Analog & Digital Beyond the Screen
Antero Garcia in Nondigital Skills discusses the concept of analog versus digital experiences and the importance of teaching with an understanding that digital literacies should be aligned with analog experiences as they are both commonplace in people's lives (2017). Students need to be taught digital experiences and how to engage within digital spaces, but often, the core of meaningful learning is based on the connection to past or potentially more relatable analog experiences. While we approach reaching from the standpoint of blending digital and physical learning experiences, we also need to consider how we are asking students to delve deeper into the concepts of digital literacy. Viewing digital literacy as a "lens for understanding", we have to undertake shifting students' interactions with the screen as surface level or just a search engine or social media tool to understanding how technology can be used to read the human experience or engage in opportunities to contribute to the digital community experience (Aguilera, 2017). Creating a balance between these two approaches is where teaching will truly unleash the best of both modalities. Opportunities for students to expand their experiences with the digital world in a beyond-the-screen way, while connecting to traditional and physical spaces, with the opportunity to explore with comfort and push self-discovery of new content through inquiry.
Political Cartoons as an Introduction to the Broader Scope of Digital Literacies
In my Cartooning & Illustration class, students explore a wide array of cartoon history from comic strips, cartoon animations, illustrated texts, and political cartoons, both digital and print. Reading through these various articles, I began to think of ways in which I could incorporate more experiential and beyond-the-screen concepts into my already established digital art curriculum. Inspired by the content of the "Fake It to Make It, fake news example (Aguilera, 2017) and the media literacy study (Jackobson, 2017), I considered how I could elaborate on my political cartoon project to create a more in-depth and new literacy-based take on the project. Currently, the project is based around researching different political cartoons, their humor, and their impact on social, political, economic, and pop-culture views. Students then pick a pop-culture topic they want to create a satirical "political" styled print-based cartoon. However, this could be expanded and modified to incorporate more new literacy elements. At the basis of the restructuring, I could expand the research component to also consider how most people currently view media, such as online newspapers, magazines, zines, and social media, along with researching the content of the cartoons. Providing this secondary research component would open a conversation about how those particular avenues prepare the information for the viewer. Additionally, how algorithms are used to sort and push out the cartoons using certain coding, tags, and hashtags for easy access on social media. Another component to this part of the project could be utilizing group research to generate multiple and changing perspectives. Coggins, Wohlwend, Bucholz, Powell, and Husbye (2014), in their play-based film-making project, attest to the organic generation and ability to freely create and expand on initial ideas as observed by the group of young girls creating their animation videos. After research, students would brainstorm visual representations of their pop-culture political cartoon and engage in idea critiques. Then create their cartoon either digitally or by hand, with the goal of the cartoon being uploaded to the computer. During this process, students would have in-progress critiques on their artworks and engage in collaborative spaces to refine their message and visual interpretation. Once the physical making is complete, students would connect back to the digital space by referencing their research to generate hashtags and key tags that would help curate their cartoon to sit within a particular genre and algorithm. As a culminating activity, students would interact within the digital sphere to push out their cartoon on social media or a UGC affinity space, connecting to concepts that they, as creators, can influence the media. They could then track their cartoon to see the levels of reach it has based on its artistic content and the influence of their algorithm choices. Sarah FitzHenry was quoted stating, “Our idea was to get students thinking critically about online news before they became independent online users in the snap-judgment world of social media link sharing.” (Jacobson, 2017, p.22) Exploring new media and literacies through this lens allows students to explore cartooning style as per the curriculum and consider their place as a digital creator and more aware user.
Tensions & Equitable Solutions
With considerations of this project's goals and inquiry activities, there are several tensions that could arise. Equally, due to student ease, comfort, and abilities of the school space. First is the tension of high school-aged students and collaborative group work. While many students are comfortable with collaboration, there are equal numbers who prefer to work alone or do not wish to share their creative ideas in discussions or critiques. To alleviate that issue and to provide an equitable solution, students could use a collaborative digital making space to collect, edit, and refine their research while completing the work on a more individual level. Additionally, keeping student interest within this project could be a struggle; however, relating the cartoon more to pop culture and their interests, more so than a traditional political cartoon will not only be more relevant, but also keep in line with the integrity of a political cartoon to poke and prod and controversial topics. Second, students may not want to spend all of their time researching on the computer, in which case, students could additionally bring in examples from newspapers and magazines to attach to their sketchbook or create a poster to coordinate with their digital research posters. Third, as Alecia Magnifico, Jayne Lammers, and Deborah Fields assert about sharing in affinity spaces, students may not be interested in sharing out their work for a variety of reasons including, not seeing relevance, fear of outside response or lack of response, thoughts surrounding abilities or sharing, but then not engaging within the shared space (2018). Additionally, to that point, depending on the outlet for sharing, there is a privacy concern with student information to consider. To address this, students' work could be shared anonymously through a social media platform or shared with a local newspaper or school paper to run the cartoons. They could also be posted into an online zine anonymously, then shared out by me as the "owner" who then tracks the collection as a group that the students could also access. The cartoons could also be shared through a site like Pinterest. Alternatively, the project could also work up through sources as students get more comfortable with sharing their work, starting by sharing their cartoons in class, then the school then a small digital space to a larger digital space. The ultimate goal to "ensure that the desired learning is theoretically possible and that learners can practically succeed" (Magnifico, Lammers, Fields, 2018, p.151) in our new digital learning spaces with application outside of school.
References:
Aguilera, E. (2017). More than Bits and Bytes: Digital Literacies on, behind and beyond the screen. Literacy Today, 12–13.
Coggin, L. S., Wohlwend, K. E., Buchholz, B. A., Wessel-Powell, C., & Husbye, N.E. (2014).
Expanding early childhood literacy curriculum through play-based film-making
and popular media. In C. Felderman (Ed.), Perspectives and provocations on early
childhood education, Early Childhood Education Assembly of National Council of
Teachers of English Yearbook (Vol. 3).
Garcia, A. (2017). Nondigital Skills: Losing sight (and sound) of our analog world. Literacy Today, 24–25.
Jacobson, L. (2017). Assessing News Literacy in the 21st Century. Literacy Today, 19–22.
Magnifico, A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Fields, D. A. (2018a). Affinity spaces, literacies and classrooms: tensions and opportunities. Literacy UKLA, 52(3), 145–152.
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