TECHNOLOGY SUPPLANTS CURRICULUM – SEMINAR SUMMARY

My partner and I chose to look at the introductions of the Science and Technology and the Media Literacy expectation of the Ontario Curriculum in relation to the two articles we had to read for the week as well as past reading we were responsible for. We split the two readings up between us and I was responsible for looking for connections to the Buckingham reading: Buckingham, D. 2003. “Media education and the end of the critical consumer.” Harvard Educational Review, 73:3, 309-327. I have had to read the documents in the past, however I have limited myself to just the expectation which required me to plan lessons, thus I was intrigued by the rhetoric found in the introduction of the document. Immediately I made associations with readings I have done for course work specifically Ursula Franklin. I came up with the following questions for the discussion:

1. Link the language used in the Science and Technology curriculum document with readings we have done in class to date with examples.


2. Under the section planning student programs the document emphasis integration and collaboration between subject areas, discuss how you might achieve this and why do you think all subjects are not automatically intercurricularly taught.


3. Buckingham writes that “younger children are now coming to be seen as a powerful consumer group in their own right…[and they] gain access to media aimed at adults more readily than their parents did as children.” In light of this do you think the overall media literacy expectations sufficiently prepare
   children to deal with the messages they encounter?


4. Keeping the curriculum dictates “whenever appropriate, students should be encouraged to use ICT to support and communicate their learning…[and] digital cameras and projectors to design and present the results of their research,” discuss both the positive and negative implication of students as producers.

I’m not sure if the questions were not clear or if the group needed to warm-up, but I found that the discussion started off a little slow. However, once we focused specifically on the first quest of language in more depth it picked up. The other three questions did not garner the answers I was expecting or as much discussion as the first question. I think in the future I will take a page from my partner’s book and be more specific by either referring to particular quotes or pages which discussants can turn or refer to in order to refresh their memories.