pandemic pedagogy — Volume 14.2 papers — Digital Culture & Education (ISSN: 1836-8301)

DOCUMENTING WHAT’S ON THE SHELF: FRAMING EDUCATORS’ IDENTITIES

Written by: Carol Doyle-Jones, Niagara University, United States

Abstract: During the beginning of an online class in a teacher education program, an exchange about a holiday and the associated family traditions prompted the author to share the haphazard pieces of her family’s lives as they were framed through the screen. Favouring the frameworks of New Literacy Studies and New Literacies, this essay showcases the connections made between what is on our shelves when teaching, while in dialogue with a fellow educator. As dialogic partners we contemplate what Pahl and Rowsell (2020) share through living literacies, what literacies and identities could be among the complexities of influencing semiotic factors. While exploring the social practices of everyday life we see our changing roles through the multimodal and multifaceted ways we frame ourselves as educators. This visual essay explores “what’s on the shelf”, how shelfies and identities intersect, and the everyday life of the shelf through the frame of the screen.

Keywords: shelfies, dialogic partners, educator identities, digital spaces, semiotics, pandemic pedagogy

S(h)elfies in Bitmoji Classrooms: A Trend or a Literacy Practice?

Written by:
Suriati Abas, State University of New York, United States
G Yeon Park, Korea National Open University, South Korea
Simon Pierre Munyaneza, Indiana University Bloomington, United States
Jae-hyun Im, Indiana University Bloomington, United States

Abstract: In March 2020, when the pandemic hit the nation, elementary school teachers turned to bitmoji classrooms to sustain students’ learning. Multiple virtual replicas of classroom themes were instantly created and shared across social media spaces. The sudden craze prompted the four of us to investigate configurations of book shelves or, s(h)elfies (selfies of books) in bitmoji classrooms. We focused on s(h)elfies that display diverse books with a social justice theme. Using netnography, we examined bitmoji classrooms uploaded onto public Facebook groups for a year. We did critical case sampling, selecting unique cases to examine (Etikan, Musa & Alkassim, 2016). In this visual scholarly article, we provided our analysis of three s(h)elfies undergirded by socio-spatial (Comber, 2015) and multimodal theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001). Our findings revealed that s(h)elfies in bitmoji classrooms is not just a trend, but also, a literacy practice.

Keywords: s(h)elfies, bitmoji classrooms, literacy, multimodal literacy, socio-spatial, pandemic pedagogy