Digital Literacies and 911

*This post is about something that was pretty scary, and the ending isn't necessarily happy. I'm not graphic about it, but I wanted to give people a heads up.

Last night, I was leaving a meeting, looking at the train schedules on my phone. One of my friends shouted, "Bethany! Call 911." I heard a gasp and looked up. A woman had fallen on the ground, and she was having a seizure.

I called 911. We were on a busy street, and it was hard to hear the operator. Was the victim conscious? No. Was the victim breathing? Yes. Was the victim garble-garble? What? Was the victim garble-garble? I can't hear you! Keep the victim garble-garble. Don't garble-garble. I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

The operator hung up.

I stared at my phone. The operator had hung up. Brain didn't compute. Hurt person on ground. Help person. Cover person. Comfort person. Where ambulance?

I looked up. There was a huge crowd of people, and every single one of them was calling 911.

The ambulance came a few moments later, and the paramedics took over.

How does this incident speak to digital literacies? There's an article I really like, Vasudevan (2010), that considers the affordances of portable technologies like  MP3 players, handheld video game players, and cell phones in relationship to literacy. Vasudevan writes, ". . .the value of these technologies is underrepresented in studies focusing on the intersections of literacies and technologies in the lives of youth who . . . are perceived to be on the margins of educational discourses" (p. 67).

For me, in an emergency, instinct takes over. I called 911 because someone told me to, not because I was actively engaging in digital literacy. Looking at the way the group operated, though, I see connections between digital literacies and the emergency.

Apparently, in Philly, there's a belief that ambulances take a long time, and sometimes they don't come. I can't say if that's true or not. What I know is, the people in the group believed it, and I heard a lot of comments like: "They come when a lot of people call," "The call dropped? Call them back," and, "Do you have a phone? You call 911, too." What I saw from that group of people in relation to portable technologies was an accessing of a shared belief (that 911 calls are more effective when multiple), a feeling of agency (that their phone calls would affect the speed of the response), human contact (working together to execute a plan), and digital literacy (in the sense that responders were using technologies to communicate rather than in the sense that they were using technologies to communicate through symbols like writing . . . that's an entire paper, though, so I'm not going to go into it).

I know that there are both problems and affordances related to cell phones, but last night I was really glad that we all had phones.

I hope that the woman who had the seizure is okay.

(PS I have a feeling that multiple calls to 911 could clog up the system, and I'm sure that some people will question that the group acted together to make multiple calls. I want to emphasize that the woman was in critical condition, the first call to 911 resulted in a hang-up, and an ambulance - with lights on - drove past while we were trying to get help)

Reference:
Vasudevan, L. (2010). Education remix: New media, literacies, and the emerging digital geographies. Digital Culture & Education. 2:1, 62-82

Snow Day Science

When I first started teaching, I taught at a preschool founded on Reggio Emilia theories. My mentor had an amazing way of considering children's interests and merging them with science and art . . . I'm pretty sure that this came from her. 

Today, my son, Arden, had a snow day. We spent the morning sledding, but in the afternoon, the snow had turned to rain. It was too rainy to go outside, and he still wanted to play in the snow. Taking my lead from Reggio Emilia theories, I considered his interests - touching snow, scooping, and measuring - and we did this experiment.

First, I went outside and grabbed a bowlful of snow:

Arden measured and scooped the snow into bags:

I held the bags open while he put colors into them. In this one, he mixed blue and yellow.
I asked, "What color do you think blue and yellow will make?"
He said, "Brown."
I said, "Let's see if your prediction is right."

We sealed up the bag, and he mashed up the snow. When he saw that the snow was green, he shouted, "Yellow and blue make green!"
I was pretty psyched.
We repeated the experiment with yellow and red and then red and blue. When we were done, we laid out all the bags in rainbow order.

After making all our colored bags of snow, we put the extra snow in the sink.
I asked, "What's going to happen to the snow?"
He said, "It water."
I asked, "So snow is water?"
"Yes," he said. "It cold."
I said, "That's called a phase change. Water can be liquid, solid, or vapor, like steam."
He said, "Phase change?"
I don't think he really got the idea of liquid, solid, or vapor, but he understood that snow was cold water, so I left it at that for today.

Arden especially enjoyed flinging the snow under the faucet.

The connection between Reggio Emilia theories - following student interests to develop a deep understanding of concepts - relates to digital media ideas like the Maker Movement, Connected Learning, and Participatory Cultures (Jenkins et al., 2006) in that playing and exploring are considered to be valuable parts of the learning process. This often makes learning incredibly messy (for example, explaining to Arden that the food coloring wasn't going to come off his hands right away didn't go so well, he was only interested in the project while he was measuring and smashing, and the only color he was truly interested in making was brown, even though I was convinced that making a full rainbow was VERY important), but when he  shouted, "Blue and yellow make green!" and explained that snow was water, he was both messing around and learning key scientific ideas.

Also, it was a heck of a lot more fun than staring out the window and wishing we could go sledding some more.

References

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the challenge of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st Century. Retrieved from The John T. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF.

Hidden History, Moonstone Arts, and Why I Love Writing in Groups

Saturday was the Charlotte Forten Writing Workshop (put on by the Philadelphia Writing Project, NMAJH, and Moonstone Arts).

When I was young, I thought that the reason there weren't any women in history books (other than in special block sections proclaiming that they were, in fact, important) was because women really hadn't done anything important.

That is not a lie. That was hegemony in practice*.

That might be why I love Moonstone Arts's Hidden History series. It's an opportunity to learn about people who don't make it into the history books or who only get a special block section.

The workshop on Saturday brought together students, teachers, parents, grandparents, actors, and scholars. Elijah Pringle, Jonathan Steadman, and Bethlehem presented Charlotte Forten's journal entries by having Jonathan act as interviewer and Bethlehem play the role of Charlotte Forten reading from her journal. At every 'commercial break,' Elijah gave students a writing prompt that related to the journal entry. At the end of each break, we shared what we wrote.

Charlotte Forten was an abolitionist, educator, member of Port Royal Experiment, Philadelphian, and writer. Her journals (where she casually mentions meeting Colonel Robert Shaw) provide a first-hand account of living before, during, and after the civil war.

This photo is of Bethlehem playing the role of Charlotte Forten as she read Forten's 6/2/1854 response to the decision against Anthony Burns:

And if resistance is offered to this outrage, these soldiers are to shoot down American citizens without mercy; and this by the express orders of a government which proudly boasts of being the freese in the world; this on the very soil where the Revolution of 1776 began; in sight of the battle-field, where thousands of brave men fought and died in opposing British Tyranny, which was nothing compared with the American oppression to-day. I can write no more. A cloud seems hanging over me, over all our persecuted race, which nothing can dispel.

The writing prompt we used with this was, "What do you witness in the world around you? How do you feel about it? Write a journal entry about something you have seen that stirred your emotions."

Throughout the workshop, the writing ranged from poignant to silly, and each time someone shared her writing, I was reminded of why I love writing in groups: because everyone can be inspired by the same passage, and there's something amazing about the differences in people's responses.

At the end of the workshop, everyone got free admission to the museum. That was when I saw this book. I cannot tell you how happy I am that there's a book called My First Kafka. Sigh. Love post-modernism when it does things like this.

Although this post is way, way too long, I'm going to put in links to two videos made by participants in the NMAJH Story Corps booth. You have to link through the captions because Blogger and Story Corps didn't want to format nicely together. 

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

What Does Freedom Mean to You?

At the end of the day: found this on a table tent. Thank YOU, Emilie and Pam, for participating!

If you're interested in getting a copy of the booklet that we gave to participants (because it's awesome), email larrymoonstoneartscenter.org to find out more. 

*Dave Baroody, I am aware that I have to put a quarter into the grad school jar now.