Hey Everyone,
I wanted to briefly talk about “Digi-Pop: New Literacies Need New Learning” by Jabari Mahiri. I used Mahiri’s piece for my wiki, but I thought the article had some really great points to discuss. First, I think everyone should check out www.youthradio.org. This is a site that focuses on important issues for younger individuals with a hip-hop twist. The site recently focused on the election and allowed for members to blog their opinions about the candidates. The site also deals with controversial issues like racism, violence, and gender. Youth Radio allows for real people to express their opinions on real issues.
In Mahiri’s article he provides an example of how a class uses Youth Radio as a model for a Hip-Hop Journalism class. I think by using topics that are important to students allow them to become more engaged and creative. The new literacies used in the journalism class, such as Blogger, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro where not that new to the students. Students outside of school are already using new literacies. As the article states, “a lot of us already have raw talent that needs a little polishing” (Mahiri, 2008). Students can use these new literacies; it is the job of the teacher to implement them in the classroom in a way that is conducive to learning.
In order for teacher to be able to implement new literacies in the classroom, Mahiri stresses the importance of training and providing support for teachers. He has started a program called TEACH (Technology, Equity And Culture High-Schools), which is a group that helps teachers re-think and re-delivery their lessons to students for effective learning. It is essential for teachers to know or to learn with the students on how to use new media and literacies in the classroom.
The article defines youth and adult participation in teaching and learning with media and new literacies as collegial pedagogy. A few features of collegial pedagogy are youth leadership, joint framing, distributed accountability and mediated intervention (Mahiri, 2008). I believe it is worth using collegial pedagogy in the classroom and is something I would like to look further into.
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I was also inspired by the work Dr. Jabari Mahiri. I believe that teacher training is essential for finding ways for students to succeed in the classroom. By presenting and working with content in a way that is appealing to the students, we encourage them to participate and achieve. However, we need to be knowledgeable of their interests and their desired methods of acquiring information. A major necessity to reach students of the digital age is to teach the teachers to be twenty-first century learners. Once we are able to do what the students already know how to do, we will be ready to teach them.
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