I chose to start my blog this week with the above quotation from Maher's article, Categories of Sex and Gender: Either/Or, Both/And, and Neither/Nor because I think it nicely ties together week 6's discussion of Video Games/Technology readings and this weeks discussion about gender issues in literacy.
For week 6 we were asked to break each article down into six words. I've decided to share my six words.
1. Fair Learning Opportunities Produce Fair Assessments
2. New Capitalism Impacts Equality in Schools
3. Video Games: Not Just Mind Numbing!
4. Digital Literacy: Future Success for Students
5. Technology impacts literacy positively for students.
The readings from last week pointed out video games in today's youth. "This game -- and this turned out to be true of video games more generally -- requires the player to learn and think in ways in which I am not adept. Suddenly all my baby-boomer ways of learning and thinking, for which I had heretofore received ample rewards, did not work," (Gee, 2003, p.1). Video games have more to offer than mindless dribble to children. As an educator, I find myself competing against technology to captivate my students attention. Perhaps it is time to incorporate these new literacies into our teaching.
"In my more cynical moments I have often envisioned culture and its influence on our construction of identities as a giant wave. Try as we might to resist, the wave is going to pick everyone up and carry us all along in the same direction. Swimming against it ends in exhaustion. The only choice is to swim with the wave and try to lang somewhere safe," (Williams, 2007, p.300).
Some of this weeks readings looked at the specific content that our students are interested in. Williams article, Boys may be boys, but do they have to read and write that way? she examined the boys and violence. "The underlying fear is that boys cannot distinguish between the violence in a story and the violence in real life, or that they are unable to process imaginative work but instead absorb it and are molded by it without thinking," (Williams, 2004, p.512). It is important that we allow our students to write about what interests them. By limiting our children's creativity and critiquing their interests we are stifling their desire to write. Along the same line, by not choosing pieces of literature that are intriguing to our students we are losing them in stories that don't connect with their lives. I recall reading many stories throughout my middle school and high school careers that were geared more towards the males. The protagonists of these stories were mostly men. Even though these pieces of work were interesting, I had trouble making connections between my life and the characters in the book. We need to promote reading and writing in our students by letting them channel both their interests and these new literacies in school. "The teachers who encourage writing without regard to subject matter are the ones who are able to see that boys are using literacy practices when they seek out websites about video games or argue over the plot of a movie or television program," (Williams, 2004, p.514).
To wrap up this blog I'm going to share the music video to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way".
I've included this video because of the article Categories of Sex and Gender: Either/Or, Both/And, and Neither/Nor. "To transgress the boundaries, valued so strongly by society, is to begin to undo violence and oppression and the regulation and control of those identities. These transgressions are a "step outside," and therefore an attack on the power held by those who conform and police identity boundaries," (Hill, 2000, p.31). I believe this video makes a great stand for gender identity and being okay in the skin you were born in.
Another video that supports the ideas in Hill's article is Michael Jackson's video, "Black and White." Gender, like many things in this world are not black any white. There are many gray areas that society does not seem to accept.
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