Since the beginning of this class, my conceptual learning has now changed. I now have seen first hand how important technology is for literacy. Before doing this project, I had never even heard of scrapblog before. After completing this project, I now feel like I can incorporate scrapblog into my future classrooms. I feel like this technology is a tool that allows a person to be creative, while at the same time getting an important message across. So, I could use this technology in my future classrooms as a tool for teaching many lessons. For example, if I am teaching a unit about recycling, I could use a scrapblog to teach important facts about recycling. Also, I think that scrapblogs are a good tool to use for visual learners. You have the ability to put multiple pictures on one page, allowing the students to visualize the point that any teacher is trying to make. Moreover, I believe that the students would really enjoy making their own scrapblogs. It would be a chance for them to express themselves and learn about their classmate’s cultures. So a good activity for the first week of school would be to have all my students create a scrapblog about their culture. If I modeled how to create one, I believe it would be easy and fun for the students to do. Also, they would learn a lot about their classmates and it would give me a chance to do the same. Furthermore, I am happy that I chose a scrapblog because it is fairly easy to learn how to use. It is very self explanatory and you have multiple options to choose from. For example, you are able to add borders around your pictures, add stickers to your pages, and add decorative backgrounds to the pages. You even have the option to add a video and sound on you pages. Most importantly, the program is free to use! All you have to do is sign up, create an account, and you can start creating your scrapblog! I would highly recommend this new technology to anyone!
The new literacy that I chose to focus on was cultural literacy. I think often times in many classrooms, the culture of a student gets overlooked. I have been in a classroom where students with different cultures simply just get ignored and feel left out. I think as a teacher, it is my job to learn about all my students’ culture. By doing this, I will be able to create lessons and activities that focus on the strengths of my students. In my classroom, I will make sure to contain cultural literacy in my classroom library. This will be a way for other students to learn about different cultures. Also, I could focus an entire unit about a specific culture. At the end of the unit, we could have a celebration and I could bring in food that is common for that specific culture. Just like discussed in class, I believe the culture of a person determines how we think, believe, behave, teach, and learn. Additionally, the culture of a person is learned, shared, and continually changing. So, in order to make an impact in my students learning I believe it is very important for me to learn about their specific culture. By doing this, I can build on what the student already knows and provide scaffolding that is responsive to the needs of students who do not know how to do a certain task. The more classrooms that I am in, the more I notice how diversity is on the increase. For my project, I chose to focus on Italian culture. I chose to do this because my boyfriend is from Italy, and so I have noticed many differences between his culture and mine. For example, sarcastic comments that I make to him, he will take seriously. So just from our time together, I have learned that it is very important to learn about someone’s culture and not to judge a person on what they say or do because it could be part of their culture.
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I love your idea of having students make a Scrapblog about their culture. Scrapblog was such an easy program to use that this would help increase their technology literacy, plus give you background information on the students. What grade would you do this with? I feel like the classes I have had my field placements in have always been to young. Also, what would you do if not all students had access to this technology at home? That is my only worry with how technology is becoming so much of a part of our literacy definition. I have noticed that most students in my kindergarten class say their families do not have a computer. So it seems like social class is really beginning to affect their efficiency with this branch of literacy. I think it is great that you are already aware of how much culture can affect the ways people act, like you discussed with your example with your boyfriend. What strategies will you use to help prevent these misunderstandings in a classroom? I know you discussed some of these ways in your post, but I was wondering if you had any specific ideas to address these misunderstandings from the start. I agree that it important to recognize how ones culture is continually changing. This shows how just because someone is Spanish they are not identical to all Spanish students you will have. (This is a stereotype I have seen in too many field placements) I have noticed in field how all the cultures are divided into groups within my class. I often wonder if this is their choice or if they were placed like this at the beginning of the year (before we went to field).
I really liked your project Carrie :); when I was flipping through the class projects, your scrapblog definitely stood out. I could see you using your current project on Italy with upper elementary students, as it is very visually appealing and easy to comprehend. Moreover, you cover topics that are of growing importance in childrens' lives (school, sports, language, etc). I think Scrapblog would be harder to do with lower elementary but you could try to do a modified and heavily scaffolded version of Scrapblog. For instance, if you had a couple of assistants, you and your fellow assistants could help lower elementary students choose pictures and decorations rather than pictures and lengthy text. I believe students would still learn a great deal of valuable skills through perusing the Internet for pictures, using scrapblog, and seeing different aspects of other cultures.
The only concern that I had is that your project definitely focuses on the importance of cultural literacy, but I felt like you focused more on the innate value of other cultures in your blog as opposed to the project. For instance, in your project, you focused mostly on miscommunication issues, such as when individuals from other cultures do not understand the dominant culture. However, I feel that the importance of cultural literacy is much greater than simply clearing up misunderstandings of language...there is intrinsic value in heterogenity. I think you talk more about this intrinsic value in your blog, and I would like to see this emphasized more in your scrapblog. For instance, even if it seems flippant, I would put a 'top ten list' on why it is worthwhile for students to learn about other cultures; I would include reasons such as respecting the backgrounds of other cultures in the classroom but I would also include reasons like having a broader viewpoint on life. I feel that these reasons would reinforce the necessity of learning about other cultures.
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