The following blog entry was written and posted by Rhys Daunic of The Media Spot, which is a phenomenal organization that “promotes media literacy education through collaborative media productions, workshops & curriculum development in K-12, higher ed, and any other place where teaching and learning is happening”. Rhys has been integral in the development of Accountable Talk protocols through Blended Learning in my 8th grade Film Arts class, allowing me to track and measure the emergence of higher order thinking skills through BLOGGING.
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At Soundview Academy (SVA), a middle school in the South Bronx, principal Will Frackelton is leading an effort to leverage students’ digital and media literacy skills acquired in their grade 6-8 filmmaking program to enhance a school-wide initiative of building “accountable talk” into students’ academic interactions. Filmmaking teacher, Kevin Lopez, is piloting a model for a schoolwide network of blogs that will allow students to publish mixed media “posts” and “comments” using content-specific protocols for constructing arguments and critiquing work on the SVA Film Blog, which defines the intiative:
“Accountable Talk is a way of practicing and developing good habits when engaging in discussions. We are combining Accountable Talk with professional film vocabulary in our blog posts and comments to develop the practice of using evidence to support our opinions, ideas, predictions, and inferences.”
Goals
Teachers observe and interact with students as digital citizens in an academic setting
Students demonstrate Common Core Standards-based competencies: asking questions, making inferences, interpreting and explaining research-backed thinking
Students demonstrate media literacy critical thinking within their written and multimedia posts: critiquing effectiveness of each other’s media messages, reflectively tailoring production decisions to reach authentic audiences)
Students reinforce digital literacy and digital citizenship skills by participating in an online learning community according to agreed upon rules for collegial discussions
Student Work Examples
Six Dollar Fifty Man Assignment, Reviews and Student Discussion on the SVA Film Blog
Six Dollar Fifty Man video film review citing examples from the reviewed media text
Long Term Vision
Lopez is hoping that students’ immersion in the language of critique, and use of professional vocabulary will deepen the critical decision making during student film production.
Frackelton would like the schoolwide accountable talk blog network to reinforce a broad set of digital and media literacy competencies that their students are enthusiastic about, while leveraging them to engage core content in a real world environment.
Challenges
SVA’s logistical challenge will be to find time to train the instructional staff beyond Lopez — accommodating a range of digital literacy among them — on the effective use and moderation of these blogs. The approach will be to roll out content area blogs one academic department at a time, trained by experienced staff and students. They will start with the most technically-proficient content teams, and build towards a critical mass of in-house proficiency. The potential of extending middle school student engagement with digital communication to core content areas through this initiative makes it a worthy outlay of PD time towards further modernization of their Common Core-based curriculum.
-The Media Spot
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