Literacy is “the ability to communicate and
make meaning from the use of a variety of socially contextual symbols.” For my new literacies project I am focusing
on emotional literacy, which is one specific area of literacy. Emotional
literacy is the ability to identify, understand, and respond to one’s own
emotions as well as the emotions in others. Emotions are universal expressions
which can be used as a way to communicate meaning. Therefore this goes along with the definition
of literacy because emotions are a way to communicate and make meaning with
others. Although, emotions are not
always represented by a contextual symbol but rather as an internal feeling
which can sometimes be expressed through facial expressions and gestures.
Traditional literacies,
such as reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing, all play an
important role in achieving communication about one’s emotions. In order to demonstrate emotional literacy
children must be able to communicate their emotions to others through writing
or speaking, as well as respond to others emotions through listening and
viewing. The key is to have a strong
foundation in which children are able to openly communicate their emotions.
Emotional literacy has
always been an area of interest to me. Through research and readings I have
learned a lot about ways to promote emotional literacy in children. One method includes having adults openly
express their own emotions and model strategies to cope with extreme emotions. In addition, identifying children’s emotions
and teaching them the proper vocabulary to label what they are feeling is a way
to promote healthy emotional development in children. Activities such as playing games, singing
songs, and reading stories with emotional vocabulary words will support
children in identifying and understanding their emotions and the emotions in
others. One important thing that I
learned from research articles is that children with strong emotional literacy
skills present fewer problem behaviors and attain greater academic achievement
in school.
The curriculum at my
field placement doesn't focus on emotional literacy. This is a reflection of the overall school
system where the focus is mainly on academic achievement and not on emotional development.
Unfortunately, many of the issues in our society today are a result of individual’s
inability to properly identify, express, and interpret their emotions. Our goal in education is to produce intelligent,
capable, independent individuals who are ready to take on the responsibilities of
the real world. Emotional literacy is an essential component that needs to be emphasized
more in schools in order to produce emotional stable individuals.
The technology that my
group will use to present our new literacies project is One True Media, which
is a video creation website. As a teacher, slideshows/videos are a great way to
present content information to students as well as a way to present documentation
of student’s work over a period of time.
This can include documented worksheets, pictures, and videos of
individual students as well as whole class projects. Learning how to work the
One True Media will be very useful for future presentations when I am a
teacher. It is important for student’s
emotional development to have an opportunity to feel proud of the hard work
that they have done throughout the course of the year. Including documentation of all students work
in a video or slideshow will give each individual student the recognition that
they deserve.
There are many
features the One True Media offers that is helpful in creating a documentation
or presentation. One True Media incorporates
pictures, videos, and music into one multimedia presentation. This program allows you to individually edit
each clip or image to fit the needs of your video. One special feature that this website has is
that that is allows you to choose a “video style” for you presentation. There are many different styles available to
choose from including “preschool graduations”, “shapes”, and “scrapbook.”
Theses would all be appropriate choices for creating a classroom friendly
presentation. I like this feature because
it allows you to personalize your video and make it more appealing to the
audience. In addition, text can be added
to each clip or slide to help communicate ideas throughout the video. These features make it easy to create a detailed
video in a timely manner.
I think that this technology
will be a great medium to use to teach emotional literacy. Emotional literacy is a domain that is best
portrayed through images and music rather than just text. The features of One
True Media will allow us to express emotional literacy in a creative way by incorporating
examples through video clips. A video can easily capture an emotion, in ways
that words cannot. Feature of this
technology allow me to use traditional communication in a new way. For example, traditional listening includes
listening and interpreting speech, but this technology will involve listening
and interpreting music clips as well as video clips as a means of communication.
I would say the most challenging thing
about creating out presentation is choosing what images, videos, and music to
include. A picture can tell a thousand
words, and a video a million words. It
is very important to pick a clip or image that accurately portrays the idea
that we are trying to get across.
If the students in my
classroom were using this technology as a content reader they would need to
develop skills in interpreting multimedia videos. This means being able to connect the text, image,
and music together and construct meaning from them. This is an important skill for students to
learn because most technology involves multiple features. Ways to teach this skill can be showing the
children videos clips or movies and pointing out the different media sources,
such as the music in the background. You
could ask questions such, “What did the music make you think of?”, “Why do you
think it was included?, ect.
Overall, I am excited
to further explore emotional literacy and use One True Media to create a captivating
video for my colleagues to view.
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