Turner. (Ed.) (2013). Access, Readiness, and the Ethical Imperative of Advocacy. The Ethics of Digital Literacy (pp. 12-18). Lanham M.D. Rowman & Littlefield.
Summary: This chapter talks about how teachers can address the unequal access to technology in schools through teaching digital literacy. Turner provides the reader with a scenario in which a teacher in an urban setting navigates teaching her students digital literacy skills with the limited access to technology provided by the school. The teacher designs a project where her students are to create a public service announcement on a school or community issue they care about using different video-editing apps on their their cellphones. In order to get permission for the students to bring and use their cellphones in class, she had to advocate for them directly to the principal, presenting the entire plan of action and rationale, which is approved.
The teacher has the students examine analyze “mentor texts” and examples of PSAs before creating their own in order to scaffold their learning and set them up for effective use of the media. The turning point in the scenario happens when the teacher allows the students to lead their own learning in discovering how to use the technology and edit their videos because she realizes that she is not the expert in this field. The students also had to write a reflection on their PSA and the experience, using argumentation, evidence, and MLA citations. The project ended up engaging students who usually showed little interest in English class because it asked them to speak on something they were passionate about. The learning was dynamic rather than laborious (snapshot).
Turner highlights the qualities this teacher displays when being an advocate for her students, such as never assuming that they have at-home access to technology to complete assignments. She accounted for every aspect of technology required for the project. Turner pulls key questions when advocating, which ask how the technology is necessary to develop the skills needed for students to reach certain goals, and how the school can help the students achieve these goals through supports or supplements. Knowing these answers are imperative to being able to advocate for your students and get results (advocacy).
Turner then describes the way the teacher discovered empowerment through relinquishing control and admitting that she didn’t have all the answers for how to use the technology. The students were able to collaborate and figure it out on their own. This taught her that rather than worrying about being an expert at all aspects of a digital assignment, she just has to effectively facilitate a space where students can become masters of different technological tools through ethical use and discovery, which builds digital literacy in and of itself (empowerment).
Reaction:
This chapter really helped provide one example of an answer to my question about how to be an advocate from the previous citation by Wilson. I got a concrete example of the process involved in finding an equitable solution by creating a well-thought out and rationalized plan of action to present to the principal for approval. It centers around students being the priority, rather than administration convenience and complacency. I hope to connect this chapter to the piece by Ethan Chang as well, because it is a classroom version of what InnovateEquity was doing in Oakland, creating equitable solutions through representation and advocacy. I also learned what calling a school “Title 1” means because it was used in this article… although I had to look it up. It means that at least 40% of the students in the school are in poverty and the school receives federal funds linked to raising test scores, retention, graduation, and attendance.
CPM200 