Teaching With The Screen: Pedagogy, Agency, And Media Culture

Description: Teaching with the Screen explores the forms that pedagogy takes as teachers and students engage with the screens of popular culture. By necessity, these forms of instruction challenge traditional notions of what constitutes education. Spotlighting the visual, spatial, and relational aspects of media-based pedagogy using a broad range of critical methodologies-textual analysis, interviews, and participant observation-and placing it at the intersection of education, anthropology, and cultural studies, this book traces a path across historically specific instances of media that function as pedagogy: Hollywood films that feature teachers as protagonists, a public television course on French language and culture, a daily television "news" program created by high school students, and a virtual reality training simulation funded by the US Army. These case studies focus on teachers as pedagogical agents (teacher plus screen) who unite the two figures that have polarized earlier debates regarding the use of media and technology in educational settings: the beloved teacher and the teaching machine.

Review: "Dan Leopard tackles some complex topics but is so comfortable in his own skin that it takes much of the anxiety out of the process. I am certain this book will be read with interest by advanced undergraduates and college-educated lay readers and the most curious of classroom educators who are seeking new ways of making sense of the impact of media change on their professional practices and on the lives of their students." Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California "Leopard presents an interesting account of his experience using technology to teach media culture covering a wide range of types of media that function as pedagogy. Clearly on-line and virtual teaching is an emerging trend so it is valuable to have an informed and experienced voice like his analyzing different modes of teaching with machines." Doug Kellner, University of California at Los Angeles

Contents: Preface Introduction. Studying Media in Educational Settings 1. Blackboard Jungle: Narratives of Pedagogy and Experience 2. Agents, Screens, and Machines: The Production of Pedagogy 3. French in Action: The Teacher Presented 4. Trauber TV: The Teacher Augmented 5. STEVE: The Teacher Embodied Conclusion. Presence, Telepresence, and the Gift of Pedagogy Appendix. How to Teach with Teaching Screens

Author Biography: Dan Leopard is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Saint Mary's College in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA.