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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Digital Practices and Media Education in my Classroom

A few weeks ago I posted a picture on my sidebar. I titled it "A Hatched Rock". This picture was taken two years ago in one of the State Parks on the shores of Lake Superior. Thanksgiving up north is one of my favorite times of the year. Nothing is what it usually is. A rock is not a rock, and leaves leave the strangest impressions on ice. It seems that I went back in time into an ice age or sorts. Or maybe exploring an alien planet.
"A Hatched Rock" was the most amazing sight: the warm sun pushed the thin ice off the rock that it was covering creating the most amazing shell - beautiful in shape and color. Exceptionally unexpected right in the middle of a path. Created collaboratively by the rocks, water, sun, and cold temperature. Nature's multitasking and appropriation at its best. On top of it, ice managed to adopt a completely alternative identity. Normally brittle, it looked exactly like a rock. And yet, I couldn't pick it up, couldn't touch it or possess it. I did actually manage to keep it - in my memory - after I admired it and took a its picture.
Digital literacy, I think, is in many ways like my hatched rock. It is collaborative in nature, and it creates things that are exceptionally unexpected. I hope that one day I will be able to create a hatched rock of my own - walking with my students on the path of digital literacies and experimenting along the way.

4 comments:

  1. Poetic and powerful!

    I'm also glad you found a technological tool you like.

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  2. I love the metaphor you've drawn between the collaboration of the hatched rock and the collective modes and experimentation that occur in making meaning through digital practices.

    I wish you much fun as you and your students learn together.

    p.s. your new blog template is great, very playful in spirit.

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  3. Also, your image and description of the rock, I would consider, to be an example of digital storytelling. Kids could start basic, with one phot adn tell the story behind it.

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