Week 3 2018 What do NL/nl look like in classrooms?

This week I'd like you to continue to think about what makes new literacies  new and especially consider what they look like in classrooms.  New literacies are not just about integration of technology but about how literacy is transformed. I added a bit about the differences between New Literacies and new literacies on last's weeks blog in response to your question/uncertainty.  Let me know if we need to revisit this distinction at our F2F meeting on Sept. 14. There was also a question about activity based curriculum.  Think about this concept about being based in learner's activity around literacy that is goal directed (activity as a verb), not as basing your classroom on activities before determining goals and purposes of your lessons (activity as a noun). I think that this is consistent with what you already know and do.

As you discuss this week on your own blog, please make sure to use the following terms in your discussions: goal driven reading and writing, affordances, constraints, open networked environments, multimodal texts, literacy practices, social practices, collaboration, communication, critical stance, persistence, flexibility, reflection, teacher and student roles and relationships.  You will be introduced to frameworks for classroom practice including TPACK, TPACK+, 21st century literacy learning, flipped classroom, IRT.  You have already read about Literacy 2.0 and activity based curriculum. Discuss your thoughts on all of these frameworks: similarities, differences, challenges. You might want to look carefully at Reflection question 2 at the end of H Chapter 10 and respond to that.  I have also uploaded to Canvas 6 articles that illustrate NL/nl in classrooms. Each of you should pick a different one to read and then summarize the classroom practices described in the article for each other and discuss how the descriptions of the classroom practices demonstrate the skills, strategies, and dispositions for 21st Century Literacy.  I'm sure each of you will also have other topics that you would like to discuss as well.

I hope you have a good Labor Day Holiday weekend and a good week next week. Don't forget to complete a virtual check in form for me please.I'd appreciate if you could do that by Wednesday.

Week 2 2018 What are New/new Literacies/literacies?

You are beginning the first module of the course, which lays the groundwork theoretically for the practical knowledge of supporting literacy development using digital tools that are multimodal.  The purpose of this module is to answer the following questions over the first 3 weeks:
What are New Literacies and new literacies? Why are they important? What makes them New? What do they look like in classrooms? How can teachers plan to integrate digital and multimodal literacies into their literacy instruction and learner's literacy learning?

For this week, you are focused on those first three questions. As you read, compare what you know about literacy in a traditional sense with Literacy 2.0, digital literacy and multimodal literacies.  Look for connections across the three texts that you are reading. For your blogging discussion, define what you think New Literacies are.  How are they different from new literacies? How do the 5Cs of the J text compare to the BABR text's 6 social practices? Where does the information in the H text fit in all of this? What are you doing already that might be supporting New/new Literacies/literacies in your classroom? What are you doing that might not be supportive of New/new Literacies/literacies?  Please use the following vocabulary in your responses in ways that demonstrates your understanding of the concepts that underlie them: creativity, collaboration, activity based curriculum, affordances, social practices, intertextuality, learning networks, digital citizenship, critical thinking, communication, comprehension, open and closed networked environments, connective writing, forward inferencing, sources of prior knowledge, connected learning.

Remember to post your responses to my questions before you read the response of your classmates. Remember also to include a question for your classmates that you would like to discuss. Finally, the blog should become a discussion between the 3 of you, so that means more than just posting and responding once to each of your other 2 classmates. 

I look forward to reading what you write and discuss. I'll weigh in when I feel the need or if you want me to.   Have a good week.

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.