer science; therefore, I am a scientist.
I’ve always been attracted by the power of technologies that change the world, education, culture and us. I saw a huge potential and hidden power in those mysterious technology books. Since I started supporting, designing and managing educational technologies, I realized the importance and power that technologies bring into educational processes and into our lives.
Technology is an important agent of change. As Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Therefore, the enhancement of all Educational Technology aspects for the advancement of education, building knowledge and better world, is my personal and professional quest, so I am a technologist.
My dedicated work and my passion for learning brings these three elements together: art, science, and technology.
Artifact #2: Group Project: Social Media Across the Curriculum (MET students/instructors click here)
This group project was created by Martin Armstrong, Marie-Hélène (May) Bacon, Jessica Dickens, Lynnette Earle and Milorad Zivkovic for The University of British Columbia Master of Educational Technology ETEC 531 course, Fall 2012.
This "Social Media Across the Curriculum" project covers the following objectives:
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To understand how social media can be used in an educational setting
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To demystify the use of technology in the classroom
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To explore different social media applications
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To offer a cross-curricular perspective on social media
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To use social media independently for learning
Interactive technologies, such as Google Docs, Glogster, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikispaces, and/or YouTube alter the nature of learning by dismantling some of the traditional approaches of how it is supported (Duffy, 2007 p. 119). Duffy (2007) suggests that Web 2.0 technologies have the potential to alter the current practices and processes of pedagogy. The use of Web 2.0 learning platforms may provide the impetus for e-learning to move away from the use of printed material, lecture notes, PowerPoint, and websites “towards a ubiquitous user-centric, user-content generated and user guided experience” (Duffy, 2007, p. 119). Furthermore, the use of interactive technology allows students to identify and meet the learning objectives, based on their ability to acquire knowledge (Barb, & Duffy, 1998). Scardamalia and Bereter, (1994), point out that the affordances in cyberspace create a potential for it to become reservoir of knowledge that is easily accessible through innovations in technology. Collaboration using Web 2.0 application are “disrupting traditional ideas about how students interact online and how content is generated, shared, and distributed” (Duffy, 2007, p. 121).
I authored "Wikispaces" page as a leading social media site highly conducive for all teaching and learning needs.
In simple terms, Wikispaces is a place where you can write, discuss, and build web pages together. It allows students to have a 24/7 fully featured asynchronous and synchronuos learning environment. Thanks to collaborative aspects of Wikispaces, teachers and students can collaborate and interchange the roles, contribute and author their own content. Everyone could see what others in the class were doing, could critique and give suggestions, and could learn from one another.
Wikispaces may be utilized synchronously and asynchronously to teach and collaborate on any elementary, secondary and postsecondary topic.
Below is a sample of using wikispaces for English as a Second Languge (ESL) training.
Independent Learning Activities for the ESL Classroom (click to open the webpage)
The following ESL activities will promote 24/7 easy access to grammar learning and gradual development of Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking skills.
Artifact #3: Media Project #2: The Culture of Planned Obsolescence (Part 1 and Part 2)
This balanced media project analyzes, critiques and offers feasible solutions to the evergrowing problem of planned and perceived obsolescence in all domains of industrial production and use of consumer goods. The special focus was given on the negative impact of planned and perceived obsolescence on ICT and technologies utilized for educational needs.
I am very proud that I well used scientific methods to research, recognize, prove, analyze, criticize and offer highly practical and feasible solutions to that huge problem having significant negative impact to the economy, environment and the lives of people worldwide.
From today's perspective, as soon as I catch some time, I plan to do additional research to significantly update this exemplary project, suggest more feasible solutions, and implement more conducive ways of digital web delivery to wide audience, to raise more global awareness about this burning problem and its unpredictable negative consequences to lives & well being of all of us.
Captain's Log:
Thanks to warm autumn breeze on the MET Sea and a cheerful company of my fellow navigators, the navigation and sailing around the ETEC 531 Port docks was like a playing a very interesting game with a group of playful and highly motivated players, dedicated to play at its best, whenever needed and possible. That dedication resulted in a very good navigational learning and sailing training atmosphere and nicely made artifacts that scientifically analyze, and depict the issues of significant importance to educational technology filed and education in generalI. For the issue of planned and perceived obsolescence, I offereed good practical insights and highly feasible solutions to address those burning issues in societies around the world. Sooner we become fully aware and address those issues, better life we will all have.
Learning of navigation and sailing in the ETEC 531 harbour was quite challenging sometimes, but with the right lead and support, I felt as a winner, so I am very proud on all of these three projects as they help me to rediscover my artistic, scientific and technological strengths and areas to further work on. My theory and practice based artifact depict the specific moments of my learning journey through the ETEC 531. It was a quite fun and valuable individual challenge and interesting collaborative learning opportunity on my way to achieving navigational and sailing excellence on sometimes wavy waters and wind strikes in the docks of the Curriculum Issues in Cultural and Media Studies.
Artifact References:
Barab, S., & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities of practice. In D. Jonassen and S. Land (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments, Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Duffy, P. (2007). Engaging the YouTube Google-eyed generation: Strategies for using Web 2.0 in teaching and learning. Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on e-Learning, Copenhagen. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&
London, Bernard 1933 The new prosperity:permanent employment, wise taxation and equitable distribution of wealth. New York: Self-published.
Packard, Vance 1960 The Waste Makers. New York: David Mckay Company, Inc.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1993). Computer Support for Knowledge-Building Communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466822
Slade, G., “Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America”, Harvard University Press, 2006
Travis P. Wagner, Shared responsibility for managing electronic waste: A case study of Maine, USA, Waste Management, Volume 29, Issue 12, December 2009, Pages 3014-3021, ISSN 0956-053X, 10.1016/j.wasman.2009.06.015.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X09002256)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM&list=PLC0CE346B565F4FE3&feature=player_detailpage
http://www.storyofstuff.org/2011/03/14/story-of-stuff/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM&feature=mr_meh&list=PLC0CE346B565F4FE3&playnext=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/automobiles/15BROOKS.html?_r=0
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/planned-obsolescence-built-in-obsolescence
© 2015 by mzivko