Week 11 Understanding and Critiquing multimodal texts

This week we are beginning the module on multimodal texts.  You are probably beginning to think about writing your own multimodal text for our iBook.  These next 2 weeks should help with that.  I want to remind you that we are meeting face to face all day (9-5) on November 14, and our major topic will be multimodal texts and their design.We will spend time in class designing your multimodal texts, thinking about what different modes you want to include and practicing with apps that will help you.  So in the interest of modeling being multimodal, I am inserting a short video that  tells you what to do next.

Just a reminder of what is due this week: VCI due by Friday noon (here is the link again VCI ); Writing group meeting via Google Hangout or other forum, Resource evaluations for iBook chapter by Nov. 6 at 10 pm.

Have a good week! 

Week 10 Assessment

First, a reminder!  You need to post on our Google Community at least once in a month and respond to at least 2 posts, and you need to Tweet at least once in a month as well. The month is almost over.  Check the participation rubric.

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 bee 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, but I've been having some difficulty in my work with my Uganda project colleagues (a long story for another day). This plays into my communication piece over Google docs with my Uganda team as well, as it seems I'm not being clear about what should be happening in the Google doc....
3. Collaborative understanding and creation of digital texts:  See above on the Google doc.
4. Adopting alternative modes of communication: Well, not so good although I've been including pictures and graphics in my PD guidebook for the Uganda project.  It will end up being printed this first time.....maybe I need to think about an iBook with examples after my first visit there.
5. Adopting alternative perspectives: I have been trying to do that when I read your blogs, 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 this blog, your blogging group's blog, your use of the VCI, your writing group's use of virtual online meetings, your inquiry topic as you look for information for your chapter or integrate New Literacies into classroom practice). Where do you shine? What might you need to work on?

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 own blogs: 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. 
Since you are all in different (or mostly different blogging and writing groups), discuss with each other how you are doing peer response and comments to each others' projects in your writing groups, and which suggestions you might like to try.  Of course, you also need to discuss what you think are important ideas related to assessment in digital spaces and of New Literacies activity.

I'm going to delve into the VCI once I post this blog (it is Friday afternoon) and jump into your blogs for this  week as soon as I post this blog.  I'll be e-mailing you individually or collectively once I review the VCI.  Look for comments on the blogs.

Finally, remember that your annotated bibliography is due on Oct. 30 by 11 pm.  Upload to the appropriate Dropbox folder on D2L (I think that is the Theoretical Article one--I don't remember if the Dropbox has separate folders for the article and for the bib).

 Have a lovely Fall Weekend.

Week 9 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 analyzing data from interviews that each of us did of teachers who are exemplars of knowledgeable teaching. We have copies of each others interview transcripts in Dropbox, we enter our coding notes into a Google form and will all leave comments on what we see as themes as comments on the spreadsheet.  Ultimately we will write our article on Google docs.  Then there is my Uganda team who is creating a professional development program (and writing the textbook to go with it) and creating curriculum guides for interdisciplinary units for use in the different levels of the curriculum. This week we spent four hours together examining the Ugandan primary  (grades 1-7) curriculum for overarching themes we could use to spiral the curriculum and turn a curriculum for children into one for adolescents and young adults. It is all now on Google docs (or will be). 

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:  zines, blogs, wiki, vlog, digital story, digital anchor charts, mentor texts, genres, websites, cloud computing, writing craft, audience, purpose, writing notebook. Are there any of these you don't know what they are? or at least aren't too sure?  If so, identify them and make a prediction in your response to this blog about what you think they are.  If all of these are familiar to you, tell me how they are related to collaborative writing in digital spaces.

As you write your own blogs, I'd like each of you to include at least 1 hyperlink in your comments.  hyperlink needs to be related to your topic of discussion.  In addition, I'm inserting a picture of a piece of text that has suggestions for comment starters that you can give to students to help them getting started in commenting on a blog post to start a discussion.  Use one of them in your commenting.  

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 wiki 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. Here is the link: VCI

Have a good weekend and Good Week!

Week 8 Research and critical thinking part 2

This week you will be reading about creating students who are critical consumers and producers of digital texts as well as tools that can help them organize and critique their research.  Before we get into that, I'd like to respond to some questions that came up on the VCI.

How often do your small groups meet?  I believe that we determined that your writing groups will meet 3 times:  Sometime in Week 8, sometime in Week 11 and sometime in Week 14.  You all decide when and just send me a summary of what you did/talked about.  These meetings are supposed to be a place to bounce ideas, get feedback, be supportive to each other.  You decide how they run and what you all do. You can meet via Hangouts, a chat, Skype, or I'll set up Adobe Connect.  You just need to meet synchronously.  See the notes from Sept 26 which I uploaded on D2L in the Module 2 section. I know that there are more questions that would be of interest to all, but as I write this (Friday afternoon at 2:30), Google Drive seems to be having an issue and although I can see the spreadsheet with your responses, I keep getting a page that says the file is not there. Hopefully by Saturday I can find it and will then respond.

You will be reading about critical literacy as well as critiquing.  What does critical literacy mean to you?  How is it different from critical thinking? How might it be important to inquiry and research?

There are 5 articles and 1 chapter of BABR to read this week.  I'd like everyone to read the BABR chapter and the IRA Critical Literacy piece. Divide up the other 4 articles so each person reads 1 of the articles.  If there is only 3 in your group, leave out the Digital Lit Circles piece.  Then, the blog leader will lead a discussion on the common readings and summarize key points of his/her article and ask for connections to inquiry, research, critical thinking and the main readings.  The rest of the people in the group, as part of your response to the blog and your participation in the discussion will need to summarize your unique article and make connections to the theme of the week and the other readings.  Please use the following vocabulary in your discussions:  multiliteracies, curator, constructor, critical response, critique, online collaborative inquiry, searchability, annotations, integrate ideas, triangulate data.

Have a good week, and don't forget to have an online small group meeting and send me a summary of what you did by Saturday, Oct. 17.  I"ll send out an e-mail with responses to the rest of your questions as soon as I can access the response sheet from the VCI.

Week 7 Inquiry: Research and Critical thinking part 1

This week I met with Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, the nun for whose orphanage we are creating and adult basic education program for the abused child mothers that she takes in whose lives and education have been disrupted by war. Sister Rosemary is passionate that her girls have access to education so that they can find their own voices and move beyond their circumstances. Sister's work began because of her own inquiry into circumstances in her country, and she is not afraid to communicate what she knows and believes, collaborate with diverse groups of people, create opportunities that help the downtrodden build self-worth, and critically evaluate circumstances.  Listening to her reinforced for me that supporting literacy, new and old, is the foundation to empowerment for all learners.

Learners are also empowered when they are able to ask questions about topics of interest and use those questions as a guide to finding information they can use to enrich their lives. So this week, we are beginning to read and discuss about inquiry.  While inquiry does include communication, collaboration, and comprehension, critical thinking is going to be a key focus here as is creativity.  Before you begin reading, I'd like you to respond to these questions: what does inquiry mean to you? What might be some advantages to doing inquiry with students at the age level you are interested in?  Some challenges? Why do you think critical thinking is key to inquiry? What is the creative part?

This week you are reading 2 articles and 3 book chapters.  I'd suggest reading the Johnson chapter first, followed by the two articles.  Read the BABR chapters last. They are really full of tools and strategies for inquiry, so much so that I was a bit overwhelmed!  Here is some vocabulary I"d like for you to use in your blog discussions: locate, evaluate, synthesize, integrate, divergent search phrases, repurposing, reinforcement, problem posing, online search, search engines, search strategies, curating, organizing, summarizing. I'd like each blog group to synthesize the information and collaborate on creating a definition of inquiry learning grounded in all of the readings for this week. Make this synthesis a generative synthesis (see the DeSchyver article for a definition of this term). Then I want you all to be critical evaluators.  Divide up the tools from BABR chapters to try out--your leader can either make assignments or you can volunteer.  Critically evaluate the tools that you tried out and write about them in your blogs. Don't forget the lists of tools that we started in your blogging groups last weekend in class and return to those Google docs and add in any that fit.

Remember that  this week you need to fill out the Virtual Check In form (http://goo.gl/forms/bNU839rZvq). Please do this by Thursday  midnight.  I"ll check regularly and get back to you.  Have a good fall weekend.