Notes on my learning

Emotional literacy is the ability to recognize and express our emotions. As emotions are a part of human nature and a huge part of our everyday lives, becoming emotionally literate should be essential for healthy and successful, emotional living. Many definitions posted on the class wiki reflect this type of literacy depending on how one interprets it. The definition stating that it is “an aspect of communicative abilities” and, “literacy is a bridge from misery to hope” can be associated with different literacy types including emotional literacy. Being emotionally literate indeed requires communicative abilities that deal with recognizing feelings of happiness, anger, fear, loneliness, etc. and the ability to express and talk about those feelings. In turn, the ability to be a good emotional communicator can contribute to positive relationships and improve the overall quality of life. As is it defined, “from misery to hope”, without emotional literacy, one can truly feel miserable to not be able to comfortably express the way they feel or be able to identify or understand the feelings of others. However, by being emotionally literate, one can have the hope of having an improved social life by learning how to understand themselves and society as a whole. As another definition stated, “By helping your young children express their thoughts and feeling verbally and in writing or drawing….and to understand how others think and feel, you can make sure their emotional development and literacy go hand and hand.”

Some of the definitions that contrasted to this type of literacy were the ones that mainly focused on technology. Definitions such as “The ability to locate, evaluate, use, and communicate using a wide range of resources including text, visual, audio, and video sources.”, “ The ability to use printed and written information to function in society…” or “a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies-from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms…” Again I think these definitions could convey various interpretations depending on the interpreter. But to me, I think they focus more on technology and using literacy that is visual and hands on. When I think of emotional literacy, I primarily think of communicating information that is not visual...information from deep within a person and expressing it outward.

Although, the traditional aspects of literacy such as reading, writing, speaking, etc. may not be the same thing as emotions, they still go hand and hand to some extent. For example, without the ability to speak and listen, how else would one be able to hear someone’s reasoning for the way they feel? How would one be able to use words to tell someone why they were mad, happy or sad? Furthermore, having the ability to write can be a good tool for expressing one’s thoughts on paper, a good way to let out inside feelings when they are unable or unwilling to tell them to an actual person. As I continue to meditate on emotional literacy, I am learning the importance it will have on my future teaching career. If I am not emotionally literate, then, how can I teach it to my students? How will I be able to show them and responsibly? How will I help them think positively about themselves? In the article by Allison Aubrey, it shares that depression among students can become an issue if they consistently think negatively about themselves. The article had some easy strategies that I can use with my own future students. For example, it suggested, teaching kids to do positive “self-talk” and reflect back on situations before reacting to disappointing circumstances. This was good insight but it was also quite surprising. I never thought to think that teachers would have to worry about depressive thoughts and feelings in their classrooms. In my field placement, I have not seen any lessons on emotional literacy. It may be a totally new concept for them. If this is the case, they may need extra support such as time and practice in becoming literate in this area. I think that they could really benefit by the practices mentioned above or by just through demonstrations of ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’ treat a person. One website I looked at talked about how emotional literacy is a ‘preventative tool’, meaning, it can prevent negative issues later in life such as violence, abuse, negative social relationships, etc. I think that all students including the ones in my field placement could benefit through this literacy by helping them live more positively altogether.

The technology I chose for this project is a presentation using the Prezi.com website. This is an awesome tool for presenting information more creatively than a traditional power point. It allows me to use reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing in a more stimulating way. I can use the so called ‘canvas’ which gives me an unlimited amount of space to type in the information I wish to present. As I present the information, I can zoom in and out of words or sentences to highlight crucial parts of text. As I present my information, I can talk about my thoughts and ideas in a non linear way since Prezi is also set up non-linearly and is easy to leave my lesson pathway and to talk about additional content. Another thing I can do with the Prezi is to have sounds in my presentation such as music, voices, single sounds, or even video clips. All of these things are very stimulating visually as its main purpose is to help people including teachers, present information or a lesson in a new, not so boring way. There are so many things that can be done with this technology that I think the most challenging thing will be my ability to be my most creative. I want to use the Prezi to its full potential and try to avoid creating something boring.

I think this tool will be great for teaching emotional literacy. It will allow me to use pictures of different emotions. I could even zoom in on the pictures I would like to emphasize. It will also allow me to explore ideas such as depression in students, bullying, etc., in more detail by zooming into hidden icons that hold further information. I can also use a video piece to show different instances of how to handle emotions. I feel that this technology can be very much like reading a book or a piece of text and even writing. For example, you can have a piece of text from a book on your Prezi and deeply analyze it. But instead of looking directly at the page in the book, you are looking at the presentation. As I mentioned before, the teacher can create different size fonts, use bold fonts, or even zoom in on a word or sentence or idea to show the students what should be focused on. In turn, after a student has read a book, instead of writing a traditional book report, they can use the Prezi to show what the book was about. They can create a ‘canvas’ of their thoughts, containing pictures, sounds, timelines, thoughts, ideas, etc. and vividly present t their classmates. If the students in my field placement were learning to use this technology, they would definitely need to work on the skill of determining the main ideas of what they want to present. They will also need to know how to summarize the things they want to add to avoid too much text on their canvas. Additionally, they will need to learn how to speak about what is on their presentation in a clear way. They should also learn how to incorporate pictures, video or sound to help make their presentations come to life.

So far, I haven’t noticed any limitations with this technology. However, I did noticed one downfall, and that is the zooming feature could leave someone a little sick feeling from all the motion. (lol) I say that based on my own experience of exploring a Prezi presentation. I’m not sure if I felt that way after viewing several presentations or if it was just the excessive amount of movement and zooming from a specific part of a presentation. I also noticed that although it remains an incredible tool, it is a lot like a traditional power point. A power point presentation has the potential of displaying all the information listed above BUT, I feel that this technology is still much better. I feel like it captures one’s attention and helps them become more engaged in the information being presented.