In the first of Elizabeth Losh's Selfie Pedagogy blogs, we are introduced to the idea that selfies are worth studying in higher ed. and that the examination of selfies in higher education is not a new concept at all. It's just become more widely talked about because of scholars like Theresa Senft and Miriam Posner and the work of The Selfie Researchers Network. A link brings the reader to The Selfie Course, a six week class developed by academics from all over the world who are in the Selfie Researchers Network. The class covered topics such as "Branding & Celebrity", "Identity and Interpellation", and "Sexuality, Dating & Gender".
The next link to "Selfies, Snapchat and Distance Learning" focused on Radhika Gajjala and her use of Snapchat assignments in the classroom. Gajjala notes that there is a "strong community component" in the assignments, and that students "are sharing personal stories". It was interesting that she mentioned that her colleagues "fret" about academic records because the images can't be saved. By planning ahead and using other components, it shows that she has a strong understanding of the digital tools that she uses in the classroom, along with the limitations and affordances of tehse tools.
Miriam Posner from UCLA was also a focus of this blog post. Her course "Selfies, Snapchat, and Cyberbullies: Coming of Age Online", takes on the question, "How do we talk about generational difference without flattening diversity or ascribing supernatural power to technology". Week 3 in her course looks at "what does identity mean in an online context" and "why is teen online behavior so often misunderstood". Posner also mentions that student privacy should be a concern to those who plan to teach a selfie course.
In the second blog post, "Selfie Pedagogy II: Internet Identity and Selfie Practices", Alice E. Marwick is the focus. Losh mentions that it was Marwick who published The Selfie Course online so that it would be available to other educators. Marwick notes that she is interested in research surrounding identity and the internet, and "people's self presentation and self expression, and how it changes when they have access to the very large audiences online". She looks at strategic interactions to increase popularity and tries to figure out what practices lead to popularity.
Marwick was also asked about her role as a core member of the Selfie Researchers Network. She said that as educators, we don't always talk about pedagogical practices, but that the interactions in the network "marry our research interest with practical day to day of teaching in a really effective way". She also offers a few basic guidelines for others who may be interested in teaching a selfie class: 1) urge students to create new accounts for the class, 2) she highly recommends the use of a pseudonym or alias, and 3) look into the pros and cons of using commercial sites. She said, "it was difficult to find technologies that give us openness online".
"Selfie Pedagogy III: Networked Spaces, Slut Shaming and Putting Selfies in Dialog with Theory" focuses on Terri Senft and discusses her work with Camgirls. The Camgirls are equitable to the ways that girl's are practicing self-expression now. Senft notes that selfies can be used as objects of study to help liven media studies and to go against the feeling of detachment from the subject matter. This is definitely the case in situations like slut shaming, which led to the death of Amanda Todd, and political acts, like the response to the death of Sandra Bland. Senft points out that selfies can "humanize what's going on" and that selfies of the dead can have great political power because "they generate strange familiarity or strange intimacy".
Mark Marino is the focus of the fourth blog post, "Selfie Pedagogy IV: Diversity, Netprov and Service Learning". His course, "Selves and Selfies: Performing Identity Online" sounds incredibly interesting. The blog post continues by describing some of the assignments that Marino's students competed throughout the semester. In a "Know Thy Selfie" paper, students answered the question, "How do your selfies produce or obscure a sense of your identity?" They had to take or choose 5 selfies of themselves and examine the pictures for their performance of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexuality, and gender. They were instructed to look at clothing, pose, facial expression, lighting, and other elements in the picture. His students also created a "specular selfie" that represented them in a future moment.
In addition to these assignments, Marino's students also created Vine-length videos of themselves "unboxing" an abstract concept. (I looked up "unboxing" videos and I don't understand them at all. It was 12 minutes of kids unwrapping chocolate eggs...) The Netprovs that his students participated in looked really interesting as well. There was one that chronicled "giving up" technology while Tweeting about it, and the other one was about working for the Web. Marino calls the assignments "thought experiments".
Finally, Marino's students participated in a semester-long service project with the Neighborhood Academic Initiative for urban high school youth. The program was meant to help potential undergraduates (the high school students) with self-representation by assisting them in writing personal statements. Marino notes that the original selfies from the beginning of the semester provide an "opportunity to consider what it means to encounter someone with a different position of access to learning opportunities and higher education". Perhaps it even teaches the students "how they come off to somebody of a very different background".
I really enjoyed reading the four blogs because I have never thought this deeply about selfies. They were simply a "thing" that we did. I would have never thought that they could be used as a teaching tool to think more deeply about identity and self-representation. A lot of the class assignments that were discussed sounded really fun in addition to being very informative. While I don't take too may (haha, I hope) traditional selfies, I do take an embarrassing number of Snapchat selfies, so here you go:
No comments:
Post a Comment