Multiliteracies – Page 5 – Digital Writing, Digital Teaching

San Antonio, Tech To Go, and Back to the Snow

Apologies in advance for what will be a long post here, as my “reflection in action” during the conference consisted more of trying to find free wifi and navigating the Riverwalk than it did of actually having time to sit down and think. I tried to break my thinking up by day, for what that’s worth, and hope that these thoughts are useful for all my readers, especially all my colleagues who were unable to attend.

That said, NWP/NCTE2008 was a wonderful week of connecting and collaborating with colleagues, and there is so much to think about it is hard to know where to begin. So, I will organize it by day.

One thing that I will note here and throughout the rest of this post is that I sensed a definite shift, a change in the tone about how people are talking about newer literacies and technologies. In a sense, it is as if we no longer had to begin every conversation, every presentation with a disclaimer: “let me tell you why I use technology in my teaching of writing.” Instead, the conversations simply began with the premise that we simply are using technology to teach writing.

And that is darn cool.

Now for a summary of the week.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wednesday brought me in early to work on a book project with NWP, and we had some great discussions about the state of digital writing as well as the Letters to the President Project. Having been in the process of interviewing a number of educators this fall, getting this day to work with Danielle and then meet with Elyse
and Christina from NWP brought some clarity to my thinking (something that has been sorely lacking as I have been digging through loads and loads of data). I feel very confident in the work that we did and that the book will be useful for educators in a variety of contexts.

I was able to interview someone from Google about the use of Google Docs in education, and that conversation (among the many I have had with NWP colleagues) reminds me that things are definitely changing. Yes, there are still issues of access and the digital divide. Yet, I think that students and teachers are finding more and more opportunities for thinking about how to teach digital writing because the tools are (almost) all online and (almost) all free. Not to go overboard on the idea of the conference theme, but I could finally see the revolution in action over the course of this weekend. Teachers are beginning, across the board, to make the shift.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

On Thursday, the NWP Annual Meeting kicked off and, for me at least, the best part of the day was the new site meeting. I enjoyed the Writing in a Digital Age session, but then got caught up in other things all afternoon, in particular some great news… Last week, on my birthday, I was pleased to learn from NWP’s Executive Director that Central Michigan University had been awarded an NWP site! Thus, this was my first official meeting as a new site director. When asked how I was feeling, all weekend long I repeated the “excited, but terrified” mantra. Attending the NWP Annual Meeting as a site director was a new experience, and again I was amazed at the ways in which technology and writing were simply a part of the same conversation now. As I begin to think about how to frame the work of our new site, I am encouraged by
the fact that being digital will be a major part of who we are. A talk with Bud Hunt later in the weekend reaffirmed this belief that our site should intertwine our web presence with our core work, and I look forward to tackling that when I get home.

Also, another cool aspect of Thursday was that I was interviewed by Paul and a crew from the Pearson Foundation about how writing is changing in a digital age. They were getting interview with a large number of TCs throughout the annual meeting, and I can’t wait to see how the videos they will be producing turn out.

Here are some of my thoughts from my preparations for that interview:

Why is writing important now?

As it has always been, writing remains a key mode of communication. It is important today because writers in a variety of personal and professional roles are being asked to produce a greater variety of texts, for a greater variety of audiences.While many teachers — especially those involved with NWP initiatives — continue to build on the principles of good writing instruction, we need to continue our efforts and supporting the teaching and learning of writing in all of our classrooms, K-12, and across content areas. As writers adapt to new situations for composing texts, they need to be adept in a variety of writing skills and genres.We, as educators, are the ones who introduce them to these skills and genres when we keep our attention on teaching writing with intention.

Writing in a technological world means what?

In an increasingly networked world, writers need to adapt to different purposes, audiences, and contexts for writing that have been enabled by newer technologies. This also involves a shift in how we think about who writers are, how texts are produced, and where texts are distributed.

Regardless of how “digital” we think our students are — and, no doubt, most of them are more adept at particular digital skills like using Facebook, Twitter, or text messaging, they do not necessarily come to those tasks with the capacities that make them critical and creative digital writers. Not only do they need to understand the technical aspects of creating hyperlinks, posting to a blog, or collaborating with a wiki, but they need to have the intentional focus as a writer to understand the audience and purpose for which they are writing. Who reads your Facebook updates and why? Can you write to that audience in the same manner as a you can when you produce an academic paper, even if it is posted on a blog?

Moreover, they need to consider the ways in which we can compose with multiple modes and media. For instance, one can argue a position through a traditional essay, a 30 second public service announcement (either an audio or video), or in the form of a single-page advertisement with an image and few words, or no words at all. Understanding when, why, and how to use different forms of media to convey a particular message requires a working knowledge of the mode — that is, what does an audience expect in order to be persuaded — and how to effectively manipulate the media.

So, writing has always been a complex act, and newer technologies offer writers numerous opportunities to get their message across. Writing in a technological world means that we, as writers and teachers of writing, need to be aware of these choices and how we can best utilize them to have the intended effect on our various audiences.

One disappointment… no more Tech Matters. That institute, more than anything else I have done, has shaped my thinking on teaching digital writing. I will miss it dearly, but understand the choice that was made to go to a more site-focused technology retreat. So, while I am sad to know that Tech Matters is no more, I am encouraged by the work that is happening across the NWP network related to digital writing. There are some promising things on the horizon, one of which I hope becomes this book project.

Thursday night ended with our traditional RCWP dinner. Janet thanked all of us and praised our new site, but I want to say thank you, Janet, both for dinner and for all that you have done to enable teacher leaders to fill entire tables at an annual meeting, reflecting on a year of shared work.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Friday brought breakfast with a friend I hadn’t seen in some time as well as the invitation to be interviewed for NCTE’s Centennial film being produced by John Golden and his colleagues. Wow, what an incredible honor to be invited into that work. He asked me to reflect on how the teaching of writing has changed over the past few years with the advent of Web 2.0. What an honor and a wonderful opportunity. In preparation for that interview, I wrote the following:

The read/write web has finally delivered the promise of having a real audience and varied purposes that writing teachers have so long looked to bring to their classrooms. From the beginning of the process writing movement, when Emig first looked at the composing process and Sommers identified revision strategies of experienced and novice writers, teacher researchers such as Murray, Graves, Calkins, Atwell, Ray, Fletcher, Portalupi, and others have been trying to invite student writers to see audiences and purposes beyond the classroom and traditional school genres. While this began to occur in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000’s, there was still something “fake” about this writing. Yes, it was shared with peers in class. Yes, it was read at author’s chair or published in a school anthology. Yes, it went home and made it on the fridge. And, if it was lucky, that student writing made it to a local newspaper or other venue for publication. When the internet really hit big at the turn of the 21st century, writing teachers felt as if they could have a purpose and audience beyond the classroom and school. Some were able to publish their writing online, but things got in the way: FTP, limited or no access to the server, passwords, firewalls, as well as the onerous HTML editors. The promise of the web was to democratize information, and it did — if you could figure out how to create web pages and uploaded them. Even discussion forums — with all their ability to post and respond to writing — hit the scene, there was still something impersonal and difficult about “publishing” one’s writing.

Then, when read/write web tools such as blogs and wikis emerged, and “push button publishing” become possible for anyone, anywhere. Along with the increased bandwidth and access to internet-enabled computers in schools, the ability to post and share writing on a blog was revolutionary. Finally, the goal of “publishing” work for an authentic audience and purpose emerged as a goal for writers, both in and out of school. No longer did a writer need to know HTML (although it helped),
or have a specified program on his or her computer. We could write (and publish our writing) any time, any where.

This has resulted in a shift in thinking that Knobel and Lankshear discuss in their work on New Literacies. In a nutshell, the traditional vision that we have of a single writer, working alone on a piece of writing that has been culled together from a series of authoritative sources has been replaced with one of a collaborator who is able to build on the ideas of others, and participate in what boyd calls
“networked publics.” We can access our documents any time and any where that has a network connection, including on handheld devices and mobile phones.

What this means is that — in addition to being able to write in multiple modalities and media — students must be made aware of the ways in which their writing is distributed and perceived across the many networks in which they participate. What this means for teachers — and NCTE — is that we need to consider the many ways in which students see themselves as writers (and, according to the Pew report sometimes do not see themselves as writers) and invite them to be intentional about how they read and write in a digital age.

We have learned a great deal about revision and how audience and purpose can lead to intentional writing. NCTE should continue to support scholarship and professional development that builds on the principles and research findings that we have, noting the ways in which we as teachers can guide “digital natives” who may know how to send a “tweet,” but may not always be thinking about the ways such a message can be interpreted. In short, we need to continue the professional conversations that we have been having about writing and revision over the past three decades, taking what we know about these processes and moving them into the era of the read/write web.

NCTE continues to move in the right direction. In just the past year, they have adopted the statement on teaching multimodal literacies, and released two research and policy briefs (one specifically on 21st century literacies and the “Writing Now” brief that encompasses a broader view of the composing process). By offering the summer institute on 21st century literacies, webinars, and the “Tech to Go” sessions at the conference this year, NCTE keeps moving ahead with this work in practical manners. The website redesign and Inbox blog offer good examples of how NCTE is trying to stay in touch with members.

Doing that interview really helped me articulate my thinking, and I appreciate the opportunity to have done it.

Friday morning brought me to my first presentation with some NWP colleagues, “Revising the Writing Process: New Literacies in the English Classroom.” Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Aram Kabodian, and Dawn Reed were able to present their work related to blogging, podcasting, digital storytelling, and social networking to a crowd of over 100 (don’t believe me — check out the pictures below!). I won’t go into detail on the session, as we have all our materials on our wiki, but suffice it to say that the work these four shared is both amazing and timely. Participants left with only a tiny handout — a bookmark with our URL on it — but loads and loads of ideas. I think that my friend and Project WRITE colleague Liz Webb recorded the session as a podcast, and I will try to get a link to it.

From NCTE 2008

Friday dinner brought together friends and alums from MSU, packing a restaurant. A few of us ended up in the Italian place next door when the tables overflowed. Despite missing the conversation with the large group, it was great to spend time with so many people who have ties to the green and white, even if just for a short while.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Saturday brought a meeting with my editor on another book project, on that I will be very excited to return to as the semester comes to a close and hopefully involve some Project WRITE teachers (as well as their students). Then I was off to present at my Tech To Go kiosk for “RSS Feeds and Teaching English.” Again, more of the work of that session can be found on my wiki, so I want to reflect for a moment on the process of presenting that session (thanks to Bud Hunt for the photo).

My thoughts on the Tech To Go session are mixed, but all in a good way. On the one hand, I wanted to have it be a little more formal with a larger screen and some chairs, so people would feel free to linger. On the other hand, that was precisely the point. People were able to move around, or just stop by is something caught their eye. Having to
reexplain RSS got a little repetitive over the course of the hour and fifteen minutes, but I think that people walked away from the session — no matter how long they stayed — having just enough info to go back and try things out. I hope my wiki page helps them do PD in their own school. As for the Tech To Go Sessions, ideally, I would like to see
them working there with computers in front of them, so they could try it out at the moment. Yet, perhaps there is some value in getting these micro bursts of information about newer literacies and technologies. I
will be interested to see how the conference evaluations reflect people’s experiences with these Tech To Go sessions and to think about how we can shape them for next year.

After browsing books, I was fortunate enough to see Barry Lane heading towards his room with all his gear in tow. After offering a hand to help, and having a quick discussion about when we met in October at the MCTE conference, we were able to walk and talk on the way to his session room. He remembered our conversation in October, reminded me that I needed to send him the podcast (which I finally was able to do
today!), and offered me one of his CDs for helping. When we got to the room with time to spare, he asked if he could interview me for his YouTube channel. I encourage you to watch the video with Corbett Harrison instead!

Video Added 12/5/08

Then, was time for me to sit. Whew…. A session presented by Bill Bass, Melissa Lynn Pomerantz, and Debra Solomon Baker from St. Louis on “Extensions: Using Technology to Extend the English Classroom.” The three of them talked about how they used participatory tools in their classroom, including the use of audio recordings embedded in word docs to give students feedback, a variety of formats for discussion forums, and how to organize your personalized professional development with RSS feeds. It was good to hear Melissa and Debra in particular talk about how very simple uses of technology were having such a profound effect on their teaching.

Later in the afternoon, as PSU was crushing MSU, I was able to ignore the pain of the game by thinking about my third session, “Why Should We Write with a Wiki? Professional Development and the Read/Write Web.” Working with Mary Sawyer and Tim Dewar to frame a session on how pre-service and in-service teachers perceive literacies, I was able to share some of the work of Project WRITE and how teachers engaged in professional learning and collaboration with a wiki. In talking with the two of them, as well as other participants in the session, we were all able to enjoy a thoughtful and engaging close to Saturday. While
Anne Whitney’s Nittany Lions whipped on my Spartans, at least we were able to have a good conversation about how teachers learn digital literacies and we talked about how to continue supporting graduate students in the NWP network.

Hicks NCTE 2008 – Why Should We Write With a Wiki?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wiki writing)

Saturday night brought a trip down to the San Antonio Market District, and fun night of conversation with RCWP colleagues.

Nacho libre anyone?

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Wow… A “down” day in that I had no presentations to do. Instead, I was able to meet with some colleagues throughout the day to discuss some projects as well as catch a few sessions. One of the more interesting
ones was a panel of British scholars — Julie Blake, Tom Rank, and Tim Shortis — who talked about their work with digitizing texts in the British Library, teaching 21st century literacies to teachers, and understanding the role of txting in our language. All were thought provoking and helped me consider the many ways in which as the nature of literacy continues to change, the ways that we frame the discussions about the change matter as much — if not more — than the changes themselves. The idea that sticks with me most is that we, as educators, can help provide context, in a variety of ways, to the vast bits of knowledge that are out there. The project that the British Library is undertaking to organize and contextualize the texts in their collection is simply mind-blowing.

Also, Kathy Yancey delivered another outstanding address that suggested we reframe the teaching of writing. I can’t even try to capture everything she said, but it was great stuff.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Final day. ACE Workshop. As it has been the past two years, lots of fun to talk with teachers about the use of read/write web tools in the classroom. As always, the sessions were fast-paced and I again talked
about Writing with Wikis. We had fun overwriting each other in Wikispaces, yet it seemed like most participants walked away with some ideas about why and how to use wikis in their classroom. Before we had
to go to lunch, Allen Webb shared his new website, Lit Archives, and talked about a number of ways to engage students in classic literature by harnessing digital versions of those texts and inviting them into virtual worlds.

After eating with my friend Carl Young, I had to catch a cab back to the airport. Finally able to get on wifi for free, I tried to write this blog post but (as you can imagine) ran out of time after checking email and talking with my Michigan colleagues who were about to hop on the plane with me.

So, NWP/NCTE 2008 comes to a close with me writing the bulk of this post (novella?) on the plane heading home towards Detroit. Of all the things that I didn’t do, I feel bad that I didn’t keep up with Twitter via SMS all weekend, as Andrea worked very hard to get that as our networking tool for the weekend. And I missed a lot. A lot. I look forward to reading everyone else’s reflections.

Yet, it was still a good conference. And the talk about technology and newer literacies filled most of the conference presentations and hallway conversations, implicitly or explicitly. I was able to help highlight the work of my colleagues and friends, some who were able to be at the conference and others who were not.

For as much as I did, as many new people as I met and those who I became reacquainted with, I have to say that I am tired. Not looking forward to shoveling snow, although I am looking forward to seeing my kids, my friends, and my family over the holiday weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my students, friends, and colleagues reading this. Thanks for sticking through this post and sharing these reflections, as well as the entire conference, with me.

See you next year in Philly, hopefully with a crew of teachers from our new writing project site.

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CEE Podcast: Examining Writing in a Time of Change

The CEE Web Editing Team has been hard at work, and this is the first in what we hope will become a series of regular podcasts with leaders in English Education. Please add comments to the page and continue the conversation about teaching writing in the 21st century.

Examining Writing in a Time of Change: An Interview with Anne Ruggles Gere about NCTE’s “Writing Now” Policy Research Brief

“The meaning of writing is changing pretty dramatically,” claims Anne Ruggles Gere, Past-President of NCTE. Given the theme of this fall’s annual convention, “Because Shift Happens: Teaching in the Twenty-First Century,” her work on NCTE’s new “Writing Now” Policy Research Brief is particularly timely, and the topic of this CEE Podcast.

Visual Literacy Tool – PictLits

Recently, I was contacted by Carrie Lightner from PicLits.com. She said:

I came across your blog and I thought you might be interested in our new web site, www.PicLits.com. It is a fun and new site that can be a great online teaching tool for educators. It helps get students interested in writing and serves up a fresh image and custom list of words each day.

After checking it out, I agree. I think that the site has the potential to engage visual learners. In particular, I am interested in the idea that you can have students drag and drop words on top of images, and they
could develop haiku-like poems or statements with an image to supplement it. In a sense, it is like using layers in Photoshop to add text to a picture, yet much more user friendly and easily embeddable.

I wonder what kinds of assignments we could ask our students to do using a tool like this?

New IM Tool: MeGlobe

A note from Jose Rodriguez about MeGlobe:

We’ve created an Instant Messaging application, called Meglobe, that also performs real time language translation. I thought you might be interested in taking a look since it can be used as a tool for students and educators to collaborate globally across language barriers. Meglobe is web based and supports 15 different languages. There are no bots to install or downloads necessary to utilize the translation features. Simply type in a message in your own language and Meglobe translates it into the language of whomever you are chatting with.

We’ve also implemented a contribution function where users can make improvements to the translations Meglobe performs. This feature helps to improve the accuracy of the translations by applying the contributions to the translation engine and also helps the system develop natural language patterns. Here is a link to a tutorial demonstrating some of Meglobes key features: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR-O57jO6yI&fmt=18. I thank you for your time, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Haven’t tried it yet, but it looks quite cool and certainly contributes to students’ multiliteracies. Let me know if anyone gives it a shot.

Rough Draft Thinking for a Hybrid Professional Development Experience

Well, we have a hybrid professional development experience coming up on September 24th for the Project WRITE teachers. In trying to meet a number of constraints and opportunities, I have set up a wiki page for the evening’s activities. Here is some of my thinking about why and how this is set up this way, as well as a screencast of my thinking, too. I would be very interested to hear your feedback about how (and if!) you think this will work.

First, we had to have a way for participants who choose to go the hybrid route to both log their “seat time” for SB-CEUs as well as be connected to what’s going on. Originally, we had planned to use ANGEL through MSU, but for a variety of reasons, not the least of which we can not have enough guest accounts to invite all the Project WRITE teachers in, I didn’t figure that was the best idea.

Second, even if we had enough accounts, I didn’t want to have to have people log in to something that they were not familiar with and try to navigate multiple tabs on a night that they would be using a new tool, Jing, anyway. Thus, I wanted an easy, open way for them to both “login” and monitor their seat time, while possibly having a back channel for communication AND being able to get the stream without having to have a separate tab or media player open.

Third, and perhaps most important to me, I wanted to make sure that what ever we did was easy and accessible to the teachers, so they could replicate this process in their own classroom. After hearing about Meebo and UStream from many other edubloggers, and seeing that they could both embed in wikispaces quite easily, I figured that this would be the easiest way to go. So, I set up the Meebo chat room, the UStream channel, inserted them side-by-side in a table and, voila!

Now, I am sure that someone else has figured this out, and also I now realize that you can have a chat right on your UStream page if you want. However, I wanted to make sure that the interface was clean and connected to the wiki, so this type of embedding made the most sense. And, what is even more amazing is the fact that I don’t even know how I would have imagined doing something like this even a few months ago (although I am sure that the technologies existed then)… instead, this came as a solution to an institutional problem about how to both monitor seat time and create a workaround for the university’s sanctioned CMS that wouldn’t let us do what we wanted to do

So, this will be an interesting experiment in trying to figure out how to have a hybrid session, implementing digital writing tools while also teaching about digital writing tools. I am excited to see what comes of it, and look forward to any suggestions that you might have for me to streamline the process before we make a go of it here in about two weeks.

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Brief Review of Webb and Rozema’s “Literature and the Web”

Earlier this summer, Allen Webb and Robert Rozema published their text through Heinemann, Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies. I received a copy as a gift, and just got a chance to read it over Labor Day. Besides thanking the two of them for mentioning my blog in the book, I also want to compliment them on the way that they approach the task of teaching with technology.

The text makes the idea of using technology very approachable because they maintain a consistent thread through the entire text, one that focuses on how we ask students to respond to literature and how technology can support that response. So, beginning in the introduction, they ground their discussion of how to use technology in principles that guide good response to literature:

Entering the story world
Close reading
Understanding social, cultural, and historical contexts
Responding to the text

Throughout the text, they return to these main principles and discuss how teachers can use newer technologies to support these types of reading responses. This approach encourages me to continue thinking about how to ground discussions of technology and newer literacies in larger discussions of pedagogy, and not vice versa. As teachers design units of study and connect them to state standards, the text boxes in each chapter will help them connect back to these principles of reading response. The projects that they describe in the text all seem very doable, although I do wonder if some readers of the text will want more step-by-step instructions.

One technology that I wonder more about — as a response to literature — is digital storytelling. While I don’t fault them for not covering that topic in the text, as Rozema does a great job of discussing how he invites his students to create podcasts in response to literature as one form of multimedia, it is a question that I have more and more. What is digital storytelling? Is it a personal narrative, or can we call other forms of digital video production “digital storytelling? That is, if it is non-fiction, or a response to literature, does it count as a digital story? Or, does it matter so long as kids are engaged? Could his podcasting project be adapted (relatively) easily to digital storytelling? Also, what are the copyright implications when remixing chunks of literature already present on the web, such as in Project Gutenberg?

That side note notwithstanding, the text is sharp and full of examples. My favorite chapter comes in the conclusion, where Webb and Rozema discuss how to become a “web advocate.” “[B]eing a web advocate,” they argue, “means mentoring those around you.” I couldn’t agree more, and I look forward to learning more from the two of them, as they have been mentoring me for years. It is great to see their thinking captured in this text, so they can mentor others as well.

CMU Podcast Interview on Technology Literacy

Earlier this month, one of my students, Lynette Seitz, and I were interviewed by Heather Smith, CMU’s Assistant Director of Media Relations about technology literacy and our work in ENG 315 this semester.

I appreciate her invitation to record this podcast and it was wonderful to have Lynette’s voice in there, too, as a pre-service teacher who is thinking about incorporating digital writing into her classroom.

You can get the podcast through CMU’s channel in iTunes.

Randy Bomer’s Keynote about New Literacies

Notes from Randy Bomer‘s keynote at MRA 2008:

“Writing Transformations: How New Literacies and New Times Invite Us to Rethink Composition”

Literacy is changing, literacy as design
Obstacles: accountability measures and deficit thinking
- If we are constantly trying to fill in gaps, we are not moving into the future. Looking at education from a deficit model results in damaging education.
- You cannot move toward the future from a deficit model
Spotting deficit thinking
- “these kids”
- “s/h/they have no language/culture/experience
- “culture of poverty”
- finger-wagging to parents
  - Varieties in deficit thinking
    - Individual ability/genetics
    - Culture
    - Poverty
    - Language
    - Mass and popular culture
- Examples
  - Paying kids in NYC for grades to “compete” with what they could earn on the street
  - Motives for teaching that see children as coming from deficient lives
  - See the book: The Evolution of Deficit Thinking edited by Richard Valencia
- New literacies are not just about machines.
  - Texts call attention to how they are made, how they work materially, and why
  - Thinking about the design of text and interaction with it
  - Spencer Schaffner‘s “five paragraph essay” picture (can’t find image online yet, here is his blog)
  - Habits of minds and material
- Design
  - Example 1
  - Bill Harvey Music
- Design as a literacy practice
  - Two phases of the writing process:
    - Generating writing in the notebook — used design as a way of thinking about content
    - Publishing — used design as a way to think about how to publish their work
  - Examples of student work
    - Map of the zoo with narrative annotations
    - Story that was drawn out into a graphic novel/comic page, and by drawing was able to add more detail
      - Bomer claimed that the students wrote more on the days that they drew, and students generated more by working in two modalities
    - Brought in pictures and used cropping Ls
    - Transferred pictures that were cropped and focused in on small components
      - Mother’s image from one image
      - Necklace from another
    - Texts in new literacies may be single pieces that are loosely joined
    - Making Journals by Hand by Jason Thompson or Memory Keepsakes or Artists Journal Sketches by Lynne Perella
    - Design Decisions
      - What pathways are the readers going to take?
        
        Box, journal, notecards

Rather than see these children and what they could do from a deficit model, we enabled them to produce texts that mattered to them and developed new literacy practices.

Reflections:

As Bomer talked, I appreciated his perspective on new literacies as “avoiding the deficit” model of thinking. This adds a new twist to the discussions of new literacies that I have been reading about recently, both because it honors the socio-cultural perspective that NLS has developed over time and also addresses issues about about accountability and assessment by hitting it head on by using the research on deficit thinking to support the idea that approaching literacy in reductive ways really contributes to poor literacy practices.

OLPC Keynote from SITE 2008

Sorry that it took so long, but getting back to another crazy week finds me now, on the Friday might before MRA 2008, catching up on SITE.

That said, I have one final set of notes and reflections, and this keynote was a good one. Dr. Antonio Battro, the Chief Education Officer for One Laptop Per Child delivered an excellent keynote address and post-keynote discussion. Highlights from both are here, followed by my reflections.

Also, FYI, I have update my presentation post from a few days ago, and it now includes a podcast of my session.

Here are the notes from the keynote, followed by notes from the post-keynote discussion, and, finally, my reflections:

The Cognitive Challenges of the One Laptop Per Child Program
Antonio Battro, Chief Education Officer One Laptop Per Child

OLPC (and per teacher)
- Sharing knowledge is a dialogue, and this is the essence of OLPC
- The machines may change, but education must evolve
History
- Nicholas Negroponte
  - 1960’s architecture of the machine
  - In Paris, Battro spent some time with him and in the early 80’s began thinking about deploying machines in remote countries
Five OLPC Principles
- Child ownership
  - This is the key, as the child and the teacher own the computers and they are given to them as a gift
  - It is difficult to understand for many ministers of education, because they want the school to own the computer — not the child or teacher
  - When we go to the highest levels of the governments that we work with, this is the first obstacle that we have to overcome
  - Uruguay is the first country to adopt OLPC for the entire country, and the machine was produced in Shanghai
    - The machines arrived during the last week of classes in November and there was discussion about what to do
      - One group said that we should give the machines to the teachers with a workshop and when classes start again in March, the kids can get them
      - Another group said that this is not the OLPC idea — we should give the machines to the children tomorrow (and this is what happened)
      - 10,000 students received the machine
      - Doing research on children and teachers who get the machine with no formal training (this is the last time that this will happen since all the children will have machines next year)
- Low ages
  - In many countries, the idea of having digital skills is meant for adolescents and older students
  - For OLPC, kindergarten is too late and we have designed a machine that is for early ages
  - The interface is adapted very well for a child even before they learn how to read and write
  - Uruguay is starting in kindergarten because they have seen so much success with the 5 and 6 year old children
  - This motivation to start early came from Jean Piaget and Seymour Papert
    - In about 1960, Seymour Papert said that all children will eventually have a computer
    - This was a crazy idea, but he was a prophet (he developed Logo)
  - Piaget
    - Constructionism (how the child constructs reality)
      - Learning to learn
      - Children teach — this was a very profound idea, too
        
        At five years old, children are very good teachers and OLPC will have millions of teachers around the world
  - Howard Gardner
    - Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century
      - The human mind has evolved a number of separate organs/information-processing devices
      - Taking human differences seriously lies at the heart of the multiple intelligences perspective
        
        We do a different kind of construction for each intelligence
        
        Digital intelligence (“the click option”)
        
        Everything boils down to a simple question: to click or not to click
        
        What happens when a child makes a mental calculation (Hideaki Koizumi, 2006)
        
        The frontal lobe is activated by mental arithmetic
        
        The frontal lobe is not activated when using a calculator
        
        So, what could it being doing instead?
        
        His dream is to write a book with Hideaki Koizumi about the activation of the human brain when teaching
        
        Knowing that someone else doesn’t know something and then teaching it — this is an amazing human capacity, and children can do this
- Saturation
  - Every child has a machine and it is like a vaccination
    - Once you have good trials, you have the obligation to vaccinate everyone or else the vaccine will not work
      - This idea was presented by Jonah Salk (correct name?)
    - We prefer to have a whole town or region saturated
      - One example: in a setting with all the ministers of a country where he took at picture
- Connection
  - Ability to connect with other users
  - The computer is not a tool, it is an environment
- Free and open source
  - Multiple languages for the machine
  - 100 books for the machine
Conclusion
- Our approach has moved from education for the few and privileged (image of Greek forum) to one computer for all the children (image of a girl with the machine balanced on her head)
- This is hope, justice, and peace
Questions and Answers
- How might this affect countries that are not democratic?
  - OLPC is non-profit and incorporated in the USA
  - OLPC will go everywhere and try to join the education efforts in the country that we work with
    - Some places need an extra push
    - We are teachers without borders and many of our people are volunteers
  - Peru — putting machines in the most remote areas of the country
- Bill Gates idea that technology will not solve the problems — we need teachers and electricity. How do you respond to this?
  - Battro discussed his experience as a medical doctor and the eradication of disease (saturation)
  - Also, OLPC is not about machines; instead it is about education (we must have water AND education — education today is about having a computer)
    - If you introduce the computer as a technical, colonial invention, then you are reducing education
    - Education has a value in and of itself, not just as a tool
    - In many difficult places today, there are lots of struggles but the governments are willing to give the computers out

Post-Keynote Discussion

Security — some people are worried that the laptops will be stolen and used for illicit purposes
- Response — the machine isn’t “on the market,” so it doesn’t have a price
- Also, if it is lost, it can be permanently disabled from afar
- Finally, the communities that have these laptops know that they are for the children. If adults have them, and they are are not teachers, then it is likely stolen
Maintenance — worries about fixing the machines in remote spots
- Response — easy to open and repair, if it can’t be done at school it can be mailed
- Eventually, it would be great if people could just take their laptops to any post office and, like other items like keys, they would automatically be sent in for repair and then back to the child
Student Use — what is happening for teachers training to support student use?
- Rapid deployment of laptops and teachers are changing pedagogy quickly, too
- Teachers are moving from classroom to classroom to see new practices
School Architecture — how do the laptops affect this?
- Changing from desks and rows to tables and chairs in South America
Printers — why can’t they print easily?
- Printers are disruptive, ink is expensive, and it encourages old ways of production and transmission of information (worksheets)
Support — how can educators help?
- Need more than just money from big corporations. Family, teachers, and students can use the machines for authentic purposes (USB plug in monitors and probes)
Education — there is a consensus that we need to change, but we are working with public funds. Also, many governments see teachers as obstacles, but we see them learning with the students. Teachers are our best collaborators. If all kids have the machine, then they are going to use it all the time. Saturation of laptops is the medical equivalent of vaccination.
Concluding comments — this is a project not about laptops, but about students and teachers.

Reflections

The juxtaposition of us, as educators concerned about social justice and equitable access, sitting in the cavernous conference hall of a casino on the strip in Las Vegas did not elude me. Here we were, with our $1000 (or $2000 or $3000 laptops), writing from America’s heart of conspicuous consumption about how “little green machines” are working around the world to empower youth as producers of knowledge, media, and culture. In a town where one is inundated by only a few views of what counts as culture, we had to buy into that part of the illusion to be able to sit in the room with an educator who is, literally, changing the world from a grassroots level.

Dr. Battro, as both an MD and PhD, shared a unique perspective with us on why the laptops have to be in the hands of every child. What public health officials understand about vaccinations are that they are not helpful at all unless everyone gets them. In that sense, it would not serve to only give laptops to some children, or to stop after this initial roll out is complete. This program is designed to be sustainable, a educational inoculation for generations to come.

My question for him was about the imminent release of Windows XP for the laptop. His response: it doesn’t matter to me. In other words, it really is about the literacies enable by the machine, not the particular tools. I will be interested in seeing how that plays out, especially if XP goes open source.

Well, there was a lot of information from that session. Even as I reread it a week later and half a continent away, on the cusp of another conference, I am still intrigued by the core message that this is not a laptop initiative, it is an educational initiative. This can not be underestimated and gives me pause to think about the ways that I continue to frame discussions of technology and literacy, and reminds me that I need to play with my own children as they teach me about their laptops.

Beginning to Think About Fall 2008 Courses

It is just barely spring break here (well, break at least, if not spring) and I am already turning my attention somewhat to the fall. I have been asked to adapt two existing CMU courses into ones focusing on digital writing. Here is what I have come up with so far:

ENG 460 – Current Issues in English: 21st Century Literacies

The study of English continues to evolve in the twenty-first century, based on changes in information communication technologies and the underlying social relations that they allow. Students in this course will explore print, oral, visual, digital, and critical literacies such as blogging, social networking, web-based collaborative writing, and multimedia authoring in relation to their own inquiry projects.

For this course, the main goal seems to be that students create a final research project, a capstone to their English major. So, I hope to attract students who are moderately interested in technology so that we can hit the ground running. I imagine that this group would go through many of the same steps that I am going through with my ENG 315 students this spring (starting a blog, wiki, and social network) and that they would quickly organize themselves around affinity groups. I would take special care to teach them about tools that would be useful in researching (social bookmarking, Zotero, Google Notebook, Scribe Fire) and the topics would largely remain their own, although I am sure that they would be influenced somewhat by the readings and technologies.

I am not sure what to use as a reading collection for this course (or the one below, for that matter). Right now, I am leaning towards only using open access journals and other web resources. Somehow, I want to use the MacArthur series on digital learning, although that could come in to play more in the other course.

Also, the main goal for students is to develop a quality research project, and I would act as a coach for that project. Thus, I need to think about a book that talks about research, yet in a way that makes it engaging and interesting. Right now, I am leaning towards The Craft of Research, although I don’t know if that is too “grad studentish” and if their might be something better for advanced undergrads.

ENG 402 – Rhetoric and Argumentation: Digital Rhetoric

By examining the histories, communities, and designs of digital spaces, this course will relate the rhetorical tradition of argumentation to contemporary rhetorics enabled by information communication technologies. Students will develop multimodal arguments based on issues such as online identity, the digital divide, intellectual property rights, gaming, civic engagement, and online communities.

For this course, I am going to build off the work of my dissertation director and mentor, Danielle DeVoss. She has an outstanding course in Digital Rhetoric already designed, and I would like to follow her lead in terms of the general direction of the course and the overall outcomes. As I mentioned above, I feel strongly that as much of the course material as possible will be open access, so I want to use the MacArthur series as touchstone for the units in this course.

I am also thinking about doing a digital literacy autobiography in this course, utilizing digital storytelling as a means for accomplishing that goal. Bonnie Kaplan and I are already talking about that. Also, I think that it will be important for this class especially (and maybe the 460 group, too), to be thinking about design issues. I just got the third edition of Robin Williams’ Non-Designers Design Book (with color!), and I am leaning heavily towards having my students investing in that text for this course.

Clearly, I will have to do some additional thinking for both of these courses in the months to come. If you have ideas about how I can make these courses stronger, I would really appreciate hearing them.

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