Week 15 Reflecting on your learning over the semester

You have done quite a bit of reading, blogging, writing, and discussing aspects related to literacy and technology.  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 iBook 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 this semester? Why are they important to you? How will they inform your practice as a scholar/higher education instructor, reading specialist, early childhood educator, or elementary educator?
2.  Revisit the goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of the semester. How have you met them?

Remember that we are meeting on Adobe Connect on Friday, Dec. 11 at 5:00 pm.  I'm looking forward to your sharing of your projects at that time. Here is the link to the video on how to access Adobe Connect.  Remember that the dates etc are for my first hybrid class last fall.

Have a good week.

Week 13 Supporting your own learning

This week (the last week of readings) is all about how you will continue to support your own learning about New/new Literacies/literacies.  These literacies are key to success, as you already know, in the 21st Century. 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 t  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 and our Google Community as a learning platform?

The next 2 weeks, you will only be responding to my blog so that you can spend your time working on video annotations and your multimodal article.  You will need to meet with your writing group and with me with your drafts of your article online via Google hangouts or Skype.  I'll be available Nov. 29 in the evening or daytime, Nov. 30 in the evening or afternoon after 3, and Tuesday Dec. 1 in the evening or late afternoon. I"ll be in California on Nov. 30-Dec 4 at the meeting of the Literacy Research Association, so remember the time difference (I'll be 2 hours earlier than you).  I want to touch base with everyone about their chapter and how it is coming.

Have a good Thanksgiving.  I'm thankful for all of you and the work that you do to support the learning of all children/learners.  I'll be down in Texas with my mother celebrating her 90th 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, 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.

See you online the week of Nov. 30!

Week 12 Designing multimodal texts

I enjoyed the multimodal blog responses and small group meeting reports.  I have had such a busy meeting week that I haven't had the chance to read your blogs yet (it is Friday at 3 pm as I write) but I'm hoping some of the multimodality has oozed over to them as well.

This coming week's readings are all about designing multimodal texts and how to help learners become multimodal text designers.  So, tell me what you know about design principles and about remixing and using images, sound, and video from the internet. What does it mean to "level up"? what does iteration and feedback have to do with it?

I know that there is lots to read, so here is how I"d like you to divide it up:  Everyone should read the introduction and section on assessment in BABR 8.  Divide up the rest of that chapter around these headings: images, audio, video, digital storytelling/poetry.  Everyone should read BABR 9 on design principles.  Divide up the articles among each of you.  The blog leader can address the common readings and those pieces she read, and each of you need to respond to her questions and fill in the rest of your blogging group on what you read.  Then all of you make connections.

A few reminders:

• Resources were due on Nov. 6, so I'll be grading them over the weekend
• Your lesson/activity plan is due Nov. 13 before we meet face to face.  Let me know if you need more time to get the video annotated and uploaded. 
• We are meeting face to face in Rm 334 on Nov. 14 at 9 am-5pm.  We will plan on an hour for lunch.  Our main plan of work is creating the multimodal chapters and learning how to author an iBook.  If you have an Apple computer, make sure to download iBooks Author and Pages if you don't have it (it is free).  If you don't, I'll have an Apple laptop for you to use.  
• Get a Dropbox account if you don't have one as that is where we will deposit the iBook stuff 
• If you borrowed one of my iPads, you will need to bring it to give back to me at the end of the day.
• Bring questions, concerns, etc. 

I'm looking forward to all of us being together again. Have a good week, and see you soon.

 

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.