Year 11 English - Digital Citizenship - Focus Questions

Hi All,

here are the focus questions and activities from the past two sessions:

Cyberbullying:

1. Are actions in an online community (like the slurs on the website) different than actions taken offline (like the notes left on someone’s locker at the school)? Why, or why not?
2. How are anonymous actions – like posting on a website or leaving a note – different from things done face-to-face?
3. Imagine you were a bystander at this school, watching this situation unfold. What do you think you would have done? Do bystanders have a responsibility to do anything?
4. What should you think about before you post anything about another person online, in an instant message, text, or any other kind of digital message?
5. Someone posts a picture of your friend with some nasty comments, and other kids make fun of him or her.  What would a bystander do in this situation? What would an upstander do? What would you do?
6. Aside from a target, who else can be impacted by online cruelty? Who else could be involved, implicitly or explicitly?

Online representations:

Create 3 different avatars for the following contexts:
1. A school social network where teachers, students, and parents communicate
2. A social network where you connect mainly with friends and people you know
3. Second Life (www.secondlife.com), where you communicate mainly with people you don’t know in real life
Remember these are digital texts, so you may wish to create these digitally.

Year 11 Speech Investigation

Hi All,

I'm currently in the middle of marking these assessments, and it has become quite evident that some of you don't understand the difference between content and context.

Content is the stuff that is in a text, such as the narrative, themes, dialogue, topics etc.

Whereas, context is the set of circumstances or facts that surround the construction and delivery of a text that influence its meaning or effect.

Let's look at the text below:

As a modern Australian audience, many people would interpret this as sexist, misogynistic, and out of touch with out current values and beliefs. However, when written, this was the point of view many people held within society. When we read it within the context of modern society, we take offence. However, when we read it within the context of the 1950s, we understand that this is the ideology of this society.
So if we were to be writing about the contextual elements that surround this text, we would be discussing the factors that occur socially, historically and culturally that influence the intended meaning and response. You may also discuss how our context resists the original meaning.

Happy writing.

Mrs P.