Educ6751(1)

EDUC6751 Knowledge and Communication Technologies

Reframing Reality and Representation: Living in the Cinematic Society LECTURE ONE Robert J Parkes, PhD

Welcome to the ‘Hermetically Sealed’ Pleasure Dome

The Media-Saturated Society

The Society of the Spectacle (Debord, 1967)

Simulation and the Simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1981)

The Cinematic Society (Denzin, 1995)

A Post-Literate Age (Rosenstone, 2001)

The Second Media Age (Poster, 1995)

Media Literacy vs Technological Competency

Technological Competence

Defined by skills (constructed as ‘neutral tools’)

Media Literacy

Production, Representation, and Reception (exposes purpose-driven, value-laden, and culturally-historically situated nature of technology)

Principles of Media Literacy

All media messages are constructed

Each medium has its own language of representation

Audiences experience the same media message differently

All media messages carry values and points of view

Media messages are produced for specific social and economic purposes

Will you take the Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

Critical Theory – We can crack the code and see things as they really are. Understanding the code lets us resist media messages. (Giroux, McLaren, etc.)

Poststructuralism – There is no outside of the Matrix. Even when we think we are outside, we are inside another Matrix. (Baudrillard, Foucault, etc.)

The Second Media Age

From

Commercial Mass Broadcast Media with few producers and many consumers

To

Indie Digital and Social Networking Media with many producers and many consumers

Key Features of New Media Technologies

Non-Hierarchical Organisation

Non-Linear (Digital vs Analogue)

Flexible (Synchronous or Asynchronous)

Relational (Networked)

Continuous Connectivity

Public by Default, Private by Design

Profiling and Surveillance

Approximate Professional Production

Course Overview

Explore the ways in which new technologies can be used to support and extend student learning.

Through project-based tasks develop the capacity and confidence to employ digital devices and software applications to construct and communicate new knowledge in and beyond the classroom.

Consider the social impact of technology.

Explore frameworks for thinking about the pedagogical use of new technologies.

Understand digital, visual and media literacy; and information literacy processes.

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development Concept Collaboration with More Capable Peer Actual Level of Development Level of Potential Development Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky’s Triangle and the Concept of ‘Tool Mediation’ Mediator (Tools) Subject (Self) Object (World) No Unmediated Access to the World

A Pragmatist’s Interpretation of Vygotsky’s Hermeneutic Triangle Mediational Means (Tools, Maps, Instruments, Gauges, Technologies, Diagrams, Models, Theories, Languages, Charts, Principles, Assumptions, Attitudes, etc.) Subject (Self) Object (World) No Unmediated Access to the World

Generating and Extending a ZPD through the Process of ‘Tool’ and ‘Tutor’ Mediation Tutored by More Capable Peer &/or Provided with Mediating Tools Zone of Dynamic Development Actual Level of Development Level of Potential Development

Throwing down the gauntlet: New Media and the raising of expectations New Media Information Communication Technologies Allow students to approximate professional productions Zone of Dynamic Development Actual Level of Development Level of Potential Development

Distributed Cognition and the Non-Neutrality of Technology

Cognition is socially shared – Tutor as Mediator

Cognition stretches across individuals and artefacts – Tool as Mediator

Example 1: Using a Ruler to ‘Count On’

5 + 7 =

9 + 6 =

Tools from the Perspective of Distributed Cognition

What ‘ideas’ does the tool you are thinking about using embody? In other words, what are its affordances and constraints?

What does this tool make easier, or more effective (or more difficult)? What does the tool offer us that we couldn’t do without it?

Example 2: Fencing Foil vs Samurai Katana

Using technology to extend student’s capabilities

What is it that databases can do for us that we couldn’t do without them?

What is it that non-linear digital video editing suites can do for us that we couldn’t do without them?

What is it that word processing applications can do for us that we couldn’t do without them?

Example 3: ICT, Visual Representation, and Mediating Cognitive Connections

Orientations to New Media Technologies

Celebratory Optimists

Qualified Optimists

Sceptics

Ways of Knowing

Technical Knowing demonstrated by skill and control of the media technology being deployed.

Hermeneutic Knowing demonstrated by the construction of a meaningful narrative that indicates attention to audience reception, cultural-historical context, social purpose and convention.

Critical Knowing demonstrated by evidence of self-reflective engagement with your topic.

Course Objectives

Relate relevant pedagogical frameworks and curriculum models to classroom use of new technologies.

Use technology as a tool to facilitate quality teaching and learning.

Construct and communicate new knowledge using digital devices and software applications.

Display an understanding of critical, digital, visual, media, and information literacy.

Demonstrate a capacity to work collaboratively on a project-based learning task.

Explain the social impact of new technologies.

Project-Based Learning PHASE 2 << CONSTRUCT >> PHASE 3 << DISTRIBUTE >> & << EVALUATE >> PHASE 1 << DESIGN >>

Design & Production Phase: Ways of Knowing

Technical Knowing demonstrated by skill and control of the media technology being deployed.

Hermeneutic Knowing demonstrated by the construction of a meaningful narrative that indicates attention to audience reception, cultural-historical context, social purpose and convention.

Critical Knowing demonstrated by evidence of self-reflective engagement with your topic.

Evaluation Phase: The Frames

Subjective Frame: Your personal intuitive, emotional, and/or sensory response to media artefacts.

Cultural Frame: The meaning of a media artefact in relation to the social, cultural, political, and/or historical milieu of its production or reception.

Structural Frame: How the media artefact has mobilised visual language, verbal language, musical language, or other technical/symbolic systems to make meaning; and how its codes and conventions, signs and symbols, might be understood or interpreted by a literate viewer, listener, responder, or player.