Revisiting Literacy: Changing Learning Paradigms in Digital Culture. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Language and Learning in the Digital Age
2011
and Hayes' latest work, Language and Learning in the Digital Age, is an informative read dealing with the potential, perils, and implications of digital media. Parallels and comparisons are drawn between oral language, literacy (defined as reading and writing), and digital media, and how these latter two have altered the way we communicate and interact. As leading authorities on games and learning, Gee and Hayes illustrate their arguments with examples from video games, including Second Life and World of Warcraft. These, along with non-game examples such as a cat listserv, "birding" (p. 72), and amateur science, contrast school learning with that found in "passionate affinity spaces" (p. 69), which are argued to be ideal spaces for personally meaningful, situated learning. The authors challenge institutionally valued literacy skills, which have been reinforced in our current school systems. The book's title describes the content of this work, which succeeds in illustrating how language, which is essential to learning, is once again being shaped, this time by digital media.
Review of Language and Learning in the Digital Age
2012
and Hayes' latest work, Language and Learning in the Digital Age, is an informative read dealing with the potential, perils, and implications of digital media. Parallels and comparisons are drawn between oral language, literacy (defined as reading and writing), and digital media, and how these latter two have altered the way we communicate and interact. As leading authorities on games and learning, Gee and Hayes illustrate their arguments with examples from video games, including Second Life and World of Warcraft. These, along with non-game examples such as a cat listserv, "birding" (p. 72), and amateur science, contrast school learning with that found in "passionate affinity spaces" (p. 69), which are argued to be ideal spaces for personally meaningful, situated learning. The authors challenge institutionally valued literacy skills, which have been reinforced in our current school systems. The book's title describes the content of this work, which succeeds in illustrating how language, which is essential to learning, is once again being shaped, this time by digital media.
"Research on educationally designed game-based virtual learning environments and virtual worlds has begun to explore the affordances of 3Dmetaverses for engaging learners in ways that contrast with formal schooling. Applying constructs from ecological psychology, distributed cognition, and sociocultural perspectives, design-based longitudinal studies have shown the quality of learning taking place in technology-supported collaborative environments. But what are the affordances of virtual environments for second language learning? How can we design for a nonlinear experience of action and interaction that exploits these affordances? We explored current language teaching practices in Second Life and found that many educators simply apply their classroom approaches in the virtual space, treating the environment merely as input. Designing for optimal learning opportunities in virtual worlds requires that we rethink second language acquisition by grounding it in the ecological psychology concepts of perception-action, values-realizing, coaction, and languaging.We call for a rethinking of pedagogies based on input/outputmodels that imply a linear progression from an initial to a goal state. Instead cognition is embodied and distributed, and avatars in 3D worlds allow us to experience virtual environments in embodied, dialogical ways. Language learning in virtual worlds calls for design that prioritizes opportunities for distributedmeaning-making and coaction in values-realizing activities that go beyond task-based learning, autonomy, and construction of a second language identity."
Learning in Real and Virtual Worlds
2013
Much has been written during the first decade of the new millennium about the potential of digital technologies to produce a transformation of education. Digital technologies are portrayed as tools that will enhance learner collaboration and motivation and develop new multimodal literacy skills. Accompanying this has been the move from understanding literacy on the cognitive level to an appreciation of the sociocultural forces shaping learner development. Responding to these claims, the Digital Education and Learning Series explores the pedagogical potential and realities of digital technologies in a wide range of disciplinary contexts across the educational spectrum both in and outside of class. Focusing on local and global perspectives, the series responds to the shifting landscape of education, the way digital technologies are being used in different educational and cultural contexts, and examines the differences that lie behind the generalizations of the digital age. Incorporating cutting edge volumes with theoretical perspectives and case studies (single authored and edited collections), the series provides an accessible and valuable resource for academic researchers, teacher trainers, administrators and students interested in interdisciplinary studies of education and new and emerging technologies.
Directions and Prospects for …, 2010
Digital games are significant for language learning not only as potentially useful new tools within the confines of traditional foreign language contexts, but more importantly, as new semiotic and cultural environments that construct, and are constructed by, social practices. In this chapter, we explore multiuser games as ontologically new social practices that warrant attention within the scope of language learning. In doing so, we specifically address two types of multiuser digital games – multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and synthetic immersive environments (SIEs) – and their role in research and practice. In terms of research, we suggest goal orientation and social consequence as two especially meaningful elements of multiuser digital games for language learning. We then highlight ways multiuser digital games might be meaningfully considered in educational practice. This includes a discussion of task-based approaches as well as literacy development.
2013
Notwithstanding their potential for novel approaches to language teaching and learning, Virtual Worlds (VWs) present numerous technological and pedagogical challenges that require new paradigms if the language learning experience and outcomes are to be successful. In this presentation, we argue that the notions of presence and affordance, together with the time/space dimensions of interactions in virtual worlds (e.g. chronotope, heteropia, and Lemke's (2000) heterochrony), provide new insights into language learners' trajectories as they attempt to carry out tasks that are designed to make use of virtual worlds' characteristics and potentialities. We explore and analyse a critical incident that occurred during the realisation of a language learning task by university learners of Italian in Second Life©. Recordings of the session, teacher observations, learner reflections and interviews have provided large amounts of data highlighting a number of critical incidents that emerged during their execution. Analysing these critical incidents through the lenses of presence, affordance, and time/space inseparability allows us to highlight the non-linearity of temporal and spatial aspects of interactions in virtual worlds, and to reveal the emergence of affordances and learning chronotopes linked to such interactions. In turn, the analysis of these emerging learning chronotopes helps us refine the design and implementation of language learning tasks in virtual worlds.
Rethinking Language Learning: Virtual Worlds as a Catalyst for Change
International Journal of Learning and Media, 2011
Research on educationally designed game-based virtual learning environments and virtual worlds has begun to explore the affordances of 3D metaverses for engaging learners in ways that contrast with formal schooling. Applying constructs from ecological psychology, distributed cognition, and sociocultural perspectives, design-based longitudinal studies have shown the quality of learning taking place in technology-supported collaborative environments. But what are the affordances of virtual environments for second language ...
The Discursive Construction of Language Teaching and Learning in Multiuser Virtual Environments
This dissertation seeks to broaden how researchers within computer-assisted language learning (CALL) make sense of and examine psychological and power constructs at play in language courses conducted in 3D multiuser virtual environments. 18 students and 2 teachers in 8 formal English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in the 3D multiuser virtual environment of Second Life participated in a discourse analysis study to explore the theoretical and analytic ways in which critical discursive psychology could function to explore how teaching and learning are performed as interactional events in a community of language teachers and learners in Second Life by investigating the use of interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions during these interactions and considering the implications of what is noticed. Transcriptions and field notes of screen recordings from the 8 classes were the primary source of data. Findings drawn from the classes pointed to how the participants’ discursive practices worked to reframe orientations to pedagogical ideologies rhetorically, and how misunderstandings could be operationalized in ways divergent from their target language abilities. Broader implications of this research are then discussed, along with suggestions for teachers and researchers working within virtual environments, as well as desiderata for future research both from the findings shared and the data that was beyond the scope of this research.