Rigor and Relevance: Digital Media Studies in an Urban High School by Cynthia Lewis, Cassandra Scharber, and Jessica Dockter
Cynthia Lewis is Professor of Critical Literacy and English Education at the University of Minnesota. Her current research focuses on the relationship between digital media practices, social identities, and learning in urban schools. Cynthia’s books include Literary Practices as Social Acts: Power, Status, and Cultural Norms in the Classroom and Reframing Sociocultural Research: Identity, Agency, and Power (with Patricia Enciso and Elizabeth Moje). Both books were awarded the Edward Fry book Award from the National Reading Conference. She is past Co-Chair of the Research Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English and has served on the executive board of the National Conference on Research on Language and Literacy.
Given persistent disparities in educational achievement and high school retention, there is an urgent need to understand processes that promote high school success in adolescents at risk for academic failure. An essential 21st Century skill set for all of our nation’s students includes the information and communication technology skills to allow for participation as creative and informed citizens as well as critical thinkers well versed in core subject area knowledge. In light of a pervasive digital divide, it is essential that schools provide the access, resources, knowledge, and skills that will allow all students to succeed academically in high school and beyond. Students from low-income households, who lack access to computers and the Internet in the home, need to acquire digital media practices in school.
Educators have the responsibility to provide all students with an education that encourages them to become creative and informed problem-solvers and citizens. Moreover, our increasingly visual and global culture means young people need to develop the capacity for critical citizenship so that they can “read” the linguistic, visual, and aural signs and symbols that inundate their lives, public and private. High-poverty urban schools rarely have the resources to provide a curriculum that will engage students and develop this capacity. The Digitial Media Program, known as DigMe, at Roosevelt High School, is a program that aims to do just that.
DigMe is a college-preparatory program in a diverse, high-poverty urban high school that uses evolving digital technologies to enhance learning in all subject areas. Developed as a partnership between the University of Minnesota and Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, DigMe taps the expertise of faculty and students from the University’s College of Education and Human Development, providing a new kind of learning community which gives students a chance to work with the kind of audio, video, and computer technologies that are shaping society. The DigMe Digital Media Program mission is to empower students to think critically, build meaning, and demonstrate their understanding across all subjects by applying college preparatory, project based learning using digital technologies.
DigMe teachers strive to build an engaging and challenging curriculum. All units in English/Language Arts, for instance, involve students in accessing multiple texts in multiple media genres, critically analyzing texts, engaging in dialogic discussions, and, finally, creating (visual art, essays, photography, audio diaries, films) sharing, and reflecting. Brief descriptions of a few of this year’s units speak to the rigor and relevance of DigMe.
Neighborhood Blog Project
In this interdisciplinary social studies and English unit, 9th graders studied their own and others’ neighborhoods in order to answer the following questions: “What is a neighborhood? How do neighborhoods change over time? How does the individual impact his/her neighborhood?” In the process, students wrote about their own neighborhood, interviewed adults about their neighborhood affiliations, read about neighborhoods in The House on Mango Street and Days of Rondo, and researched and evaluated issues facing their own neighborhoods with the use of digital mapping and databases. Students’ collected their work for the unit on blogs.
Photography Projects
In advance of creating a documentary film, students in an interdisciplinary English and Social Studies class were asked to take a series of photos that cohere around a unified theme. David Cruz Nava’s is about the working hands of immigrants from Mexico. He decided to use iMovie to create his project and wrote a script to accompany the photos.
Anti-Propaganda Project
After studying propaganda in advertising and politics, students were directed to use comic life and photobucket to create a propaganda poster of their own. Students needed to demonstrate their understanding of propaganda by choosing an issue they care about, deciding the statement they wish to make about the issue, and creating a poster using propaganda techniques and images to persuade an audience.
Corporation Wikis
For this unit, 11th and 12th graders researched and critiqued the ethical practices and violations of multinational corporations. Working in groups, students produced wikis to synthesize their findings and make recommendations to address the problems they identify. Each wiki contained the following parts: Introduction Page, Corporation Research, The Issues/Violations, Advertising/Marketing, and What’s Being Done?
Google Earth and Polygons (Geometry class)
In this assignment, students acted as city-planners using Google Earth and their knowledge of polygons to find the area and perimeter of well known places in Minneapolis and around the world.
Observations of DigMe classrooms revealed three key conditions that resulted in critical engagement in learning: (1) opportunity to critique institutions and media representations (2) desire to appeal to an audience; and (3) involvement in the aesthetic aspects of digital media production. All three of these conditions were dependent on other features of the classroom. For example, because students’ identity affiliations were engaged through classroom discussion and often central to class projects in English classes, students knew it was acceptable (and even desirable) to offer critical perspectives from their identity standpoints, most often related to race and ethnicity. Moreover, the teacher’s comfort level with technology tools allowed her to encourage students to experiment with the tools rather than follow detailed instructions. This, in turn, allowed students to get “in the flow” aesthetically, to immerse themselves in the technology and experiment with its visual and audio affordances. The classroom context shaped the conditions that emerged as salient, and all three conditions were dependent, as well, on an equal emphasis on the creation of media products as well as the analysis of media.
Analysis of interviews and focus groups has shown that students find the DigMe work to be intellectually challenging. They value the authentic audiences for their work (e.g. a film festival after completing a documentary film that is an interdisciplinary English/social studies project) and the feeling of competence they have when they accomplish their goals. Students also appreciate that DigMe projects allow them to connect their work to their identities, communities, and interests outside of school. In general, students indicate that they feel motivated to work hard beyond the requirements.
We have much work to do as we continue to refine the program and research its affects on student achievement, retention, and readiness for college. What is clear at this early stage is that the DigMe program engages students in this urban high school—many of whom have no access to computers outside of school-- because it pairs digital tools with intellectual challenge, authentic audiences, and a space for students to represent their identities and demonstrate competence.
