Semiotic Linguistic Quiz

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Saussure   Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

As of late, I (Cathy) have been exploring semiotic linguistics to further  my understanding of multimodality (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). Ferdinand de Saussure is considered to be one of two fathers of 20th century semiotic linguistics.  He described semiotics a as a system of signs that are created within a cultural context.  Sausuure defined a sign as being composed of:

        • a ‘signifier’ – the form which the sign takes; and
        • the ‘signified’ – the concept it represents.

On the internet I stumbled upon these diagrams which are intended to illustrate the meaning of signifier and signified.  Do you think they are both correct?

tree

rose

A multitude of communication resources

curriculum; teachers, education, literacy, Literacy teacher educators, research, Teacher education, teacher educators, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

cartoon_newliteracies

When I saw this comic it made me chuckle.  I enjoyed the comic’s gentle reminder that children/youth routinely engage with and expertly navigate a variety of communication tools. Clare and I (Lydia) conducted a two-year collaborative self-study of our efforts to incorporate various technological resources (e.g. a wiki) into our pre-service literacy methods courses. This research helped us identify both the challenges and successes we encountered along the way.  Our research efforts also made us more mindful of why we chose to incorporate certain technological resources into our pedagogical practice — questioning for what purpose and to what end.   Through the analysis of our efforts we realized that we had initially seen technology as an end in itself, not as a tool to support learning. In the second year of the study, we focused much more on student learning and became more systematic in our efforts. Over the two years of the study, our identities as teacher educators shifted as our pedagogies became richer, our use of technology more fully integrated into our literacy courses, and we received validation from others and from each other.

“The Secrets of Sugar”

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I (Pooja) watched an eye-opening documentary on CBC’s Fifth Estate. The documentary sugaruncovers some frightening facts about the effects of sugar and the sugar industry. Most of us are eating way too much sugar on a daily basis. Surprisingly, sugar is added in food items such as ketchup, yogurt, soy milk, and salad dressings. There was one alarming segment in particular in which I couldn’t help but think about the effect of sugar on children in school. Research was conducted on a sample of lab mice to observe how they reacted when their sugar consumption increased. The results were disturbing. Before any sugar consumption, the mice were alert and able to navigate through the set-up maze. However, as sugar consumption increased, their alertness levels decreased significantly. They moved sluggishly through the maze, bumping into the walls along the way. Some could not even make it to the end. This made me think so many of our young learners who consume high levels of sugar from their school cafeterias, vending machines, convenient stores, and/or home. Although in the past decade there has been a push towards healthier food for our school-aged children, there is a need for a deeper awareness around all the places where sugars are hidden.

Learn more about “The Secrets of Sugar” here:

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-secrets-of-sugar

Family Day

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In Ontario we have a public holiday called “Family Day”, a day in the depths of February where most adults have the day off from work and children stay home from school for the purpose of spending time together. It is a day meant for us to relax and enjoy the wonderful people in our lives.
In honour of Family Day, I (Yiola) would like to share an interesting and inclusive way of thinking about family from the perspective of a child.  This idea comes from the descriptive findings from my research project on critical literacy practices of elementary school teachers.  In the Grade two classroom students designed their autobiographies and published books called “Selfologies”.  The published books include a variety of literacy process and forms of writing including: interviewing family members, writing narratives, developing timelines, creating family trees to mention just a few.
Instead of a traditional family tree that is a chart representing the family structure, often with the child at the bottom of the tree and the space for the father on one side and the mother on the other, the teacher used something different.  The teacher recognized the traditional family tree chart normalized the nuclear family and left no space for all the wonderful family structures that exist. The teacher introduced a “family circle”.  This graphic organizer places the child at the centre of the page and bigger circles that include family members surround the child (see image below).  This way of organizing the concept of family changes the perspective and value we place on “what is a family” and “who is in a family”.  The family circle empowers the child to decide on their own who is in their closest inner circle. That may be siblings, two mothers, a grandparent, a family friend. By using a new and improved structure we are teaching students how to read the world differently. Family today is a broader and more inclusive term.

The first image is of the children designing their family circles.

Image Family YC

Family Circle

 

Can you understand what I am saying?

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In the New York Times on the weekend, Nicholas Kristof wrote a stinging criticism of academics. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-professors-we-need-you.html?ref=nicholasdkristof
He notes that when someone utters the phrase “That’s academic” it is a very loaded comment. That retort implies scholars are irrelevant. He quotes Anne-Marie Slaughter who observed that “disciplines have become more and more specialized and more and more quantitative, making them less and less accessible to the general public.” He feels that the PhD programs “have fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience.” Although I (Clare) found his comments a bit harsh there is something sobering about his analysis. Often I find myself reading a journal article on teacher education (my specialty) that I simply cannot understand. The jargon overwhelms the central points and the writing so turgid it is inaccessible. As academics our many masters (tenure review committees, funding agencies, journal reviewers) expect our work to sound “academic” so we are almost forced to employ an unnatural writing style. There is no easy solution. We may not be able to do anything in the short term but in the long-term I hope that our research can be used to inform general discourse about teacher education and public policy. Writing for different audiences is difficult but hey, we academics are quite smart. Let’s take up the challenge to make our work more accessible to many readers.

The Past – A Movie That Leaves You Wondering — What would I do?

Events, Reflections, ,

Movie Poster The Past

We (Clare and Clive) went to see the movie, The Past which has been called a “domestic drama with all the tension of a thriller.” It is the latest movie by Asghar Farhadi the Iranian director.The movie is fantastic because it is well directed, you can relate to the characters, it captures the complexity of life, shows how decisions we make are often based on incomplete information, and the story is captivating. The quality of the acting is good you cannot believe the actors are actually acting. Below is a summary of the story:
·      Coming back France to complete the divorce procedure, Ahmad an Iranian man, arrives in Paris after four years to meet his ex-wife and her daughters from her previous marriage. He notices his ex is in a relationship with an Arab named Samir who also has a son and a wife in a coma. The relationship of the older daughter and her mother is deteriorating because the daughter thinks her mother is the cause of Samir’s wife comatose state. The affairs get more complicated when the older daughter discloses something heinous she has done. From IMDB http://www.imdb.com/media/rm456776960/tt2404461?ref_=tt_ov_i#
·      For a full review of the movie go to the Globe and Mail link:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/film-reviews/the-past-domestic-drama-with-all-the-tension-of-a-thriller/article16435003/

·      Here is the linkfor a conversation with Asghar Farhadi who said, “All the films I’ve made … I have faith in.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/a-conversation-with-asghar-farhadi-all-the-films-ive-made-i-have-faith-in/article16467505/
By the way, Farhadi directed The Separation which won an academy award for best foreign film a few years ago.
If you are looking for a non-Hollywood movie which captures day-to-day life and leaves you wondering what you would do when faced with certain dilemmas, I would highly recommend The Past.

Multimodal Valentines

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I (Cathy) love special occasions.  Just give me a theme and I suddenly have an opportunity to be creative.  Lately, my outlet is a three dimensional mode of expression- cupcakes!  I can experiment with my designs using colour, texture, size, shape, and taste.  For my Valentine’s cupcakes, aside from the cake and icing choices, there were a multitude of affordances (decorative toppings) to choose from. For this dozen, I decided on a range of tastes and textures:  cinnamon heart candies, red and white jube jubes, tiny snowflake hearts, red sugar sprinkles, silver balls and message hearts.  Remember those tart tasting message hearts?  They say things like “hug me”, “I love you”, “kiss me”, and now there is one that says “text me”- so new literacies!  This is truly a multimodal sensory experience for me (the designer) and everyone that gets one (the receiver of my communication). I see this as a perfect example of my Western culture influences channeling through me to create a social semiotic representation of my caring.  But I won’t tell that to my husband.  All he will see a pretty cupcake that is “Mmmmm, delicious!”  And that’s fine too.  I am not sure if this is what Gunther Kress had in mind when he created the Centre for Multimodal Research, but it works for me.   Happy Valentine’s Day all!photo

Teachers’ Broad Conception of Their Role after Several Years

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I (Clive) have been working with Clare and Elizabeth on a paper on teacher identity, based on our longitudinal study of teachers. One thing we’ve noticed over the years is how broadly our teachers view their role.
Elizabeth has just developed a table showing what the teachers give priority to in their teaching. In spring 2012 (year 8 for cohort 1 and year 5 for cohort 2) we asked 39 of the teachers:
·      What do you think are the most important aspects of your role?
·      What are your main goals for your students?
The top 8 priorities in each case were as follows:
Most Important Aspects of My Role

Provide engaging lessons

18

Build a community, and a caring and safe environment

16

Develop a relationship with students

15

Be a role model

6

Involve parents

 

4

Teacher reflection and ongoing learning

 

4

Advocate for student needs

3

Foster strong literacy abilities in students

2

Most Important Goals for My Students

Social development

 

 

18

Love of learning

 

 

11

Development of self

 

 

11

Sense of community

 

 

10

Problem solving and critical thinking

 

 

6

Progress in learning

 

 

6

Literacy

 

 

6

Curiosity

 

 

4

Having such a broad role may appear burdensome for teachers. However, based on the teachers’ comments and our reading of authors such as Mary Kennedy and Nel Noddings, we argue that approaching teaching broadly is in fact more feasible and satisfying. Students are more engaged, understand more deeply, and develop across many aspects of their lives. And teachers are also enriched and find the daily interaction with students more enjoyable.

“Everything Changes When You Read”

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The Guardian published an edited version of a lecture Neil Gaiman delivered as part of the Reading Agency’s annual lecture series. In the lecture Gaiman makes an impassioned argument for the importance of libraries and the benefits of reading fiction.  He compellingly notes, “prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed”.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming?CMP=twt_gu

photo12