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Technology and Multiculturalism: How Cinderella Can Improve Education In the US

Page history last edited by Gabriela Medina 9 years, 3 months ago

Technology and Multiculturalism: How Cinderella Can Improve Education In the U.S.

By Gabriela MedinaMulticulturalism In Cinderella

 

     The group Multiculturalism in Cinderella at the University of California, Santa Barbara has brought forth the controversial topic of technology in the classroom as well as the importance of cultural learning in the classroom.  Although many may agree that technology is becoming increasingly more important in today's society, it is still common to find teachers banning computers, tablets, and phones in their classes. Secondly, it is still common for students of other cultures to be uneducated. Although many individuals support technology and multiculturalism in education, there are enough persons against it or simply staying passive when it comes to it. Multiculturalism in Cinderella wants to encourage educators as well as individuals to incorporate technology into their lessons as well as having lessons on multiculturalism. 

     The researcher's primary focus was on the importance of technology in the classroom and how it is beneficial for students, teachers, and parents. Today, especially in the U.S., kids are accustomed to multitasking. It is common to walk into an average American home and find a teen watching television, doing homework, all while simultaneously texting three different friends. Children and teens are comfortable to situations where they are constantly multitasking, so accustomed to it that they commonly do it in their free time at home. When educators limit their ability to multitask by taking their devices away, they are limiting the individual's normal way of processing information; thus, the student becomes bored, and a lack of interest occurs. The UK Chief Inspector of Schools found that achievement overall amongst the students is beginning to decrease; not only in the US but also in the UK and simultaneously student behavior is beginning to deteriorate (McFarlane). Individuals forget the incredible plasticity of the brain. A teacher may believe technology in the classroom should be banned, because they are unable to multitask so the students must not have the capabilities to do it either. In reality, the students are more than capable to multitask. Children are born with more synapses than an adult has. Over time, the child's brain rids itself of unused synapses. By exposing children to the digital world at an early age, they can use synapses for multitasking skills, synapses that an adult would not have developed at a young age. If we continue to ban technology in the classroom we are doing a disfavor for future generations, because we are not allowing them the opportunity to improve their multitasking skills.

     Sharmilla Ferris labels this generation (millennial) as Digital Natives, comparing the ability to learn how to use technology to learning a language. They are born with the abilities and develop them over time. Moreover, like any language, if not frequently practiced one can lose the ability and is then unable to develop any longer. Similarly, she calls anyone older than these Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. These Digital Immigrants can develop the ability to learn how to navigate technology but will never truly lose their "accent." By banning technology, we are preventing students from "speaking in their native tongue" putting them at a disadvantage in the classroom; students see technology as something familiar, they no longer have to force themselves to focus on what is being presented to them. What they might be reading a textbook, and cab now stay attentive to the actual content and the educational purposes of what they are being taught.  Currently, the education system emphasizes on tests, which means students are memorizing what they need to know to pass the test. Since they are only trying to memorize it, as soon as the information becomes irrelevant to them, they forget it to make room for new information they believe is important to memorize. The issue with this is that students are no longer learning. They have no natural curiosity to the content and see it as irrelevant to them. This causes their interest and motivation to deteriorate. 

      Multiculturalism in Cinderella attempts to combat this deterioration in motivation and interest by incorporating technology into the lesson plan. This allows the lesson to become much more engaging. Multiculturalism in Cinderella attempts to be more inclusive for students by targeting different types of learners. The three major types of learners are visual, audio, and kinesthetic. A traditional classroom lecture will only target one and sometimes two of the types of learners but rarely all three. Typically a classroom lecture will consist of a PowerPoint presentation or examples on a white board, along with a form of oral presentation, while this traditional lesson may work well for visual and audio learners, kinesthetic learners are left in the dust. Multiculturalism in Cinderella is a blog in which different versions of Cinderella have been re-written in first person narrative diary entries.  The reason the researchers felt it was important to make this switch is because of child development. They were targeting sixth-grade students, but the lesson can easily be adjusted to younger age groups, but what becomes apparent in younger age groups is the regularity of egocentrism. Egocentrism makes it difficult for children to view an event or anything from a different perspective. For example, a child may love the game of hide-and-seek. So they will ask their older sibling or parent to play with them, and are shocked when they say they do not want to play. The child's thought process is that it is their favorite game, which means they cannot understand why someone would not want to play.

      To limit this potential distance from a student to the Cinderella, we re-wrote the story in the first person narrative to create a bridge from reader to a character and allow more of a connection. To fine-tune the bridge the researchers created a student narrator; the student narrator introduces a diary entry or comments after an entry on the historical or cultural context. This helps the fairytale come alive for the student and makes it more reliable as a source of information. The layout of the blog consists of a main page where all the entries for the different Cinderellas are available. In the case of having all the texts on one page makes it confusing for a student; it is possible to select one text and have only those on the page. The ability to organize further provides an opportunity for students to organize their thoughts and distinguish between the texts, verses handing out individual packets they have to attempt to keep track of or a larger packet that will confuse them or cause them to lose interest. What is most beneficial about incorporating technology into a lesson plan is the ease and accessibility students have to do further research. In the diary entries, the researchers incorporated links. These links are there to encourage students to dig a little deeper into new information they find interesting or might not understand. This integrates the text itself into making certain words links. These links take the students directly to more information on what that word may have been such as further information on a tribe or even just the definition to the word highlighted. As well, this can potentially encourage students to do their research by opening another tab and researching something they may have found interesting. This new form of reading allows students to explore their natural curiosities encouraging them to stay motivated because what they are researching is something they are interested in.. By taking this approach we can theoretically improve interests in classrooms, achievement amongst students will increase, and student behavior will begin to improve. 

      The second topic the researchers focused on was the importance of multicultural learning in the classroom. As future educators, the researchers recall feeling there was a lack of multicultural learning throughout their schooling. They felt there was a danger to this, with a lack of knowledge when it came to other cultures; they felt they had a disadvantage when interacting with individuals of other cultures, as well as text. For example in the text, there can be a hidden metaphor one would only recognize with a familiarity and background knowledge in the culture. They also found that it is common for children to be bullied or feel excluded due to insensitive and naive classmates. This can be seen as a reflection of their nativity of other cultures educationally. As much as this can cause a feeling of exclusion for children of cultures considered as a minority socially, it can cause a feeling of exclusion in the classroom and even be a cause for the lack of motivation students may feel in school. When content is difficult for a student to relate, it can cause ostracization, and have the opposite effect the education system wants to have on its students. As much as we wish it were not true, racial prejudices are a very real issue in late childhood and early adolescence. This is why it is important for an educator to integrate multiculturalism in the classroom. Any prior racial stereotypes or prejudices the students may have learned outside of the classroom can be decreased by incorporating multicultural learning in the classroom,. Thus allowing children of many different cultures feel included in an educator's classroom. 

      "I do not see color" is a common phrase heard across the US. Individuals feel that by ignoring the color of another's, racism becomes a nonissue. Yet by not acknowledging, they are not truly helping the situation. This is why having events like black history month or celebrating Cinco de Mayo (which is not a real holiday in Mexico), should not be considered as a multicultural integration in a classroom. When an educator has a set amount of time they will be discussing a new culture in a classroom, it will immediately be labeled as a special lesson in the class, something that will not occur often. The goal of multiculturalism is to integrate other cultures into a classroom so well, that they become part of the norm. When multicultural learning becomes a norm, it can easily be integrated in a social setting and in social interaction becoming a social norm as well. So instead of feeling a need to create total assimilation, or completely ignoring other cultures and staying ignorant, individuals understand that there may be differences in their culture to another person's; yet just as there are differences, there are similarities as well. If educators embrace multiculturalism, they can potentially help students grow out of egocentrism at a younger age, which can create a sense of understanding and acceptance in the classroom as soon as children begin their schooling. 

      Multiculturalism in Cinderella supports both the technology movement into classrooms as well as multicultural learning. The researchers were able to accomplish this by selecting a cross-cultural fairy-tale. Cinderella, most commonly known to Americans as a Disney princess, has over 360 versions across many different cultures worldwide. Although there are many differences amongst the stories, similarities can be found as well. A common concern issued amongst fellow researches was if we were worried about a gender-bias amongst readers. This in turn proved the individual with the question had done no multicultural research or had experienced multicultural learning at a young age. If they had been given the tools and opportunity to do a quick search online they would have quickly found the many versions of male Cinderellas, the most prominent being "Cinderlad," an Irish fairytale in which Cinderlad's best friend is a bull. Even in versions where Cinderella is a girl, there are ways that the story can appeal to a more masochistic audience whether through dragons, fights, or more male characters. Cinderella has the ability to really open a student's eyes by showing them how many cultures there are around the world and how these cultures have come to influence one another. 

      When it comes specifically to Cinderella, there are two possible origins to the character and storyline. One is Rhodopis, an Egyptian version of Cinderella; the second source can be Yeh-Shen, a Chinese version of Cinderella. The story has been around so long before oral stories were written down, that it is difficult to pinpoint the original story. What we do know is that over time, the story and character has leapt from culture to culture with a new spin to it making it more relatable to persons who are apart of that culture. Not only does it allow students to come to this eye-opening realization, but also through the StoryMap feature they created, they can visually see it. Story Map is an interactive map that can take students visually across the globe showing them where a small sample (roughly 30 versions) of Cinderellas came from; this is just as educational for students. For example two of the stories on the map are in what is now New Mexico. Although these stories are geographically close and the stories themselves are similar, differences can still be distinguished amongst them showing how they correlate to a specific Native American tribe. 

      One of the fairytales on the blog (as well as the StoryMap) is The Turkey Girl: A Zuni traditional story, in this version the protagonist is referred to as the Turkey Girl, she is never given a name, this allows members from the tribe to feel more connected to the character by allowing them the chance to see themselves as the character. Later on in the story the Zuni River is discussed. If a quick search online, it can easily be found that the Zuni River is part of the Little Colorado River in New Mexico. This new information would have made children in the tribe feel more connected to the Turkey Girl because her setting is in the same place they have grown up in. Children reading the blog site and going through the StoryMap will quickly make these connections by doing the research themselves with the links provided for them. So instead of reading a fairytale from an omniscient narrator's point of view, they are able to connect to main character, and knowing just a few basic facts creates a historical background they can work off making the information they read valuable to them.

      Students in the US have an opportunity to take the Americanized version of Cinderella they know, and compare it to other cultures. Recently a trailer for a new Cinderella movie was released in the US. In this new version the same Disney storyline is used, this shows a lack of multicultural knowledge across the country, because the movie industry always gives what the audience wants. By incorporating multicultural learning in the classroom, our society as a whole can be enriched. This entire process can be sped up through the use of technology in education, and not only would it be speeding up this enrichment of societal inclusion, but improving student's natural curiosity and moral overall.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Boundless. "Advantages of Using Technology in the Classroom." Boundless. Boundless Education, 3 July 2014. Web. 15 Nov. 2014.

 

"Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students." Archived: Effects of Technology on Classrooms and Students. U.S. Department of Education, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2014.

 

Ferris, Sharmila Pixy. Teaching, Learning, and the Net Generation: Concepts and Tools for Reaching Digital Learners. Hershey PA: Information Science Reference, 2012. Print.

 

McFarlane, Angela. Authentic Learning for the Digital Generation: Realising the Potential of Technology in the Classroom. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

 

Miller, Howard. "Middle Ground: Beyond "Multicultural Moments" The English Journal 86.5 (1997): 88-90. JSTOR. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

 

Moe, Terry M., and John E. Chubb. Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009. Print.

 

Smith, Paul. "Great Benefits of Technology in Education." EdTechReview. N.p., 22 Oct. 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2014.

 

 

 

 

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