Easter eggs and semiotic cues: embedded meaning as early adolescents engage in programming-as-writing

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Hagge
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Early Adolescent ◽  
Multimodal Composition ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Descriptive Case Study ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Easter Eggs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which early adolescent programmers embed meaning in their digital media created within an online programming community called Scratch. Design/methodology/approach The author completed an 18-month descriptive case study with 5 early adolescent participants. The research design included a multimodal analytic analysis of participant artifacts and inductive analysis of semi-structured interviews and transcription frames. Findings Participants embedded meaning to achieve four primary purposes, namely, to guide visitors through exhibits, to story, to engage in conversation and to game. To achieve each goal, the participants embedded unique semantic cues within specific Scratch structures. Research limitations/implications Questions for how researchers in literacy and learning can further explore meaning-making within programming-as-writing are suggested. Practical implications Connections to the supportive structures within Scratch are discussed in the context of programming-as-writing. Considerations regarding the use of Scratch to promote programming-as-writing are provided for educators. Originality/value The findings in this study provide an introductory step toward an enhanced understanding of the ways in which youth embed meaning into digital media as they engage in programming-as-writing. Although coding has been researched within the context of computer science, the use of coding in multimodal composition should be explored as it relates to literacy practices.

Critique and the video production classroom: providing students the skills to navigate new media literacies

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie Nixon
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Video Production ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Media Literacy ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate how teaching the discourse of critique, an integral part of the video production process, can be used to eliminate barriers for young people in gaining new media literacy skills helping more young people become producers rather than consumers of digital media. Design/methodology/approach This paper describes an instrumental qualitative case study (Stake, 2000) in two elective high school video production classrooms in the Midwestern region of the USA. The author conducted observations, video and audio recorded critique sessions, conducted semi-structured interviews and collected artifacts throughout production including storyboards, brainstorms and rough and final cuts of videos. Findings Throughout critique, young video producers used argumentation strategies to cocreate meaning, multiple methods of inquiry and questioning, critically evaluated feedback and synthesized their ideas and those of their peers to achieve their intended artistic vision. Young video producers used feedback in the following ways: incorporated feedback directly into their work, rejected and ignored feedback, or incorporated some element of the feedback in a way not originally intended. Originality/value This paper demonstrates how teaching the discourse of critique can be used to eliminate barriers for young people in gaining new media literacy skills. Educators can teach argumentation and inquiry strategies through using thinking guides that encourage active processing and through engaging near peer mentors. Classroom educators can integrate the arts-based practice of the pitch critique session to maximize the impact of peer-to-peer learning.

Pandemic meaning making: messing toward motet

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Beth Schaefer ◽  
Sandra Schamroth Abrams ◽  
Molly Kurpis ◽  
Charlotte Abrams ◽  
Madeline Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Research ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Content Type ◽  
At Home

Purpose In this child–parent research study, three adolescents theorize their meaning-making experiences while engaged in exclusive online learning during a three-month stay-at-home mandate. The purpose of this study is to highlight youth-created understandings about their literacy practices during COVID-19 in order to expand possibilities for youth-generated theory. Design/methodology/approach This child–parent research builds upon a critical dialectical pluralist (CDP) methodology, which is a participatory research method that looks to privilege the child as a co-researcher at every stage of the inquiry. In this research study, the adolescents work together to explore what it means to create and learn alone and then with others via virtual platforms. Research team discussions initially were scaffolded by the parent–researchers, and the adolescents developed their analyses individually and together, and their words and insights situate the findings and conclusions. Findings The musical form of a motet provides a metaphor that three adolescents used to theorize their meaning-making experiences during the stay-at-home order. The adolescents determined that time, frustration, and space were overarching themes that captured the essence of working alone, and then together, in messy, orchestrated online ensembles. Originality/value In this youth-centric research paper, three adolescents create understandings of their meaning-making experiences during the stay-at-home order and work together to determine personal and pedagogical implications.

Democracy, digitisation and public libraries

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Skøtt
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
National Library ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Media Types

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate what democratic challenges the digitisation of the public libraries in Denmark has entailed. Using the concepts from a national library professional strategy from 2012, an analysis of 9 librarians’ experiences with digital dissemination in practice is conducted. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a part of a larger research project called “If digitisation is the answer, then what was the question?”. This sub study builds on the semi-structured interviews with library staff members, case-descriptions of two central providers of digital public library materials, as well as literature studies of missions, vision and strategies from different public library policy institutions. To frame the study, a literature review has been conducted. Findings The author detects the presence of several incompatible conditions in digital dissemination. These conditions are predominantly of an organisational nature, potentially containing major consequences for citizens’ free and equal access to information, knowledge and culture. Among other things, the Danish public libraries risk substantiating an already existing and problematic polarisation between technologically capable and incapacitated groups of people. Originality/value The digital transformation of society has only just begun. Therefore, it is important to examine the consequences of the transition to digital media types for central cultural institution such as the public libraries. The present study is an early and minor contribution to the illumination of a process requiring many more and large-scale studies.

The quantified-self archive: documenting lives through self-tracking data

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 290-316
Author(s):  
Ciaran B. Trace ◽  
Yan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Small Data ◽  
Quantified Self ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Individual

Purpose The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which self-tracking data have meaning and value in and after the life of the creator, including how such data could become part of the larger historical record, curated in an institutional archive. In doing so, the article expands upon existing shared interests among researchers working in the areas of self-tracking, human–computer interaction and archival science. Design/methodology/approach A total of 18 people who had self-tracked for six months or more were recruited for the study. Participants completed a survey which gathered demographic data and characteristics vis-à-vis their self-tracking behavior. In-person semi-structured interviews were then conducted to ascertain the beliefs of the participants regarding the long-term use and value of personal quantified-self data. Findings The findings reveal the value that people place on self-tracking data, their thoughts on proper modes for accessing their archive once it moves from the private to the public space, and how to provide fidelity within the system such that their experiences are represented while also enabling meaning making on the part of subsequent users of the archive. Originality/value Today’s quantified-self data are generally embedded in systems that create a pipeline from the individual source to that of the corporate warehouse, bent on absorbing and extracting insight from a totality of big data. This article posits that new opportunities for knowing and for design can be revealed when a public interest rationale is appended to rich personalized collections of small data.

Multimodal Literacy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy A. Mills ◽  
Len Unsworth
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Literacy ◽  
Multimodal Texts ◽  
Making Meaning

Multimodal literacy is a term that originates in social semiotics, and refers to the study of language that combines two or more modes of meaning. The related term, multimodality, refers to the constitution of multiple modes in semiosis or meaning making. Modes are defined differently across schools of thought, and the classification of modes is somewhat contested. However, from a social semiotic approach, modes are the socially and culturally shaped resources or semiotic structure for making meaning. Specific examples of modes from a social semiotic perspective include speech, gesture, written language, music, mathematical notation, drawings, photographic images, or moving digital images. Language and literacy practices have always been multimodal, because communication requires attending to diverse kinds of meanings, whether of spoken or written words, visual images, gestures, posture, movement, sound, or silence. Yet, undeniably, the affordances of people-driven digital media and textual production have given rise to an exponential increase in the circulation of multimodal texts in networked digital environments. Multimodal text production has become a central part of everyday life for many people throughout the life course, and across cultures and societies. This has been enabled by the ease of producing and sharing digital images, music, video games, apps, and other digital media via the Internet and mobile technologies. The increasing significance of multimodal literacy for communication has led to a growing body of research and theory to address the differing potentials of modes and their intermodality for making meaning. The study of multimodal literacy learning in schools and society is an emergent field of research, which begins with the important recognition that reading and writing are rarely practiced as discrete skills, but are intimately connected to the use of multimodal texts, often in digital contexts of use. The implications of multimodal literacy for pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment in education is an expanding field of multimodal research. In addition, there is a growing attention to multimodal literacy practices that are practiced in informal social contexts, from early childhood to adolescence and adulthood, such as in homes, recreational sites, communities, and workplaces.

scholarly journals How Islamic are young Muslim people’s poems?

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Joke Dewilde
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Classroom Observations ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
Muslim People ◽  
Islamic Countries ◽  
Devotional Texts

In this article, I investigate poetry written by two young Muslim people during their spare time. Adopting Shahab Ahmed’s (2016) understanding of Islamic in its plenitude and complexity, I ask how Islamic their texts are. The participants, Neda and Mohammed (both pseudonyms), grew up in Islamic countries where they were socialised in faith literacy practices, including practices around sacred and devotional texts, before moving to Norway in their teens. The data used for this article were collected during two linguistic ethnographies and include poems written in and outside of school, fieldnotes from classroom observations and transcripts from multiple semi-structured interviews. The interview questions concerned their poems and writing in general as well as their observations about living as Muslims in Norway. Although their poems include few or no explicit Islamic references, the findings support an argument that an Islamic lens gives meaning to the poems in terms of Islam as they engage with rather different Islamic norms and discourses. Whereas Mohammed’s texts are characterised by more prescriptive discourses leaving little room for alternative interpretations, Neda’s texts contain more wonder and perplexity and are thus in line with non-prescriptive discourses. I conclude by arguing that 1) the meanings of the poems are enriched in terms of Islam by viewing them through an Islamic lens and that 2) schools should provide safe spaces for young Muslims to develop their meaning-making and writing.

Unfold studio: supporting critical literacies of text and code

2019 ◽  
Vol 120 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 285-307
Author(s):  
Chris Proctor ◽  
Paulo Blikstein
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Web Application ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Interactive Storytelling ◽  
Final Study ◽  
High School Classroom ◽  
K 12

PurposeThis research aims to explore how textual literacy and computational literacy can support each other and combine to create literacies with new critical possibilities. It describes the development of a Web application for interactive storytelling and analyzes how its use in a high-school classroom supported new rhetorical techniques and critical analysis of gender and race.Design/methodology/approachThree iterations of design-based research were used to develop a Web application for interactive storytelling, which combines writing with programming. A two-week study in a high-school sociology class was conducted to analyze how the Web application's textual and computational affordances support rhetorical strategies, which in turn support identity authorship and critical possibilities.FindingsThe results include a Web application for interactive storytelling and an analytical framework for analyzing how affordances of digital media can support literacy practices with unique critical possibilities. The final study showed how interactive stories can function as critical discourse models, simulations of social realities which support analysis of phenomena such as social positioning and the use of power.Originality/valuePrevious work has insufficiently spanned the fields of learning sciences and literacies, respectively emphasizing the mechanisms and the content of literacy practices. In focusing a design-based approach on critical awareness of identity, power and privilege, this research develops tools and theory for supporting critical computational literacies. This research envisions a literacy-based approach to K-12 computer science which could contribute to liberatory education.

Meaning making of mentorship for the tuition-free student

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceceilia Parnther ◽  
Daniel Collier
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
First Year ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
First Year College ◽  
Mentoring Practices ◽  
Orders Of Consciousness ◽  
First Year College Students

PurposeThe study aimed to explore how student recipients of a full-tuition scholarship envision, define and experience mentorship and the types of relationships they have and expect from mentors. The study adds to the growing body of literature on mentorship as supplemental support for college student success.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews of 20 first-year college students in the Mid-West United States were collected as a part of a more extensive mixed-methods study. The authors used a four-phase process to refine, derive meaning and develop themes. Kegan's orders of consciousness explain how students make meaning of mentorship.FindingsStudents described mentoring as a service that could provide specific transactional features. Ten participants were unable to acknowledge a mentoring relationship at all, despite describing mentoring experiences and opportunities. Students often align with Kegan's second order, which focuses on self and valuing transactional, short-term relationships. Adjusting approaches to explaining mentorship and the value of building relationships appear to be an opportunity for research and practice.Originality/valueThis study illustrates an apparent disconnect between the intent of mentorship and the experiences of mentees. The students' experiences add a valuable perspective that supports the need to further refine mentoring practices in meaningful ways to impact student success, persistence and retention.

Designing more just social futures or remixing the radical present?

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon M. Wargo
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Multimodal Composition ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Interviewing Techniques ◽  
Cultural Justice

Purpose Plugging into the multimodal aesthetics of youth lifestreaming, this article examines how three lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ) youths use digital media production as an activist practice toward cultural justice work. Focusing on the queer rhetorical dimensions of multimodal (counter)storytelling, the communicative practice used to (re)name, remix and challenge epistemic notions of objective reality, this paper aims to highlight how youth worked to (de)compose and (re)author multiple identities and social relationships across online/offline contexts. Design/methodology/approach Through sustained participant observation across online/offline contexts, active interviewing techniques and visual discourse analysis, this paper illuminates how composing with digital media was leveraged by three LGBTQ youths to navigate larger systems of inequality across a multi-year connective ethnographic study. Findings By highlighting how queer rhetorical arts were used as tools to surpass and navigate social fault lines created by difference, findings highlight how Jack, Andi and Gabe, three LGBTQ youths, used multimodal (counter)storytelling to comment, correct and compose being different. Speaking across the rhetorical dimensions of logos, pathos and ethos, the author contends that a queer rhetorics lens helped highlight how youth used the affordances of multimodal (counter)storytelling to lifestream versions of activist selves. Originality/value Reading LGBTQ youths’ lifestreaming as multimodal (counter)storytelling, this paper highlights how three youths use multimodal composition as entry points into remixing the radical present and participate in cultural justice work.

Health commodified, health communified: navigating digital consumptionscapes of well-being

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (11/12) ◽  
pp. 2054-2079 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Cavusoglu ◽  
Melike Demirbag-Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Digital Discourse ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Spiritual Well Being ◽  
Health And Well Being

Purpose Historically, research on perceptions of health either converged upon the meanings created and proposed by specialists in the healthcare industry or focused on people who have medical conditions. This approach has failed to capture how the meanings and notions of health have been evolving as medicine extends into non-medical spheres and has left gaps in the exploration of how the meanings surrounding health and well-being are constructed, negotiated and reproduced in lay discourse. This paper aims to fill this gap in the understanding of the perceptions surrounding health by investigating consumers’ digitized visual accounts on social media. Design/methodology/approach Textual network and visual content analyses of posts extracted from Instagram are used to derive conclusions on definitions of health and well-being as perceived by healthy lay individuals. Findings Research demonstrates that digital discourse of health is clustered around four F’s, namely, food, fitness, fashion and feelings, which can be categorized with respect to their degrees of representation on a commodification/communification versus bodily/spiritual well-being map. Originality/value Our knowledge about the meanings of health as constructed and reflected by healthy lay people is very limited and even more so about how these meaning-making processes is realized through digital media. This paper contributes to theory by integrating consumers’ meaning-making literature into health perceptions, as well as investigating the role of social networks in enabling a consumptionscape of well-being. Besides a methodological contribution of using social network analysis on textual data, this paper also provides valuable insights for policy-makers, communicators and professionals of health.

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