Session 5a: The New View
3rd Global Conference
Tuesday 14th July 2009 – Thursday 16th July 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford
Go To, Select and Click: Critical Inquiry Online
Heather Mullin
Toronto Catholic District School Board, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
In an increasingly mediated world, with instant and unlimited access to a vast and complex digital scene, students must search, sift, select, source and synthesize unprecedented amounts of information. It is essential that educators equip students with the critical inquiry skills necessary to unscramble, and make meaning from, the media messages which impact their everyday lives.
This qualitative research report focuses on critical media literacy in a group of twelve and thirteen year old students at a Toronto Elementary school. Over a period of three consecutive weeks in June 2006, twenty-one Grade seven and eight students participated in a study designed to examine their use of critical inquiry strategies when researching on the Internet.
Participants were required to complete a series of three written tasks. Each task asked them to research an age-appropriate topic using a number of selected websites. With the criteria laid out and the expectations clear, questions about website design, source, accuracy, purpose and point of view, were asked in order to determine whether students think critically online. Data from task worksheets, post-task questionnaires, focus group interviews and researcher field notes were collected and analyzed.
The findings indicate that students do apply online critical thinking skills when given appropriate, structured activities. While students are impressed with the graphic, audio and interactive elements of the technology, the evidence suggests that they can look beyond and come to a deeper understanding of media messages.
The development of online critical inquiry strategies is dependent upon educators providing students with ongoing opportunities to engage in purposeful inquiry, teaching them to interpret and critique the digital sources they explore. As emerging technologies continue to transform students’ environment, integration of critical media literacy into students’ daily learning experiences is imperative.
Exploring Digital Practices of Looking
Senka Anastasova
Institute of Philosophy, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia
The essay examines the status of the coherent aesthetic autonomy of visual literacy in regard to theory and practices of the text and identity subject of narration in digital creative media and contemporary technology of communication in the post “postindustrial” age of electronic communications. The focus will be on the connection between the text (as a cultural product/cultural artifact), narration and practices of looking (strongly determined by the hiperreal visual society of simulation). Interpreting elements will be connected with redefining digital media, virtual reality, cultural identity, identity of digit narrating subject, narratology/narration and technology of seeing.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Keeping an Eye on the Game: Video Gaming, Visual Literacy and Cultural Identity
Sandra Schamroth Abrams
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, St. John’s University, New York, USA
Video gaming is a multimodal activity that hinges on visual literacy, and this paper explores aspects of the gaming culture that relate to learning. Drawing upon data from a larger study, this paper focuses on three case studies of adolescent male gamers and addresses how collaboration and knowledge sharing appear to be accepted practices among gamers. The examination of the Discourse community of video gamers helps to reveal the practices and values that are part of the gaming culture. Interacting with others in real and virtual situations is part of the the multimodal gaming experience, and gamers seem to understand and embrace peer sponsorship that enhances their learning and gaming proficiency; such collaboration is part of the cultural identity of the gaming community and has important pedagogical implications.
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