Follow the Fossils

The ability for people to connect, learn, and communicate about science has been enhanced through the Internet, specifically through social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter are well-studied, while Instagram is understudied. This Element provides insight into using Instagram as a science education platform by pioneering a set of calculated metrics, using a paleontology-focused account as a case study. Framed by the theory of affinity spaces, the authors conducted year-long analyses of 455 posts and 139 stories that were created as part of an informal science learning project. They found that team activity updates and posts outside of their other categories perform better than their defined categories. For Instagram stories, the data show that fewer slides per story hold viewers' attention longer, and stories using the poll tool garnered the most interaction. This Element provides a baseline to assess the success of Instagram content for science communicators and natural science institutions.

Instagram as a Special Educator Professional Development Tool: A Guide to Teachergram

Instagram is a free, online social media application that facilitates social networking. Since Instagram is image dependent, educators create visuals accompanied by captions of up to 2,200 characters. By adding specific hashtags to captions, educator posts are curated by the algorithm into a broad community of practice, colloquially known as “Teachergram.” As a technology-facilitated PD tool, Teachergram lends itself to many of the characteristics of high quality and sustainable professional development (PD). In this paper, we focus on how Instagram can be used as a PD tool that supports collaboration, reflection, and feedback loops of educators. We focus on how the unique characteristics of Teachergram lead to the creation of communities and affinity spaces, aligned with existing PD frameworks, built to support the retention of special education teachers and related service providers.

Knowledge sharing discourse types used by key actors in online affinity spaces

Purpose The growth of online social network sites and their conceptualization as affinity spaces makes them well suited for exploring how individuals share knowledge and practices around specific interests or affinities. The purpose of this study is to extend what is known about highly active/key actors in online affinity spaces, especially the ways in which they sustain and contribute to knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzed 514 discussion posts gathered from an online affinity space on disease management. This study used a variety of methods to answer the research questions: the authors used discourse analyses to examine the conversations in the online affinity space, social network analyses to identify the structure of participation in the space and association rule mining and sentiment analysis to identify co-occurrence of discourse codes and sentiment of the discussions. Findings The results indicate that the quality and type of discourse varies considerably between key and other actors. Key actors’ discourse in the network serves to elaborate on and explain ideas and concepts, whereas other actors provide a more supportive role and engage primarily in storytelling. Originality/value This work extends what is known about informal mentoring and the role of key actors within affinity spaces by identifying specific discourse types and types of knowledge sharing that are characteristic of key actors. Also, this study provides an example of the use of a combination of rule mining association and sentiment analysis to characterize the nature of the affinity space.

Context, cosplay, and (re)configurations: Centering the geek at the heart of science fiction pedagogy

The course "Science Fiction: Humanity, Technology, the Present, the Future" uses fandom as a motivator for pedagogical development, promoting participation and engagement by encouraging students to embrace their fan passions. In classroom discussions, website commentary, Geek of the Week presentations, and a final prototype project where science fiction texts are reimagined as nonlinear user-driven experiences, students are given a role in shaping the content and trajectory of the course. Two perspectives are provided, one from a professor and one from a former student, on the course, its syllabus and assignments, and the ways in which the students' participation in fandom helps influence the hierarchies, balance, and flow of the course. By exploring new approaches to course development and more democratic classroom experiences through concepts such as affinity spaces, participatory culture, and design thinking, the course proposes a fan pedagogy that best contextualizes science fiction as a genre, field, and space for cultural commentary.

Gaming the System

This chapter highlights the potential and practical application of CALL and specifically the use of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) for the language and identity socialization of transnational students. The authors focus on the educational trajectories of 1) children returnees and 2) international migrants who have lived and attended school in the U.S. and now have been uprooted to Mexico as a result of repatriation and/or deportation. The authors advocate creating blended affinity spaces at schools where youth can meet and play digital role-playing games. Game-ecology literacy development within these spaces is detailed through the sharing of game screen shots, blog posts, and the perspectives of transnational students that support this kind of learning within the EFL environment. The chapter concludes with a “call to action” and steps for educators to create such blended affinity spaces for gaming at schools.

Space Exploration: Approaches to Inhabiting Digital Spaces and Their Influence on Education

What happens when we go online, interact and leave our digital footprints? What is the nature of the online spaces that teachers and their students inhabit and the implications of being in these spaces? In this article we have explored these questions by following the theoretical inspirations by James Paul Gee about affinity spaces and Martin Heidegger’s notions on dwelling. The article interweaves its argument with examples from several research projects to argue that online environments allow for opportunities to play and personalize, to be creative, and that these forms of expressions are an interplay of social and technical elements. While the control within digital spaces is not transparent, we contend that there are opportunities for the user to exert influence on and within digital spaces, and to transform them in varying ways and scope. Sometimes those spaces facilitate autonomy and self-selection, which in turn initiates or confirms transformation. With the growth and increased sophistication of virtual realities and artificial intelligence, we need to understand the nature of the educational engagement within these spaces. We also need to understand this mutually influencial engagement between the user and these digital spaces, and be vigilant as to who might be exerting the most influential control.

Applications of Affinity Space Characteristics in Music Education

Affinity spaces are the physical, virtual, or combination of locations where people come together around a shared affinity (interest) (Duncan & Hayes, 2012). Online affinity spaces can act as a participatory hub for music making and learning through social networking and sharing. Although music affinity spaces exist in myriad informal spaces, little scholarship explores potential applications of affinity space characteristics within formalized learning spaces. This chapter introduces characteristics of an affinity space and questions the role of the framework in relation to another framework commonly used in online music learning communities: communities of practice. This chapter concludes with a discussion on practical and theoretical applications of affinity space characteristics within formalized educational contexts.

Students’ discursive moves in two distinct literacy modes: Comparing approaches in a grade 10 English classroom

This exploratory sociolinguistic study examined D/discourses and writing modes in a Grade 10 English literature classroom wherein students answered literature-based questions by means of both traditional and new literacies approaches. Studies conducted at the intersection of classroom instruction and online affinity spaces are still surprisingly under-reported in the academic literature; thus, the purpose of this small study was to contribute to new literacies studies research within classroom contexts by examining what happened when students responded to teacher-given prompts in two distinct modes: a traditional, essay-style response and a live, backchannel chat. This study compared the language use and some of the discursive moves that students made when composing written answers via both modes in order to provide insights for educators who may seek to use new literacies in their classrooms. Findings add to the discussion about what I see as the self-limiting aspects of traditional essayist-literacy (i.e. Academic English) favored by schools and the benefits of socially constructed literacy events facilitated by classroom-based online affinity spaces. Interestingly, findings suggest that this is not an either-or dichotomy, but that students in this study seemed to co-construct their literary analysis in the liminal space between Academic English and online chat discourse.

MULTILITERACIES AND LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES IN CONTEMPORARY FANFIC LITERACY PRACTICES

ABSTRACT Using the lens of Street (1984; [1995]2014; 2003; 2010; 2012), this article firstly aims at discussing the contemporary literacy practices young readers and writers of fanfics engage in when inserted in the affinity spaces of fan literature. This discussion is based on the concept of ideological literacy proposed by the author and dialogues with the concept of multiliteracies, outlined by the New London Group (CAZDEN; COPE et al, 1996) and expanded by several authors such as Cope; Kalantzis (2000), Gee (2000), Rojo (2012) and Kleiman; Sito (2016), among others. These contemporary literacy practices, understood, therefore, as the social use of language, were studied from an ethnographic perspective (HEATH; STREET, 2008). Data was generated from the field observation on two fanfic self-publishing platforms and from literacy events occurring in rounds of conversation, within the scope of the Junior Scientific Initiation Project. (PICJr-049), promoted by a traditional federal institution of basic education in Rio de Janeiro. The social models of literacy used by participants in literacy events (HEATH, 1982; STREET, 2012) signals that designs are (re)shaped according to the interactional context of these participants. This article also proposes a reflection on the language ideologies underlying the discourse of the students participating in the PICJr-049. This analysis is oriented by Volóchinov’s concept of ideology ([1929]2017) and the notion of language ideology, as discussed in the studies by Woolard (1998) and Kroskrity (2004). In the analysis, it was observed that the students reinforce language ideologies anchored in the legitimation of the educated norm of the Portuguese language and in the privilege of literary canons in school literacy practices.