Wright - CURR 501: Digital Media Literacy

I have always loved stories. Reading a book with my grandmother and big sister Perhaps because I am the child of two former stage actors, framing life through a narrative arc has always made things a little easier to understand. As a kid, I did musical theater, immersing myself fully in my roles, living out the character I was playing on stage. In college, I studied English literature, spending four years deeply entrenched in novels and unpacking their connotative meanings and cultural significance. When I graduated, I went into the film industry, thinking that was the path on which I could continue unfurling the pages of my own story, living vicariously through the tales of movie characters.  Visiting Stratford-upon-Avon, hometown of William Shakespeare But then, for two years, the pages stopped turning. It felt as though the author of my life had writer’s block. Everything in my life felt stunted. I was running through my routine like a montage. I woke up, went to work, did my pa...

Decked out in Disney from an early age I, like many my age, grew up on Disney. I played our VCR of The Little Mermaid until the film was rolling out of the tape. I wore a Sleeping Beauty princess dress until it was threadbare. I knew the words to "Reflection," "Tale as Old as Time," and "Part of Your World" before I could even form full sentences. For the first five years of my life, we lived in Los Angeles, and legend has it, one of my first outings as a newborn was to Disneyland. Later on, my eldest sister would work at the Disney parks as a "friend of Mary Poppins and Belle," as they refer to cast members. Disney has just always been an unconscious part of my life. My favorite princess and me I don't watch the movies with such frequency today (though I still know the words to every song), my wardrobe is a bit more "evil stepmother" color palette than "princess," and trips to Disneyland aren't quite as fun when you h...

TV Bullies: Glee and the Perpetuation of Bullying I remember when Glee premiered in 2009. I was in eighth grade, a huge theater and choir nerd, and had just spent the better part of the seventh grade year being picked on by the resident mean girl in my grade. So many of the themes in that show resonated with me. I bought every volume of music on CD at my local Wal-Mart and learned every word to Rachel's solos. I'm fairly certain that, at one point, I insisted my mom buy me gold star stickers so I could sign my name like Rachel did on the show. I watched the show through to its finale in 2015, devastated that a series that had been so influential in my life was coming to a close. I felt that I was losing a part of my identity in its airing of the finale.  Years later, all six seasons of the hit show are available for anyone's viewing pleasure on Netflix, and there is a 30-hour, 8-minute playlist on Spotify consisting of every song  ever performed on the show available for c...

It is like pulling teeth to get teenagers to read an actual book. They constantly ask me if there is a movie version that we can watch instead of reading. They fall asleep at their desks during a read-aloud. They don't remember the basic story elements of the text because, as they lovingly tell me, they "just don't care," even when I try to make the texts we read relevant, hip, cool, straightforward, or fun.  But I'm their language arts teacher. My role is help them find the deeper meaning in stories. I am supposed to guide them to see themselves in the pages of a text. I'm meant to equip them a skill set that helps them critically analyze any text they read, evaluating it for significance, bias, or meaning. How can I do that if my kids will just not read? In thinking about my final project, this is the question that puzzles me. It's a big question when put succinctly-- how can I get my students to read ? It feels as though stories told in the pages of a...

If you are anything like me, you are constantly looking for your next adventure. From Maine to India to Chicago to Los Angeles to London and everywhere in between, I want to see and hear and taste and feel and do it all. Unfortunately, however, I am a teacher, which means that neither my schedule nor my bank account necessarily support international jetsetting on a whim. Still, however, when I feel that travel bug bite, I know just the antidote to help scratch that itch: Google Earth. What I have found, however, is that Google Earth is a fantastic digital tool that we can use with our students to show them the big, beautiful world, and help them become global citizens. Google Earth is an engaging, culturally responsive digital tool that you can implement in your classroom to take your students on virtual "field trips" (and do your own exploring as a teacher... and maybe some  fantasizing about a tropical vacation ). When undergoing the training for my Google Educator certifi...

Sky High: My immediate thought when I heard "School in the Cloud" It's wild to consider how much the concept of "school" has changed since I was in high school just ten years ago. Prior to receiving my stepdad's old work laptop my junior year, my siblings and I had a carefully choreographed system of desktop computer sharing to get our homework done--but the majority of our assignments were expected to be completed on paper and delivered by hand.  Even the way in which we collectively learned presented differently than educational expectations of today. The majority of my teachers demonstrated "stand-and-deliver" type instruction, essays were the assessment norm and an entirely independent endeavor to be completed on a quarterly basis, and math was a straightforward process (that I still didn't understand, even in its most basic form).  Education, even in 2010, very much mirrored the 300-year-old Victorian model detailed by Sugata Mitra in his ...

It took me twice as long as it should have to get through this assignment because I kept checking my phone. Despite the fact that I am currently surrounded by my family for the holiday weekend--parents and siblings and cousins and grandparents--I couldn't stop picking up my phone to check Instagram and Hinge and Twitter to see what I was "missing." Spoiler alert: I wasn't missing anything. But I am surrounded by people I have missed dearly for the past year, but I'm missing out on time with them, because I can't put down my phone, and the reality is that I'm not missing anything other than memory-making moments with my family. I am acutely aware of the digital reality of which Sherry Turkle speaks in her TEDTalk, "Alone Together." I grew up alongside modern technology, and it has been a defining element of my relationships with so many different people in my life. But the point that she makes--about our reliance on technology for togetherness act...