New Literacies Beyond the Screen

     We live in an age where sharing artistic creations is easier than ever. Whether posting a video of a song you wrote on TikTok or releasing a track on your Spotify page, musicians can express their art through mediums beyond the CD or Cassette Tapes used in the 20th century. However, these new possibilities for sharing music also leave students vulnerable to instances of plagiarism and crude behavior in online spaces. Young musicians often mimic the works of their radio heroes either because they have not found their own voice or because they fear rejection for sharing an original sound. As Aguilera (2017) stated, our students live in an age where understanding the text or videos on their screen is no longer sufficient. They must also be aware of who created the content, what laws exist to govern using content, and how they can constructively criticize content. By helping my students recognize plagiarized music, guiding them toward creating music from their own voice, and instilling the ability to provide constructive feedback within online platforms, I can help them move their creative process beyond what they see on their screens. Moreover, I can help my students connect the dots between the music they share and how it will affect their personal brand outside their computers.

    As Moorman & Pennell (2017) stated, plagiarism occurs when copyright infringement happens. Typically, schools see plagiarism through the lens of students misusing intellectual property while writing papers. However, infringement also occurs when students take musical ideas from a copywritten song and use it in their own songs. Each Fall, I teach a unit on Songwriting in which sixth-grade students compose a melody and add ukulele chords. Invariably, some students take pitches from songs such as You Are My Sunshine by Jimmie Davis, or I'm Yours by Jason Mraz and change the words. I have realized that my students do not intend to commit plagiarism, but they do not know how to aurally identify when a "new" musical idea replicates another. Moving forward, I believe the solution is to expose them to a tool such as Shazam that can help them identify if their music replicates another song. I can send them tracks on Chrome Music Lab that are either completely original or mimic the pitches of another song. They can then use the Shazam app on their phones to listen to the track on their computers, which will immediately identify if the track has been plagiarized from another song. My students can then apply this technique to their songwriting by using Shazam to identify if their work is too similar to another musician's. 

    Beyond recognizing plagiarism, students must also know how to find their voice and avoid plagiarism. Moorman & Pennell (2017) describes the process of pre-writing, writing, and post-writing that he recommends for helping students develop original thoughts. This process can also be applied to my sixth-grader's Songwriting assignment. My students can use the pre-writing phase to brainstorm the words and chords they want to use in their song, the writing phase to get their ideas onto paper and into their ukuleles, and the post-writing phase to polish their ideas into a final product. I can even provide an anchor chart listing all three phases to help guide their creative process Additionally, they can work in groups to hear each other's songs and provide constructive feedback. Just like this three-step process is used to help writers avoid plagiarism, it can also help songwriters develop original ideas and polish them with the help of a supportive community.

    Sometimes, receiving constructive criticism from the peers you see every day is not enough. In today's digital age, more and more online affinity spaces for sharing artistic work are becoming available. Magnifico et al. (2018) put it best when they stated how these spaces can offer a supportive community for people to share work surrounding a shared interest. However, as an elementary music teacher, I face a crucial tension concerning online affinity spaces: a community concerned with internet safety. My students' families often express concern about their children's names and faces appearing online without their consent. Therefore, it is difficult to design an activity where students can share their work with a broader community. However, I can simulate the experience of an online affinity space with other schools in my district. After completing their original song, my sixth-grade students can record a video of their class performing the song that they wrote. This video can then be uploaded to a Google Classroom that includes sixth-grade students from across the district. Students from across the district will then be able to provide praise and constructive feedback on each other's videos through posts and comments on the Google Classroom. This activity would simulate how my students can interact within an online affinity space should they choose to do so when they get older, and it also provides a chance to practice giving feedback respectfully and responsibly. Moreover, this activity calls upon my students to incorporate both their analog and digital music-making skills to create an original song and share it within an online community. 

    As comprehensive and engaging as my proposed Songwriting activity would be, I would also need to consider how the needs of some students may require additional resources. Some of my students who are ELLs or have IEPs often find it difficult to respond to their peers' videos by typing posts or comments. Therefore, I would need to give these students choices to contribute to the Google Classroom space through other media. Whether it's by recording a video response to their peers' songs or creating digital images to show that they valued and/or what they would like to see improved. Regardless of the media that they choose, all of my students will be able to positively contribute to the Google Classroom and simulate the process of sharing each other's music in an online affinity space. With these steps in place, my simple activity in writing songs using ukulele chords can become a broader lesson in considerations of digital literacy beyond the screen.

Works Cited

Aguilera,  Earl (2017). More Than Bits and Bytes. Literacy Today, (35) 3, pp. 12-13.

Magnifico, A., Lammers, J., & Fields, D. (2018). Affinity Spaces, Literacies and Classrooms: Tensions and Opportunitites. Literacy, (52)3, pp. 145-152. 

Moorman, G., & Pennell A. (2013). Plagiarism in the Digital Age. Literacy Today, (35)3, pp. 14-15.