Assignment 2 - ICT and Indigenous Perspectives

The forthcoming National Curriculum favours an emphasis not only on the constructive use of ICT for learning, but also indigenous perspectives. I would like to discuss how I plan to integrate both of these into my practice as an English teacher.

Firstly, a word on the role of culture in society and the shaping of identity. Seana Moran, in 'Vygotsky and Creativity' says that "There is a tendency to relate to environments as if they were fixed or pre-determined, and to see people as 'being in', rather than creating the environment." (2010, p.201) Breaking down these assumptions is what I consider to be one of my fundamental roles as an English teacher. As a Melbourne school teacher, my class will be quite geographically and perhaps conceptually removed from the culture of many indigenous communities. Certainly, wealthier schools are able to go on excursions to learn of other cultures, but what about the rest of us?

Text selection will play a large role in the exploration of culture...

In addition to digital literacy, 21st Century English places a heightened emphasis on visual literacy and there are many digital-visual environments where students can learn about indigenous perspectives; the NGV has their collection online as well as further educational resources, and there are also video clips and websites about indigenous culture readily accessible to anyone.

I was lucky enough to undertake a teaching placement in the Anangu Lands of South Australia. Literacy levels in the school were extremely poor but I quickly realised that the students were really into photos and videos so I set them a task to capture what life was like in their community. See below:



I plan to use this video in my English classes in Melbourne. As a text, it provides a unique starting point for discussing the various aspects of life in this community, as well as analysis of what is valued - from the students' music choices to what they have visually captured. I would look to set my students a similar task to capture still and moving footage of their own lives, cultures and communities and put it together with Movie Maker or a similar program. Just as I would show the Indulkana (Anangu) sudents' video to my Melbourne class, I would send the Melbourne videos back to Indulkana for the teachers there to use as resources. As I am lucky enough to already have contact with an indigenous community school, I would look into creating penpals (emailing or blogs) between the classes. This will provide an engaging reason to practice literacy for the Indulkana students, as well as the Melbourne students (depending on their year level) to develop a wide array of skills depending on what I wanted to develop.

Connery, M. C., John-Steiner, V., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (Eds.). (2010). Vygotsky and creativity: A cultural-historical approach to play, meaning making, and the arts. New York, NY: Peter Lang. (Book)

Choose Your Own Adventure

I recently heard about an ICT approach that is surprisingly basic in terms of the technology being used, but has the potential to really engage students with learning and I can't wait to put it into practice.

Essentially, Choose Your Own Adventure is an English assessment task (for younger year levels) that uses power point to respond to a class text. After reading the novel/film, students must locate specific turning points within the story and speculate on what might have happened if the protagonist made different choices. Following a brainstorm, students can present their hypotheses in different power point slides, summarising the point in the story and then providing two options to proceed, before hyperlinking the two options to different slides. In this way, students are developing written and oral language (as they present the final power point to their classmates), expanding their ICT technical repertoire and being given a contextualised environment in which to develop skills in prediction and creativity.