Monday, May 8, 2017

EDC 534 Final Project

OPTION 3. CURRICULUM PROJECT. If you choose to develop a curriculum project, you’ll submit a set of lesson plans, materials, sample student work product and other resources needed to create a complete unit or inquiry project. You post these resources to your blog.


Précis:
Students will construct a multimodal presentation to weave the four stories together into a coherent whole.   I will create lesson plans and student direction list and sample items to have students make a will be a multimodal narrative that states where they are coming from, where they may desire to go in their lifetime in relationship to a faith journey.  It will allow them to articulate their own experience and hold it in creative tension with things they see as possibilities for a greater consciousness about the world around them.

Basic Outline


On Google Site:
MY STORY/THE CHURCH’S STORY (LOCAL) A local religious community and it’s sacred space that has been part of our life.  

An interview with a local clergy member or long term lay member of said community.  
THE CHURCH’S STORY (EXPANDED) place we have not yet been to where we long to visit in terms of both religious architecture and practice and visiting a particular people or community.  

This could be a Pinterest/Symbaloo or Photostory collage. It could also be a playlist of youtube items (chants, African spirituals, or other religious music)
THE STORY A Scripture passage or passage by a spiritual writer.  

This could be rendered in a new way with a word cloud or other digital authorship application.  


THE CULTURE’S STORY A recognition of cultural heritage both in terms of it’s affirmation and tension with the other parts of the story.  

Another multi-modal tool/component
MY STORY:  Personal narrative of religious identity, meaning found within their own life story connecting and distancing oneself from the other stories.  
Screencast or other form of movie embedded in the story.  
These individual wiki pages could in turn be tagged or curated in other ways so as to make them more integrated and interactive for viewers.  




Curriculum Plan

Day 1
Awakening activity to overlapping stories.  
  1. Looking at old yearbooks.
  2. Examining evolving stories.   (Yearbook photos of alumni faculty.)
  3. Video interview of alumni faculty on what it is like to return to school as a teacher.
    1. Discussion Questions.
      1. How much difference does it make to know the story of this person/group of persons across the passage of time and space? (Considering their time at school, away at college/other career and return to school community as faculty or staff.)  
      2. How will your own stories expand and deepen with growth and development?
      3. How important or problematic are Yearbook Superlative pages?  (Ordinary voices, average people)

    1. Identifying the Pattern
      1. My story-- the story of the individual and the articulation of the ordinary voice. (Stern)  This is for the sake of Adolescent Identity Development.   Specific block quote articulating this in the appendix of this document.  
      2. The Vocational story/The Church’s story The larger story of vocation/life task (college and sometimes other work). (Church means con-vocation)
      3. The Culture’s story--The common cultural background story (so that is specifically excluding study abroad experiences for now),
      4. THE STORY--The common faith experience that is mysterious, ubiquitous and yet transcendent.  


Day 2


Introduce specifics of project of four stories woven together and represented.

Students start to consider the personal My Story Component which is based on the past and the present.  
  1. My Story: taking stock of the here and now.  A personal statement video recorded of pairs interviewing each other about identity issues.  Maybe some family of origin and ethnicity questions along with religious preference.    (Students little or no religious involvement would be directed toward talking about other institutions and civic groups that may be part of their lives or family customs, e.g. Scouting)
  2. My Story built on the stories of others.   Further influence of grandparents and previous generations as they are known.
  3. My Story as shared with an older adult.  Compose a list of three possible older adults to interview while ultimately only interviewing one of them (Sometime on after Day 5 and before Day 7)  Interview with an older adult who has experience and roots in the community and also has knowledge of life beyond the local community. (My example is provided elsewhere in this project.)
  4. Teacher provides an example complete project as a template and guide for what is expected.   (Hyperlinking examples in the text here)
    1. In this case it would be my interview with Brother Joseph Pawlika, CFX.
    2. My interview questions would be hyperlinked on the My Story quadrant of the web page.  
    3. His questions and answers would form one parenthetical mark aroud the basis for my own personal reflection as a person who knows about the Xaverian Brother’s subculture in the church as it is expressed in one high school but needs my own response and explanation of why it compels me to want to understand more stories beyond the local one.  

Day 3
Students begin to create questions for interview for My Story built on stories of others. (homework)
Students are directed to brainstorm where to go after the My Story/Here and now/with background.
  1. Students are directed to make a short list of other religious communities or sites that have some connection to their own context that they might consider visiting in the future and exploring.
  2. Possibilities
    1. Students may choose a set of common patronymic sites for future or current virtual visit.  That is if they attend a parish named St. Timothy’s they may consider finding three or four St. Timothy’s Churches around the country or around the globe.
    2. Students may choose a religious house/monastery, shrine, college or charitable foundation run by a religious order/congregation they already familiar with in some way. A student who has a parent with Xaverian Brothers education may decide on a mission country served by the brothers.  A student who attends a parish by a religious order of priests, like the Dominicans may consider another Dominican parish far afield.
    3. Students may choose a community of relative similarity within the country or outside of it.  (Population, socio-economic, religious demographics etc.)
    4. Students who are not Catholic may choose a historical site or community with some relationship with their own community.  (e.g. The First Baptist Church in America in Providence, RI, Truro Synagogue in Newport, RI or King’s Chapel (Unitarian) in Boston.
  3. Basic Representational Checklist for The Church’s wider story.  
    1. Can I locate an account of the beginning or a back story to the parish, community, institution I decided upon?
    2. Does this group/institution only accessible through a limited number of web pages or other online media, how in depth is the coverage of what is presented about that communities mission and ministry?
    3. Can I supplement my online web research with database research or other publications available from or about this community or group?  Do I see similarities or differences in the portrayals? (Transmedia navigation)
    4. Have I assembled enough information to demonstrate that there is clear affinity between myself/my research pair and this newly discovered community but also do I account for things that are noticeably different and challenging for me?
    5. Have I found enough information to contextualize the first hand sources I have encountered?

Teacher example: Webpage off of main project page of Xaverian Brothers in Kenya and the Congo.   

So the Church’s story or the Church’s Wider Story AKA the place I would want to deepen my faith and understand my fellow human beings/fellow Christians is discovered and then is contrasted in the next day with the Culture’s story.  
Day 4
Continue
The Culture’s story.   
Teacher provides example of the Xaverian Brothers in Kenya.   
Teacher does a Think Aloud reading of the web page.     
Teacher provides example of those in need  in the United States with NPR article.
Teacher does a Think Aloud of the NPR hunger infomation.  (This begins the comparison with the first article and forms the basis of the Venn diagram presented below.)  

Teacher shares a venn diagram diagram constructed to go on web page in the culture’s story quadrant.   The links for the sources are also provided under the document.

Venn Diagram creation of the cultures story. Post this with brief commentary to web page cell.
Students begin research in class on finding a cultural story that is symmetrical to their Wider Church’s Story.  
Day 5
Students  prepare and present a very quick Think Aloud to fellow students about the articles and documents on the Church’s Wider Story or on My Culture’s Story.  
  1. Students peer critique one another to help each other make stronger connections between the two articles they briefly present in small groups.  
  2. Students construct Venn diagrams for the Culture’s story quadrant of their web page.  


Day 5
The Story: (The argument can be made that this should be the starting point of the project.   I will defer to the “life to faith to life” model advocated by Dr. Thomas Groome).

Consulting with teacher to find relevant scripture passages that speak to and deepen all of these experiences.  
Looking at Scripture story of choice with a sense that one must approach as Jenkins would with Transmedia navigation.  
Consulting: Textweek.org, The Cyberhymnal, and the Web Gallery of Art to do brief exegesis and understand story on a multimodal level.  

Web gallery of Art







Day 6-9
Students will compose as demonstrated on
Day 10
Students will peer edit and critique each other before audience display date.
Future
Audience Display date with feedback google form.  








Course Concepts
Representational Ethics(Buckingham)
Vernacular Creativity and Hearing Ordinary Voices (Burgess)
Transmedia Navigation (Jenkins)
Think Alouds (Duke and Pearson)
Adolescent Development and Identity (Stern)
Laying it all Out: Online Expression for Self-Reflection, Catharsis and Self-Documentation (Stern)

Academic Sources


Buckingham, David. (2003) Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. (pp.57-59) Cambridge: Polity. Print


Burgess, Jean (2006). Hearing ordinary voices. Continuum: Journal of Media & Culture 20(2), 201-214


Duke, N.K. & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction, 3rd edition. International Reading Association.


Thomas Groome. “Life to Faith to Life .” Online video clip. Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHHn0i2gEec . Sept 24, 2014. Web. May 8, 2017.


Jenkins, H. (2013). Is it appropriate to appropriate? (pp. 105 – 122). Reading in a participatory culture: Remixing Moby Dick in the English classroom. New York: Teachers College Press


Stern, S. (2008). Producing sites, exploring identities: youth online authorship. (p.96-102)In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, Identity and Digital Media. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative


"Who We Are." Who We Are | Xaverian Brothers. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2017.


Resources to Create Template/Example






Foundational Quotes from Susannah Stern


Out of all of the resources, I felt as though these three quotes were the underlying basis for why a project like this is worthwhile and meaningful in students lives.  


Burgress p.5

In thinking about how a politics of ‘ordinary’ cultural participation might articulate
with the ‘democratization’ of technologies, Atton’s (2001) article on the
representation of the mundane in personal homepages is significant. This is because it
disarticulates the spectacular and the radical from the concept of alternative media,
redrawing the field to include everyday cultural production and therefore ‘ordinary’
cultural producers in the field of alternative media studies:
What happens when ‘ordinary’ people produce their own media? I want to
explore some aspects of ‘popular’ media production and its intersection with
everyday life. To do so will be to [...] take to the notion of ‘everyday
production’ and its place in identity-formation to a different place: to that of
the originating producer within everyday life. Popular media production might
then be considered a primary form of everyday cultural production. (n.p.)
The central placement of the politics of ordinary participation through everyday
cultural production shapes our concerns toward access, self-representation, and
literacy, rather than resistance or aesthetic innovation. This approach also preserves
the distinction between the everyday (as signifier of a particular form of
mundaneness, viewed from above by the privileged cultural critic or artist) and the
specific dignity of everyday lives, expressed using vernacular communicative means.

"Who We Are." Who We Are | Xaverian Brothers. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2017.
Within each distinctive life choice, we are further invited to attentiveness, simplicity, flexibility and openness to the common, unspectacular flow of everyday life.

Synthesis and Commentary:

Part of the reason for choosing the quote from Burgess as an underlying philosophy of the project was because it already had a philosophical convergence with the often quoted line taken from the Xaverian Brothers website that is part of the Fundamental Principles of the Xaverian Brothers.
Stern p.97

By contrast, this chapter is primarily informed by more developmental approaches, which interrogate transformations that occur within individuals as they age, although social circumstances are also thought to play a significant role. From a developmental perspective, identity generally refers to how one subjectively views oneself over time and across situations, and is typically believed to evolve throughout the life cycle as one’s inner self changes. Identity is thus commonly viewed as a “process of qualitative stage reorganization rather than a mere unfolding of static personality characteristics.”4 The self can be considered as “a personal iconography of values, symbols, and identifications that answer the question, ‘Who am I?’”5 During adolescence, in particular, individuals typically begin to question and deconstruct how they think of their selves. This self-inquiry is not conducted in isolation, but rather in the context of, and through feedback from, meaningful others. As Erikson put it, “The process of identity formation depends on the interplay of what young persons at the end of childhood have come to mean to themselves and what they now appear to mean to those who become significant to them.”6
Stern p. 102   Remarks like these signal that despite what ends up on the site, the very process of self-inquiry provides meaning and value. As Blood puts it, “The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions.”20 This process may be particularly valuable for young authors, since adolescence is thought to mark the arrival of formal operational skills. These skills allow individuals to “construct more abstract self-portraits, to distinguish between their real and ideal selves, and to begin the process of resolving discrepancies between multiple aspects of themselves.”21 Later in adolescence, teens become preoccupied with their futures, their religious and political beliefs, and their standards for behavior. Expressing oneself online becomes a way for them to explore their beliefs, values, and self-perceptions, and thereby to help them grapple with their sense of identity. Indeed, youth authors indicate that personal sites provide both a space and a stimulus to participate in this internal dialogue.22