In Yang’s TEDx, he talks about the educational potential of comics and the importance of getting comics back into American classrooms. As an educator, Yang has witnessed the incredible educational benefits that comics can have on students in a classroom environment. He argues that students are growing up in a visual culture and comics use visuals. He also suggests that when a student works with comics, the rate of information flow is in the hands of that student. Similarly, in Yang’s graphic novel, “Secret Coders”, characters Hopper and Eni work together to crack odd mysteries about Stately Academy, a mysterious-looking school. They encounter many strange characters and Eni teaches Hopper that the bird and turtle they encounter are actually robots. Soon after breaking into the janitor’s supply closet, Eni finds a written program and the turtle begins following the instructions of the program. The comic book ends with an unsolved puzzle; the bizarre janitor puts Eni, Hopper, and their friend Josh to the test by asking them to come up with a new program. Furthermore, authors Collins and Halverson discuss the pros and cons of what they refer to as the “new technological revolution” and suggest that educators must learn how to appropriately integrate technologies into their classrooms. For example, one pro they mention is that technology fosters a “learning by doing” view of education, while traditional schooling requires students to simply absorb knowledge. Additionally, they acknowledge that with the rise of technology, education has begun to appear in more adaptive venues like web communities or home schooling. Lastly, in Hall and Lucal’s article talks about the advantages of using comic books in sociology courses. This is because comic books present various social phenomena such as race and gender. Thus, comic books may be used to compliment class discussions on how culture depicts images of men and women. According to the authors, every time the comic book is implemented in a sociology classroom, students are engaged and make insightful remarks regarding gender inequality or social inequality (since the comic characters are predominantly white).
I was able to make many personal connections to Collins and Halverson’s article. When the authors wrote about how technology nowadays caters to every possible interest a person may have and specifically to the rise of web communities, I immediately thought about Instagram. Instagram is a social networking service that I am an active member of. Instagram gives its user the ability to “follow” pages of their interests. Therefore, I follow many food pages in order to learn how to cook fast and healthy meals, and to connect with other followers on the page who share my similar interests.
Questions:
- Question posed to the class: How many of you were required to use a laptop or desktop in high school in order to complete your assignments?
- Beginning at what age should educators implement the use of technologies in their curriculum and in their classrooms?
- Why do you think Yang and Holmes only used two colors in their graphic novel? Why do you think they chose the colors blue and green? Is there a meaning behind this?
- “Secret Coders” revealed the inner thoughts of Hopper at the bottom of some comics; did you like that the authors chose to do this?
UWP 104D 