Inclusion and inclusive practices are not things that are commonly discussed in China whether it comes to teaching or day to day life. Even as our population has aged dramatically, many cities have only made half-hearted efforts to make navigating cities/life easier. In our schools, there is one way to learn to read, one way to learn to write and one way to engage with texts and if that way doesn’t work for you, well it does work for you, you’re just not working hard enough.
Alexis’ Week 7 post blew me away with the effort she put in and the number of different ways she created to engage with her work. At first, I was almost a little bit overwhelmed and had to take a step back and narrow her work down piece by piece to see all the different ways to engage with it. Even though it’s different ways to engage with the same pieces of work, what amazed me was that I was able to understand and gain different things from different modes of engagements.
I laughed at her Merriam-Webster link because this is a common problem for ELLs that we have encountered in our school. Being able to navigate and ensure they have the proper definition for the word or are using a word properly is a struggle, especially for those with lower levels of English. Also, understanding common usage of words can present problems. It reminded me of my favourite story from one of our BC teachers where a student used the word “kinky” when they really should have used “strange”.
The “thinglink” usage was particularly intriguing as a way to create quick engagement with a singular thought on some of the items present and was an awesome way to engage someone in a short amount of time.
I also appreciated the opportunities that were created for feedback from others.
It really got me thinking more about the different ways people engage with texts and the different preferences that different people have and how to create opportunities to engage. My boyfriend and I vary considerably in our preference for engaging with topics through videos. If the only option for him to engage is through video, he is likely to pass and move on to something else while I often prefer video to other formats. He is one of the people who doesn’t particularly like social media sites (Facebook and Instagram) switching to more focus on stories while I quite like them. Alexis provides opportunities for everyone to engage no matter their preferences.