Week 15 2018 Reflecting on your own learning

You have done quite a bit of reading, blogging, writing, and discussing aspects related to digital and multimodal literacies.  We looked at New Literacies and new literacies, and the important skills and social practices that are a part of both. You practiced with Web 2.0 tools and tried out ideas in your own practice.  I'm quite impressed at what you all did and the willingness you had to try out different tools and social practices. Finally, we read about and you are writing multimodal works. I'm really looking forward to your eBook chapters.
I'd like you to reflect about your learning over the course of the semester and respond to these questions:
1. What are the three most important (to you) ideas that you learned about New/new Literacies/literacies and digital and multimodal literacies this semester? Why are they important to you? How will they inform your practice as a reading specialist or as a practitioner in your present position?
 2.  Revisit the goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of the semester. How have you met them?

Respond to each other as well after you do this.

I have enjoyed working with you both this semester, and appreciate your flexibility and input on the book.  I hope you both will work with me next semester (even though you are graduated) on putting together the eBook.

Week 14 2018 Supporting your own learning

This week (the last week of readings) is all about how you will continue to support your own learning about digital and multimodal literacies.  These literacies are key to success, as you already know, in the 21st Century. Digital and Multimodal/New Literacies are continually changing--even the apps or websites or programs that you think you know are updated regularly, sometimes to the point where you have to relearn how to  use them.  Not only that, new tools (hardware, software, in the cloud) proliferate and old tools may become obsolete.  As teachers, we are life long learners (or we would not be doing what we do). Sometimes your school district or workplace decides what PD you will attend and sometimes you yourself do.  So think about what makes effective PD for you? How do you continue to learn about your profession?  How have  you used Twitter as a learning platform?  How do the readings suggest you continue to be a learner?


This week will be the last blog discussion you will have. During Week 15, I'll have a blog post for you to respond to. We will have touched base about your chapters at the face to face meeting, and will have discussed how to share your chapters as they are complete.

Have a good Thanksgiving.  I'm thankful for both of you and the work that you do to support the learning of all children/learners.  My mother will be here for the holiday and to celebrate her 93rd birthday on Nov. 25.  I'm including a picture of my Mom and I.  She still lives alone, is a basket weaver, knits and sews for her great-grandchildren (ages 18,14, 4,and 1) and honorary great-grandchildren, reads the newspaper daily (and has at least 2 books going)and is a faithful attendee of women's soccer, basketball, and softball at Texas A&M University (where she lives). I could tell you all about the  gutsy stuff she has done (she was the first woman in her small town in Iowa to go to college and she worked for the FBI in Washington, DC during World War 2, for example) that makes her a role model of her time.

 

Week 13 2018 Creating multimodal texts

As I write this, I am under a tree at a table with a nice breeze.  We have ha busy but productive meetings (it is 11:30 am on Wednesday here) and I have 2 more meetings this afternoon that are more education related than the meetings I have had so far.  I enjoyed your blog about designing multimodal texts (and added a comment about using links).  This week you are reading 4 articles about creating multimodal texts.  What are your key take aways from each of the articles? How are they helping you create your own multimodal texts?
I'll see you on Friday Nov. 16 for our last F2F class.  Thanks for your flexiblity. Have a good week.

Week 12 2018 Designing multimodal texts

This coming week's readings are all about designing multimodal texts and how to help learners become multimodal text designers.

Remember, we have changed the readings and schedule a bit, so this week you are reading BABR 8 and 9 only.  You will read the articles for week 13. For your blog discussion,  tell me what you learned about design principles and about remixing and using images, sound, and video from the internet. How will this impact your own design of your multimodal text chapter?

Sorry this is so short....I want to make sure I get it published before I leave.  Looking forward to reading your blog while I'm in Uganda.

Week 11 2018 Understanding and critiquing multimodal texts

As I told you in class, I got some new ideas for myself, such as Flipgrid in my undergrad class and Symbaloo to organize my book marks.  

This week we are beginning the module on multimodal texts.  You are probably beginning to think about writing your own multimodal text for our eBook.  These next 2 weeks should help with that.
We will have talked about this book more in class on Oct. 26, as well as about your activity plans.  In the interest of modeling being multimodal, I am inserting a short video that  tells you what to do next.  I made this for the time I taught Literacy and Technology in 2015, the precursor of this newer class, so disregard the last slide and narration.  We will have gone over the plan for the rest of the semester in class.

I head off to Uganda on Nov. 1 and will be back on Nov. 10.  I'll have my blog ready to go live on Nov. 2 and 9 before I go, but may get behind on reading your blog unless I can get access to wifi in the airport in Atlanta on Thursday.  Once I get to Uganda, I'll have access to internet most of the time, so let me know if you have questions. 

See you again on Nov. 16!

Week 10 2018 Assessment

I really enjoyed your discussion of digital writing, anchor charts, and mentor texts.  I tried out your links and bookmarked a couple of them.

This week the readings are all about assessing reading and writing in digital spaces as well as creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and comprehension and the social practices around digital tools.  One aspect of this assessment is helping students be metacognitve and assess themselves and their own learning and enactment of these key features of participation in New Literacies. I thought I'd do a little self assessment in terms of reflecting on my own incorporation of the 6 social practices into my blogging, collaboration and communication.  So here goes:
1. Contextualizing digital texts: My blog is hopefully is serving the purpose of activating your knowledge of our topic and helping you to make connections before you read, so I carefully choose what I want to write about and how I frame what I ask.  I'm not always as successful as I would wish, so I have been working on being more specific and having some modeling of my thinking in my writing.
2. Making connections between texts and people: I think I'm doing okay in the blog, and am continuing to work on discussion prompts for my other class.
3. Collaborative understanding and creation of digital texts:  I have been working with two other people on conceptualizing a research project and writing a proposal for a presentation via Google docs. It is working pretty well, especially if we do a synchronous discussion via Zoom or Skype.
4. Adopting alternative modes of communication: Well, not so good in terms of multimodal issues, but I am thinking about doing more chatting, and I do work with several students via Zoom or Skype.
5. Adopting alternative perspectives: I have been trying to do that when I read your blog and the discussion boards for my classes, putting myself in your shoes to understand your key points and how you picked them out.
6. Constructing and enacting identities:  I definitely do that with this blog as I construct my teacher identity, and hopefully my guide toward understanding.

Before you begin reading, think about and assess your own incorporation of the 6 social practices into your New Literacies participation in this class (that would be in your blog, your use of the VCI,  your inquiry topic as you look for information for your chapter or integrate New Literacies into classroom practice).

Here are some key ideas/terms that I think you  need to look for and pay attention to as you read for this week and that I would like to see used in your blog: scenario based tasks, reader based response, meta-cognitive reflection, self assessment, static electronic feedback, intertextual commentary, marginal and end commentary, screen cast, dynamic response, holistic and analytic rubrics, dynamic criteria mapping. 
Of course, you also need to discuss what you think are important ideas related to assessment in digital spaces and of New Literacies activity.


 
 Have a lovely Fall Weekend.

Week 9 2018 Writing in digital spaces

 As I write my blog entry, I'm thinking quite a bit about my own New Literacy practices, particularly around collaboration on writing projects in digital spaces.  This blog is one example, but it is probably the least collaborative of what I've had to work on.  One project we (and that is me and my research collaborators, none of whom are at OU) are working on is writing an article about a project on knowledgeable teachers.  We have already analyzed data from interviews that each of us did of teachers who are exemplars of knowledgeable teaching. We put copies of each others interview transcripts in Dropbox, we entered our coding notes into a Google form and we all wrote reflective memos about what we were seeing.  We meet via Skype to discuss what we are doing as well as sending things via email.  We have multiple copies of the drafts in our Dropbox folder.  Then there is my new Uganda partners.  One is a lecturer at Gulu University in Uganda (although he is a Canadian) working in adult literacy, lifelong learning, and community engaged research. The other collaborator is Sr. Rosemary, my new doctoral student.  WE have a folder on Google Drive with articles for each of us to read, our research ideas, and now our proposal for a symposium at the European Conference on Literacy in 2019. We have Skyped and brainstormed ideas and written together on the Google doc.  By the time you read this, I will have submitted the proposal.

You are going to be reading about writing and collaboration in digital spaces. Before you read, I'd like you to think about the following terms or ideas:  blogs,  vlog, digital story, digital anchor charts, mentor texts, genres, websites, cloud computing, writing craft, audience, purpose, writing notebook. All of these are related in some way to writing in digital spaces.

As you write your blog and respond to each other, I'd like each of you to include at least 1 hyperlink.  The hyperlink needs to be related to your topic of discussion.  

 A couple of questions and ideas I'd like for you all to discuss in your blogs as well.  For what kind of activity do you think it would be better to have students collaborate on a Google doc and for what kind should  they collaborate on a blog?  Why? Look up your topic or look up New Literacies on Wikipedia.  What did you find?  How accurate was it? How  do you know? Which of these ideas that you read about would you like to try with students? which have your tried?

Finally, please complete a Virtual Check In this week by Friday morning.  I'll check them regularly and respond to questions or requests as I can.