Cartoons as an alternative educational tool

Location: Crete Greece
Summary
In the age of digitization of public and private life, it is essential for the reading skills to be enriched with new semiotic modes helping students to adapt to the new social reality. In parallel, Europe fronts mass displacements and relocations of populations creating multicultural societies and educational environments. Thus, the teaching of language is needed to be approached in a multimodal way, while simultaneously is aimed at the students transformation through a critical analysis of discourses, the realization of their reality, and the production of new multimodal projects which will demonstrate their personal concerns and their lifeworlds in the global multimedia community.
This course aims to present cartoons as an alternative communicational and educational tool that helps students to express themselves about their personal experiences over social issues, to rethink their society and their personal point of view about it.

Objectives
- Learn the new literacy models
- Present how teachers can use new media tools in their classrooms
- Introduce cartoons as a semiotic mode and communicational resource
- Enable teachers to use cartoon as educational tool

Agenda
Day 1
- Introductory meeting, explanation of practical arrangements, presentation of timetable, information about course venue.
- Icebreakers, Introduction to the Course
- An introduction to literacy
- New media age and the need of rethinking literacy

Day 2
- New literacies and the multimodal way of teaching
- Learning by Design
- Four Practices to approach transformative learning using oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial patterns of meaning

Day 3
- Presentation about optical designs-meanings (optical communication- optical representation)
- Cartoons as a communicational and representational meaning
- Cartoons as an educational tool

Day 4
- Presentation how cartoons facilitate teaching a language as second and developing a dialogue in a sociocultural perspective
- Learner diversity
- Role playing activities

Day 5
- Planning a lesson learning by design
- Teaching in practice (teamwork)

Day 6
- Study Visit

Day 7
- Erasmus+ programme : objectives, priorities, actions, forms, budget, tips for applicants
- Planning follow up activities, dissemination and exploitation of learning outcomes
- Course Evaluation
- Certifications

Methods
Lectures, exercises, discussions, teamwork, role-playing, study visits

Target groups
Teachers working in kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools