Tara E. Van Geons South Stanly High School Norwood, North Carolina

1. Conceptualizing a Social Vision and Social Justice in the English Language Arts Classroom through Technology CompositionNCETA ConferenceNovember 2007Charlotte, NC Tara E. Van Geons South Stanly High School Norwood, North Carolina MAT Research – University of North Carolina at Charlotte May 2007

2. How it began… • Students choose topics and ask focused questions that they wish to explore more as an extension project of the memoir Night. • Students will conduct in depth research in a variety of mediums. • Students then create and compose (in pairs) hypermedia a technology composition webpage which reflects their learning of their chosen topic.

3. The Research Question • How do students in this rural setting conceptualize their understanding of a social vision and social justice through the use of technology and technology composition?

4. Purpose • This study examines rural high school students and their conceptualization of a social vision and social justice through a hypermedia webpage composition project.

5. How was it done??? • Methodology- Participatory Action Research • Design- a non-experimental, naturalistic, participatory action research design utilizing interviews with students and archival data. Interviews will be semi-structured in a think-aloud format.

6. This research studied the cognitive, or metacognitive, ways in which students examine their own learning

7. Several themes emerged: • Conceptualizing through multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983) and multiliteracies (Hull & Nelson, 2005) such as: • Co-creating knowledge, • audio-visual language, • kinesthetic and interactive text, • the conceptualization of a social vision and social justice through the composition of original text, • and cognitive competence in conceptual evaluation and synthesis of their given research topic.

8. Implications… • Rethinking classroom pedagogy is at the heart of this research. • If students are learning best through the co-creation of knowledge with their peers, through audio and visual language, and the use of kinesthetic and interactive text, especially in creating their own composition, then the days of “podium” teaching are over.

9. I teach, you sit there and learn! • The idea that a student should sit in her seat and work individually in order to conceptualize her own learning is ultimately dismantled. • Given the opportunity to work together, uncover information that became relevant to them, and create an original composition, students internalized their understanding of the given topics- that of a social vision and various issues regarding social justice.

10. “Podium Teaching” and Digital divide issues… • The use of audio-visual text as well as interactive text does not always seem to have a place in podium teaching. • Yet, due to the digital divide, many rural schools do not have access to these types of texts.

11. But the research speaks for itself… • Students conceptualize greater understanding through the use of audio-visual text and through the opportunity to physically, kinesthetically, interact with the text as well as to compose their own creation.

12. For the interviewed students • Not only was it important to hear the material, see the material, and interact with the material, when given the opportunity, these students conceptualized their learning through actual composition of their own text. • They were given a voice in the realm of the World Wide Web, thus… • They had an authentic audience and • attempted to present their information genuinely, reflecting what they had learned.

13. Students had to • Research the information, • Cognitively organize, sort, and reassemble their knowledge, and • Effectively compose a text which would be viewed and understood by others. • BTW- many NCDPI standards addressed…

14. These students were studying profound issues dealing with social justice, and their concepts of a social vision for themselves began to challenge what they have been taught growing up in this small town.

15. What the students said… • “And um it kinda makes me aware that not everyone does things like us. And that not everyone needs to be the same. …but we at least need to come to some understanding.”- Annah • Jodi discussed her understanding of having a social vision “outside of [her] little town” while Liza synthesized and evaluated her learning in terms of personal feelings: “I just know that it makes me think a lot more into how we are treating people in this world. And I actually spent a lot of time crying when we made this [web page].”

16. Holly made references to the fact that “there is a lot of stuff going on in the world that [she has] no clue about” while Ashley said repeatedly: “Why…aren’t [we] doing anything now about Tibet and Darfur?”

17. The project itself • Time consuming (approx. 2 weeks) with the teaching of the various technology programs, construction, presentation, and extensive conversations which resulted about the issues at hand. • Use Geocities, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Office, or FrontPage

25. Implications for pedagogy • Integrating technology into the classroom does not have to be this time-consuming. • Having students work with audio-visual language and interact kinesthetically with text can be critical in students’ conceptualization of what is being taught and appeals to the current age of technology in which many students are savvy. • Students’ social construction of knowledge and understanding the context in which they derive can greatly impact their synthesis and evaluation of their learning.

26. Teachers must: • discover ways to reach students, • aid students in the synthesis and evaluation levels of their own learning, • and recognize that pedagogy must reflect the needs of the students.

27. Co-creation of knowledge (social construction), audio-visual language, kinesthetic and interactive text, composition of authentic text, and understanding of context in reference to synthesis and evaluation are critical in students’ conceptualization of knowledge. • Through the understanding of students’ conceptualization process, countless educators can truly teach for life-long learning.

28. Contact info • Tara E. Van Geons • Tara_VanGeons@yahoo.com • www.geocities.com/tara_vangeons • www.taravangeons.com