There are more than one way to make meaning in this hugely diversified society and as teachers, we have to take into account the diversity of backgrounds (culture, history, language spoken at home, experiences) and schema that our students possess. The pedagogies should aim at helping students to develop, tapping into their potentials, but at the same time bearing in mind constrains of the situation.
The 6 main assumptions of multiliteracies taken from Stein are:
Pedagogy is semiotic activity within relations of culture, history and power.
Meaning making is bodily, sensory, and semiotic.
Meaning making is multimodal.
Meaning making is interested action.
Language is limited.
Meaning making is transformation, creativity, and design.
To sum up all these 6 points, it aims to say that students learn in many different ways and each one of them are exposed to different types of experiences. What student A possesses, might not be what student B possesses. Every student is different, resulting in diversity and a pool of background knowledge in which students can share their experiences and learn from each other too.
Students learn best when they are involved in their own learning. Knowledge is best gained through acquisition (as learnt in previous lessons). They explore and learn through their exploration, investigation and realization of concepts.
However, we also have to bear in mind that in the local Singapore context, we are still very exam-oriented due to the standardized (PSLE, ‘O’ Levels and ‘A’ Levels) examinations. Therefore, we have to consider the reactions of the stakeholders of our education system, namely the parents, who would want our curriculum geared towards preparing for exams rather than having a range of activities.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Lights, Camera, Action
How do we, as teachers, get students to understand that the different elements in videography – angling, movement, positioning of shots, voicing, selection of shots, etc. – generate certain meaning in establishing their personal identities?
To start off, I would pick a theme, for example advertisements. I will select a few products, such as, toys (possibly adverts from Toys R Us), cars (BMW, Mercedes), health supplements, washing detergent/powder, fast food restaurants (KFC, MacDonalds) and restaurants.
In every advertisement, there is a target audience. I will first get the students to identify the targeted audience for the various advertisements. After students have identified the audience, I would ask them to pay attention to the actor(s)/actress (es) in the advertisement and to make a link to their target audience. They have to justify their reasons. Another would be the role that each gender has to play. For example, it is usually the females who would be talking about a certain washing powder to wash the stains, such as mud, off from the males’ white t-shirt. Therefore, portraying that it is the females who are taking care of the household chores, whereas the males are ones who make a mess of things or are the ones who do sports.
I will then replay the advertisement again, asking students to focus at the camera angle. I would expect the students to identify that advertisements such as those of prestigious cars would have a higher angle as compared to those from toys and fast food restaurants. This is to give a high class image to the cars as we have to look up to people who own those cars.
Similar activities can be done to focus on the various aspects, such as the voices, background, context of culture, etc.
If time permits, the teacher can make this a project for students, to create their own short advertisement and justifying the various elements and their selection.
To start off, I would pick a theme, for example advertisements. I will select a few products, such as, toys (possibly adverts from Toys R Us), cars (BMW, Mercedes), health supplements, washing detergent/powder, fast food restaurants (KFC, MacDonalds) and restaurants.
In every advertisement, there is a target audience. I will first get the students to identify the targeted audience for the various advertisements. After students have identified the audience, I would ask them to pay attention to the actor(s)/actress (es) in the advertisement and to make a link to their target audience. They have to justify their reasons. Another would be the role that each gender has to play. For example, it is usually the females who would be talking about a certain washing powder to wash the stains, such as mud, off from the males’ white t-shirt. Therefore, portraying that it is the females who are taking care of the household chores, whereas the males are ones who make a mess of things or are the ones who do sports.
I will then replay the advertisement again, asking students to focus at the camera angle. I would expect the students to identify that advertisements such as those of prestigious cars would have a higher angle as compared to those from toys and fast food restaurants. This is to give a high class image to the cars as we have to look up to people who own those cars.
Similar activities can be done to focus on the various aspects, such as the voices, background, context of culture, etc.
If time permits, the teacher can make this a project for students, to create their own short advertisement and justifying the various elements and their selection.
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