Author: hickstro
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The Next Decade of Digital Writing
With the support of Sara Kajder and Shelbie Witte, I am pleased to share that I recently published a “Leading the Call” article from Voices From the Middle, “The next decade of digital writing.” Through NCTE, they have made it available through open access, and here is the abstract: The author, a leader in bringing digital…
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ILA Literacy Leadership Brief: Democratizing Professional Growth With Teachers
As teachers and teacher educators prepare for a variety of workshops, conferences, webinars, institutes, and other events this summer, I am pleased to share a timely publication I’ve co-authored with Misty Sailors of the The University of Texas at San Antonio: “Democratizing Professional Growth With Teachers: From Development to Learning.” One in a series of Literacy…
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Preparing to “Turn the Corner” at DMAC18
The days do go fast at DMAC. As a participant, I am reminded of the many, many moving parts that the facilitators for such an institute need to plan, and I have been fully engaged in the workshop for the past few days. Couple that with needing to continue working on all my regular tasks…
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DMAC18: The Image Assignment
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Yesterday, Scott DeWitt introduced to our first task for DMAC, the Image Assignment. The main goal of the assignment is “to work with a collection of information that you can use to compose a persuasive piece of displayable and/or distributable multimodal media.” In short, we are making an infographic. Our task yesterday afternoon was to…
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Prepping for DMAC 2018
Today, I made my way to Columbus in preparation for the Digital Media and Composition Institute, also known as DMAC. In more than one way, this has been a career aspiration of mine for well over a decade, and I’m very much looking forward to the immersive, sustained experience of working with colleagues over the…
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On the LMS, Wikispaces, and Where to Next
As anyone familiar with online teaching knows, critiques of content management systems, especially Blackboard (Bb), are common. From articles in the popular media, to critiques in peer-reviewed journals, to an analysis from an Bb itself on the way it is used by instructors and students, there are many, many of us out there who dislike the…
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Can We Make Online (Graduate School) Discussions Suck Less?
As many of you know, and have probably experienced, discussions in online classes can be notoriously bad. At best, many online courses feign discussion as a pseudo-cooperative (and not a collaborative, generative) task, and students engage because they are required to connect with the content and with one another. At worst, the tasks are perfunctory and just…
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Webinar Next Week: Teaching Grammar in the Digital Age
https://www.smore.com/0tfmr-literacy-webinar-hicks-hyler?embed=1
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Updates from Our Book: Argument in the Real World
As a writer — both in the sense that I am a blogger and the author of texts for teachers — I am well aware of the fact that writing is never really “done,” it is just “due.” I am thankful that I have the opportunity to keep writing, keep sharing, keep updating. It is…