Listening as a Community

Active listening can sometimes be skill that teens and even adults have trouble acquiring. We all want to be heard but do we actually listen to others? In Campbell's article "The Power of the Listening Ear" there are various suggestions such as "planned discussions," using audiobooks or podcasts.

I worked a school program during the summer with 9th graders. I had them listen to two episodes of Sarah Koenig's podcast Serial and had them debate later whether they believed if Adnan Syed was responsible or not for the murder of Hae Min Lee. I was intrigued observing how well the students listened to the podcast and discovered details that I even missed. The article was correct when it wrote "Using audiobooks is not without its disadvantages, but with proper preparation and training they can be a wonderful tool for all students." Even with I the podcast project I did with the students I had to do pre-activities to get them engaged and prepare for the podcast.

In the other article "Digitalk as Community," I am glad that it proves the legitimacy of digitial communication or "digitalk." As communication evolves, as educators we should help students be able to use and analyze digitalk. The article states that "In the digital world adolescents choose the communities to which they belong... In school, however, this power to choose often does not exist, and tasks assigned have little value to teens beyond the assessment." In my personal experience in school, I found this to be true that many of the assignments I had were of little value. However, as an educator I want to change that but I know that will be difficult with the confinements of testing and school regulations. But I have seen that even assessments can have value for students when created and implemented correctly such a project/problem based learning assignments.

Reading both "Keeping It Current" and "Using Online Role-Play to Promote Collaborative Argument and Collective Action" was interesting seeing how using online games to teach about social issues and promote discussion. I never thought that "Games can invite more powerful understanding of emotional situation" but it makes sense because evokes powerful images and it forces the gamer to be placed inside the situation. I know that I will have to be more up to date with gaming because that is out of my comfort zone but I can see it as an engaging way to have students to not only see the world in a new way but to promote change.