Welcome

Introduction

 

           As a teacher of indigenous students, many of whose first language is not English, I work hard to find ways to teach the westernized curriculum in a way that is appropriate for my students. I teach thirty fifth through eighth graders in a rural Alaskan Yup’ik Eskimo village.  For approximately 60% of my students their first language is Yugtun (language of Yup’ik Eskimos) for others English is their first language.  However, even though many of them come to school understanding a variety of English, it is not Standard American English (SAE), but a dialect called Village English (VE). As their teacher, I am responsible for making sure that they make annual growth in their ability to understand and use SAE because that is what they are tested on during state-mandated writing tests. Perhaps more importantly, SAE is the variety of English that is expected and necessary for success in schooling and many professional contexts outside of rural Alaska.  The district mandated curriculum does not incorporate indigenous Alaskan culture or languages.  The curriculum does not take into account my students’ unique life experiences.  For example, in one reading for the language arts curriculum, the story discusses walking down the street to a carnival and stepping off of a curb and seeing a clown an experience my students have had no exposure to.  In rural village settings, we don’t have streets, we have boardwalks. These boardwalks are made of wooden planks, so there are no curbs.  Not only do we not have curbs or streets, but my students have never visited a carnival or seen a clown in real life.  My students struggled with the context of this particular story because they did not have the necessary background knowledge to understand the basic content of the story, making it harder to analyze the text.

 

              I chose to be a part of University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Alaska Native Education (ANE) Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) program to learn how to reach students in a way that is culturally relevant and engaging. As a result of attending this program I have learned how to help my students engage in learning not only in school, but value what they learn outside of school.  As I have learned about my students, I have learned that they come to school with an immense amount of knowledge about the world around them.  For example, one of my male students could tell me everything about the local rivers and lakes, and where the best places to find different types of fish are while another student can make over ten different types of bird calls and can tell me when and where to use what call for which bird.  My students have a knowledge base that I want them to understand they can utilize in the classroom.  

 

               Westernized curriculum often puts emphasis on literacy as just reading and writing, while devaluing native ways of learning. From teaching and living in my village of Kasigluk, I have seen firsthand how my students process information in their community. By integrating myself into the community, I have observed children watching an elder cut a fish until they feel comfortable doing it themselves. My students learn through real life experiences, for example, students learn about river currents when setting fishing nets. I know my students learn best when they collaborate with their peers and work as a group rather than through individual work. My students are shy and don’t like to be the center of attention. I have one student who will never give an answer even though she knows the answer instead she will tell her partner or her group the answer and have them share it instead of herself. My students learn through Yup’ik dance and storytelling. Incorporating these culturally situated ways of learning into my instruction to help students learn the content standards they are required to learn, makes the content more relevant.

 

                 Not only do I want to create culturally relevant lessons for my students, but I also want to engage my students with the use of technology. In today’s society, we are surrounded by technology.  Even in the village my students have cell phones, tablets, computers, and video games.  As technology use grows so do my students’ abilities to use these devices.  My students are often engaged with some form of technology.  

 

                 So how can I incorporate indigenous knowledge and technology?  They seem like they are in contradiction with one another. Cultural knowledge is seen as knowledge from the past that ingrains them in place while technology can put them in a world outside of their local place.  My hope is that with my master’s project, Surviving Alaska, I make a place for both technology and culture to be relevant tools that engage students in meeting academic content standards . An augmented reality interface was chosen as a medium to do this.  It allows for the creation of a story based on cultural knowledge to help students engage in learning about science and literacy skills. Augmented Reality is a mobile interface that enables the design of  games around a particular location, authentic roles, authentic documents, narrative challenges, and game mechanics that sculpt user experience(Dikkers et al, 2014). The use of augmented reality fuses the virtual world with the real world to engage students in learning.  My game takes place in our village, Kasigluk, and the characters they meet in the game are all local elders.  My students play as survivors in a post-apocalyptic world.  The students were given background knowledge of this post-apocalyptic world by reading the book Raven’s Gift by Don Rearden, in which many of the people of our local area were wiped out by a strand of Avian Flu. The students/survivors learn how to survive by learning skills from elders in their community.  The skills presented include making shelters, hunting, medicinal plants, and clothing making. All of this is done to engage students in learning literacy skills to use for journal writing and for digital storytelling that emerge from their experiences playing the game, which involves interacting with the elders and learning traditional skills and competencies. Holden & Sykes (2011) explain “formal learning environments [need] to become places capable of building, rather than simply transmitting, knowledge” (p. 2) This is why I wanted to use AR because it allows students to build their own knowledge and interact with the academic content in a way that is engaging, AR allows students to become active participants in their learning, and not just passive recipients of content.

 

           This paper will explain how my project encompasses the theory of multiliteracies and other learning theories to meet the needs of my students in learning content standards in a way that is culturally responsible.