#dmal

“Review - New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and ‘Worked Example’ as One Way Forward.” - Georgia Durán

"As I read his arguments, I actually wondered if digital immigrants can truly understand DMAL or if we are like anthropologists studying another culture. We may have learned to speak the language, but we will always impose our biases since we are not truly members of the group. Perhaps the study of DMAL will fluctuate until digital natives join the discussion." (GD, p.2)

"Teachers [and practitioners] need significantly more professional development to close the divide between adults who are more like tourists [or immigrants] in digital worlds and youth under 30 who function as digital natives." (Banks et al., 2007, p.17 in GD, p.5)

“Although popular, I question the reliability of Wikipedia, which bills itself as ‘the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,’ whether one is a scholar or not.” (GD, p.3)    > Being cautious concerning the reliability of Wikipedia is certainly not a careless thing to do. However, questioning it on the basis of the (professional/educational) background of the contributors is questionable in itself. The idea that only scholars can be relied upon to contribute to the creation of a body of trustworthy knowledge is a slippery slope that leads to Ivory Tower Thinking of academics. It is hard to hold such a position as a social scientist, since research and knowledge coming forth from the humanities or social sciences are infused by what happens in society, among people, within and between cultures.

“There are many who might benefit from this book, provided that readers are culturally literate in academic studies and popular culture, specifically digital gaming, and have time to absorb the dense content.” (GD, p.8)    > The previous remark also relates to this quote by Durán, only directed the other way around. It is hard to imagine that anyone (researcher/scholar, practitioner, or others) who is genuinely interested in the theme of the book would be unaware of, or unfamiliar with, popular culture. Add to this Durán’s own conclusion (which she offers by quoting Gee): “one can develop an appreciation for some texts without participating in the practices of the group whose texts they are (…)” (Gee, p.20 in GD, p.8). Combined this leads to the idea that there is little reason to regard the required cultural and/or academic literacy as a downside of Gee’s discourse.

  > Whether or not the example worked example Gee gives in the book is poorly chosen is irrelevant. The book focuses on the idea of the ‘Worked Examples’ itself, not on giving them. Crucial to this idea is the fact that the examples are open to discussion, alteration and dismissal. The only relevance of the comment concerning the fitness of the example worked example is the judgment itself, since this is the start (but only the start) of what Gee calls the ‘working’ of the example (Gee, p.49).

"New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and 'Worked Examples' as One Way Forward" - James Paul Gee

Centrale vraag: “How can work in digital media achieve enough commonality for contributors to engage in fruitful collaboration and the accumulation of shared knowledge?” (JG, p.5)

Thema van Digital Media and Learning (DMAL) als onderzoeksveld: “… the ways in which digital tools have transformed the human mind and human society and will do so further in the future.” (JG, p.6)    > herformulering vraag: Zijn er gedeelde tools en perspectieven om een dergelijke studie te ondernemen? Of ook: “… the ways in which literacy has transformed the human mind and human society.” (ibid.)    > gerelateerd aan: visie op geletterdheid als ‘een technologie’ (JG, p.7)

DMAL als onderzoeksveld is = “… the studie of how digital tools and new forms of convergent media, production, and participation, as well as powerful forms of social organization and complexity in popular culture, can teach us how to enhance learning in and out of school and how to transform society and the global world as well.” (JG, p.14)

Participatory culture (volgens Jenkins, 2009, p.xi) “A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices.” (in JG, p.13)

Geschetste historiek met betrekking tot geletterdheid en de studie ervan:                 * Bevindingen:                 “… the major literacy effect that interested policymakers and the wider society was, for better or worse, literacy learning in schools. (…) And this concern was massively dominated by (…) reading education as a specialization in schools of education. (…) This, in turn, was closely tied to policymakers and the wider society viewing learning to read and write in purely mental and individual terms: reading and writing go on in people’s heads…” (JG, p.7-8)                                > bemerking:                                “Video-game designers did not become familiar with these learning principles from the learning sciences, nor did the learning sciences use videogames as a basis for research. (…) Videogames are largely just problem-solving spaces; if people could not learn them well and in an engaging fashion, the companies that make the games would go out of business. So it is, perhaps not surprising that game designers have hit on – and even innovate on – many of the learning principles that contemporary research in the learning sciences has argued work for deep and effective human learning.” (JG, p.11)

                               “There is something more apparently social and institutional about digital media.” (JG, p.8)                                                >> “We live, then, in an age of convergent media, production, participation, fluid group formation, and cognitive, social and linguistic complexity – all embedded in contemporary popular culture.” (JG, p.14; meer uitleg: p.12-13)                                                “Digital tools help create and sustain these features of ‘modern times’, but they do not stand alone and cannot be studied in isolation from these features.” (ibid.)

                * New Literacy Studies (NLS)                 “Literacy as something people did inside society. (…) ways of participating in social and cultural groups...” (JG, p.17)                                > Geletterdheid als sociocultureel fenomeen.                                “Knowing how to use a text in the right place and time is as important as knowing how to ‘decode’ it” (ibid.)                                “… within different practices, it is integrated with different ways of using oral language; different ways of acting and interacting; different ways of knowing, valuing and believing; and too often different ways of using various sorts of tools and technologies.” (JG, p.18)                                                > purpose, uses, insider-outsider                                “One can develop an appreciation for some texts, without participating in the practices of the group whose texts they are, but a knowledge of how the ‘texts’ fit into those practices is still necessary.” (JG, p.20)                                                >> “Learning was largely treated (…) as changing patterns of participation in ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wegner, 1991)” (JG, p.22)                 --> gelijkenis DMAL: brede blik op geletterdheid.

                * Situated Cognition Studies                 “These viewpoints all believe that thinking is connected to, and changes across, actual situations and is not usually a process of applying abstract generalizations, definitions, or rules.” (JG, p.25)                 “… humans think, understand, and learn best when they use their prior experiences (so they must have had some) as a guide to prepare themselves for action.” (JG, p.26)                 --> link NLS: “… participation in the practice of various social and cultural groups determines which experiences a person has and how they pay attention to the elements of these experiences.” (JG, p.27)                 link DMAL: “… these practices are mediated by various tools and technologies whether these be print or digital media or other tools.” (ibid)                                > world of experience

                * New Literacies Studies                 “… is about studying new types of literacy beyond print literacy, especially digital literacies and literacy practices embedded in popular culture. (…) views different digital tools as technologies for giving and getting meaning, just like language.” (JG, p.31)                 --> link NLS & DMAL: “… different ways of using digital tools within different sorts of socio-cultural practices.” (JG, p.32)

                * New Media Literacy Studies (NMLS)                 “… stresses the ways in which digital tools and the media built from them are transforming society and, in particular, popular culture.” (JG, p.34)                                > production; flexible group formation.                 “We live in an age of pro-ams: amateurs who have become experts at whatever they have developed a passion for (…).” (JG, p.35-36)                                > “These pro-ams have passion and go deeper rather than wide. At the same time, pro-ams are often adept at pooling their skills and knowledge with other pro-ams to bring of bigger tasks or to solve larger problems. These are people who do not necessarily know what everyone else knows, but do know how to collaborate with other pro-ams to put knowledge to work to fulfill their intellectual and social passions.” (JG, p.36)

Naar Worked Examples: “… what was really needed (…) is for different authors to explicate the foundations of their work in ways that compare and contrast these foundations with the foundations for other people’s related work.” (JG, p.41)                 > “… arguments and implementations now must begin to converge on a wider set of shared criteria of validity and warrants for claims that can serve both as a foundation for collaboration and eventually for more formal standards in the area.” (JG, p.42)                 > “... to gain traction and coherence it is necessary for certain examples of work (...) to come to be seen as shared exemplars of what counts as ‘good work’ or accepted work in the emerging area. (…) To the extent that others come to agree or propose other exemplars (…) the area emerges.” (JG, p.44)                                >> market idea (JG, p.45)

“… we could create ‘play exemplars’ that we could use as tools for thought and debate.” (JG, p.45)                 > play exemplars = “proposals about what an exemplar might look like.” (JG, p.49)

“In a worked example, an ‘expert’ takes a well-formed problem and publically displays for learners how that problem is approached, thought about, worked over, and solved.” (JG, p. 46)    > symmetrie: Roger Schank’s Think Machine http://www.rogerschank.com/

> exemplify the conventions of a discipline “The worked example is meant to model for newcomers how an expert thinks, values, and acts in a given and well established domain. In turn, newcomers can then try this and perhaps eventually find novel ways to solve problems in the domain as they ‘play’ with various modeled approaches, because the model also can serve as a reference point from which to try variations.” (JG, p.46)                 > teaching devices (for novices) (JG, p.47)

Exemplars become worked examples: “… for experts trying to build a new area in which there were as yet, in fact, no real experts.” (ibid.) “This public debate ultimately would become a sort of communal public working of the example.” (JG, p.49)