Monday, October 20, 2014

Weekly Reading and Discussion #8

According to Hobbs, “today, every teacher needs to be a media composition teacher. That’s because the power of authorship offers students of all ages a transformative learning practice.  When students create messages, they gain new knowledge while strengthening communication and problem solving skills (p. 84)”.
               
              I agree wholeheartedly with this quote and find it very important.  Teachers need to see themselves as many things, and experts of media is one of them.  When teachers have a strong understanding of media, they can facilitate high quality learning experiences for all students regardless of the subject of the class.

Although it is not a long quote, I was very interested to read Hobbs description of learning.  Hobbs states “Media composition practices promote intellectual curiosity.  As a learner mysely, I was lucky enough to fall in love with learning…Romance comes first.  Emotional involvement with the subject matter compels our interest (p. 88-9)”. 
               
              This quote struck me as very interesting.  It may seem obvious, but our students are not going to learn if they don’t have some emotional involvement with the subject matter.  For a lot of students, that emotional involvement is the fear of failure or bad grades.  However, that is not the type of emotion Hobbs is referring to.  Media composition can help students actually develop feelings for the subject matter out of curiosity, thus generating an authentic and meaningful learning experience.

n talking about documentary ethics in the classroom, Hobbs states “Scientists are stakeholders in maintaining a meaningful connection between representation and reality.  That’s why accuracy and transparency matter so much in scientific research (p. 93).”

                
              This quote interested me because my content area is biology.  I understand the importance of maintaining realistic connections within my work, but will my students get that?  I need to make sure I can help them distinguish the line between representation and more abstract connections to the material.  

No comments:

Post a Comment