New Media – Page 4 – Digital Writing, Digital Teaching

Composing Community

My friend and RCWP colleague, Marcus Brown, has been working for about a year to open the Village Summit in the house next door to his Lansing home. You can read about many of the trials and tribulations that Marcus, his wife, and everyone involved in creating the Village Summit have had to endure in this article from the Lansing State Journal.

In trying to figure out a way that I could help Marcus and his cause, he suggested that I spend some time with him and help develop a website for the center that highlights its services and activities. And here is where the power of digital writing comes into the picture…

Marcus and I began talking about this last year and began a Google Site for his organization. As it does, time slipped by, we both neglected the website for a long while, and kind of forgot about it. But, when talking with him over breakfast in December, and trying to figure out how I could help, he began discussing all the ways in which we wanted to use a website to reach out to his community — people in his neighborhood helping with the Village Summit, other community organizations, the Lansing Mayor’s Office and City Council, and beyond. I was thinking about the software that he could use to compose this site, immediately moving my mind to the suite of tools that Google offers including Sites, Picasa, Maps, and Calendar. After working together for the better part of two hours, we updated the site, adding images, maps, and a calendar, not to mention a good deal of Marcus’s writing and poetry that show his passion for education and serving his community.

And, so, in less than two hours, the Village Summit had a (revised) website.

On the one hand, we could look at this as nothing remarkable. Yep, we have Google Sites and can insert plug-ins and, wow, doesn’t that make life easier for us when we make web pages.

Yet, in digging a little deeper and thinking about the socio-cultural, technical, and political literacy practices associated with how Marcus composed a site about a community center for a variety of audiences and purposes, I find the digital writing task in which the two of us were engaged to be quite fascinating. To be sure, even a few years ago, he could have created a similar site with a variety of web-based tools or software. It would have taken awhile, and he would have likely had to use a site like Geocities that put ads on his work (or buy a domain).

But, using this suite of Google tools, and having a specific set of purposes and audiences in mind, he was able to compose a multimedia text — a website that employs text, links to videos, images, and maps — to distribute his message. Composing community. All in about two hours. In less time than it used to take us to design, produce content for, and upload a basic website using Dreamweaver and FTP.

And, it’s free.

And, it’s collaborative, so others can add content.

And, it’s a public voice for a community that, even a few years ago may not have had the time or resources to develop a web-based message.

To me, as a teacher of digital writing, this was really an epiphany. Yes, of course I knew that anyone could hop online and make a site, or a blog, or a wiki, or a twitter account. Yes, I realized that our digital writing can be collaborative and shared widely. Yet, I didn’t think very clearly, until that day when Marcus and I met, about the power of digital writing — in really just a moment — to compose entire communities, to bring something into existence in ways that would have been difficult or impossible even a few years ago. I had heard of it happening with different tools, over time. But, in just under two hours, we were able to take what Marcus had started a year ago as a dream, and what we initially tried to capture on the web last summer, and brought them both together.

For me, watching Marcus connect his many literacy practices and personal passions to create this website show the heart of what it means to be multiliterate in a digital world.

Thanks, Marcus, for reminding me of it, and for all that you do to serve your community.

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Framing an Approach to the Digital Writing Workshop

After a wonderful week in Philly and while reflecting on my experiences at the NWP Annual Meeting, “Digital Is” Conference, and NCTE Convention, I was fortunate enough to engage with a Michigan colleague who, as a part of her master’s program, is doing an inquiry project on establishing her own digital writing workshop. She had picked up my book (thanks!) and then had some questions for me, specifically related to her teaching context. With her permission, I share excerpts of our email conversation here in hopes that it may be useful for some of you attempting to establish digital writing workshops in your own classrooms and schools. The exchange begins with her first question, and I have indented my responses for clarity.

1. Access is my biggest issue. Currently, I share a laptop cart of 20 with the whole school (about 220 kids). I do have 5 computers in my classroom, but I am unable to sign out the cart on most days, leaving me one day a week (to compete with the whole school) to sign out the laptops. I am currently dreaming and searching for grants to get more computers for my own classroom, but access continues to be an issue. Not all of my students have access to computers or internet at home, and most aren’t able to use a computer during the school day. (The competition to use one of the classroom computers can be pretty stiff, especially since many of my students have computer usage written into their IEP… leaving all the others without class time access.) How does one go “fully digital” without access? Do I make blogging their weekly writing a requirement and then have them come in during lunch or after school? Or do I wait on that part until I know everyone has fair access?

I am in a fairly fortunate position… my class sizes are small. But how much do I push the envelope?

You have two problems here — the immediate and long term need for access. So, I will address both.

First, for the short term, no, you should not wait. Kids, and parents, are resourceful, and if you create an assignment and give them a fair amount of time (one post per week, with one response to a peer, perhaps), then I think that it is more than fair to require that as homework. If you make extra time available at lunch or after school, in addition to the one day a week that they have in your class, then this is even more fair. Sadly, we will never have equal access (which is what I think you mean be “fair access”) and I don’t think that should preclude students engaging in digital writing. So, your plan is reasonable. Push the envelope, not only because you know it is pedagogically sound, but because you know that students can rise to these expectations so long as you make them reasonable.

A more long term question is embedded in your desire to get grants to buy more machines. With tools like netbooks and iPod touches as very low cost, that might be your best entry point for a one-to-one system. Honestly, you won’t have full access in your classroom unless your school supports a building-wide initiative, or you get your own for your classroom. So, that is an admirable goal, but I would really encourage you to push for a school-wide initiative in order to make substantive changes in the ways that students and your colleagues engage with technology. You might want to look at this book to help make an argument about why and how laptops can support student learning: Warschauer, M. (2006). Laptops and literacy: Learning in the wireless classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

In short, you are thinking about this in all the right ways. Trying to make things fair for all of our students is the sign of a passionate teacher, and I appreciate your efforts. That said, I can understand why you feel you are not being fair. One blog post a week, I can assure you, is a fair assignment, and one that moves your students in the right direction to becoming digital writers.

2. Some of my parents are concerned about their child’s off task behavior while on the internet. One parent has demanded that we not let her child use the computer at school at all, because she can’t be monitored well enough. This child is only in 6th grade, so I will continue to have her for 2 more years. Any ideas to help sway her parents?

The best response that I have heard to this is from a colleague, Bud Hunt (who blogs at http://budtheteacher.com/blog/). Basically, he says that it’s not the internet that makes the kid go to Facebook/IM/game sites/etc. It’s the kid. Your job is to help teach the kid to be productive, ethical, and responsible online. But, that’s part of her parents’ job, too. And, filtering/censoring the internet is not going to solve that. Keeping her offline at school, in short, is not going to help her be a better digital writer nor is it going to help her learn behaviors that are going to make her a good digital citizen. We have to recognize that kids, and all of us, can and should have time to play and explore online, and that should be balanced with doing work. This is true offline as well. So, your job is to help the parents see that it’s not the internet that is distracting their daughter, it’s their daughter that’s distracting their daughter. Show them what you are asking her to do, talk about how that should be engaging her, and then discuss what other reasons might be present for why she is not engaging in the digital writing task (is she a struggling writer? are other kids in the class not responding to her writing? other?)

3. What do you say to those that value the very traditional 5 paragraph essay “make my kid ready for the MEAP and ACT” kinds of writing, and do not believe that digital story telling, podcasting, and creating PSAs will help their child learn the so called “nuts and bolts” of writing? Thankfully, I do not get a lot of that at my school… but I am sure others face it quite a bit.

Like crafting a blog post, composing a digital story, or writing a letter, the writing a 5 paragraph essay is one type of genre that students need to master for a specific writing context. My argument for focusing on digital writing is simple — use the MAPS heuristic and help students talk about the mode, media, audience, purpose, and situation of a given writing task, then use that language across tasks. So, as they compose a blog post, talk with them about the similarities and differences between writing that post as compared to a traditional essay. When kids understand the rhetorical choices that they are making, then they will be better able to discern how and why to make these choices.

Moreover, if kids are engaged in authentic writing tasks through digital storytelling and other means, then it will give them more fodder to choose from for these exams. That is, if they are passionately writing about their own ideas in a variety of other contexts, then when it comes time to perform on the state test, then they will have a variety of ideas to choose from. Rather than drilling them with decontextualized prompts each day, engage them in real writing, and they will be able to craft an essay when they need to.

Beyond that, one footnote. The best MEAP essays are NOT five-paragraph ones. I know that you know this, but point parents to the MEAP released items and talk with them about what the best essays look like. Talk with your kids about it, too. Then, see how that type of essay writing can be fostered by making good rhetorical choices (ala the choices one makes as a digital writer).

4. Just for fun…
What has been your favorite digital writing workshop activity to experience?
What activity has been the most valuable as far as engaging students in writing, both in and out of class?

I love digital storytelling. Love creating them. Love teaching them.

That said, my favorite and most valuable activity is having my students create a writer’s profile. I am copying and pasting the next few paragraphs from a blog post I made on the Ning a few months back…

At the beginning of each writing class that I teach, I invite students to “interview” each other with Nancie Atwell’s writing survey from In the Middle. While they are interviewing each other, I walk around the room and, with their permission, take their picture with a digital camera. This encourages some offline collaboration that then turns into the basis for their online relationships as readers and responders.

After the interviews, they then take the answers to the questions that they gave, and begin to create an individual page with an autobiographical profile on our class wiki. Before class begins, I have already created a list of students on a page of the wiki, so that they can then link their profile to the class list.

Often times, over the course of the semester, this profile page grows as they add their writing territories (Atwell), responses to a “50 questions” activity I lead them through,” and links to the writing pieces that they are developing over the semester. Also, other students can go into the wiki and comment on each other’s profiles, including responses to writing. These profile pages grow and change over the semester, just as they grow and change as writers.

Two examples of these class pages linked to individual profiles can be found in my ENG 315 course and this summer’s Chippewa River Writing Project.

Thanks for supporting me on my quest to “digitize” my writing workshop!

You are welcome, and thanks for taking the next steps — I applaud your enthusiasm and professionalism. I look forward to hearing about your work.

Cross-posted on the Digital Writing Workshop Ning.

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Notes from “Erasing Copyright Confusion” at NCTE 2009

Joyce Valenza, Renee Hobbs, Kristin Hokanson, and Michael RobbGrieco

Center for Social Media

Renee Hobbs, Temple — What is the purpose of copyright?
- Protect intellectual property
- Ownership, profit
- Authors’ right
In fact, the purpose of copyright is to promote creativity, innovation, and the spread of knowledge
- Owners have pushed for longer length of copyright
How we Cope as Educators with Copyright
- “See no evil” teachers — don’t examine copyright issues at all
- “Close the door” teachers — know that there is something to copyright, yet keep it private
- “Hyper-comply” teachers — they hold on to this idea more strongly for their students than themselves
When I use creative materials, which concepts apply?
- Attribution — citing your sources (an academic community’s normative conventions that they agree upon to acknowledge other’s work)
- Plagiarism — not acknowledging source material used in your work
- Infringement — copying another’s work in violation of the law
- Fair Use — the legal use of copyrighted works without permission or payment
- Licensing — Asking permission and paying a fee
Copyright balances the rights of owners with the rights of users
- Owners get to control how their work is controlled and distributed for a limited use of time
- As users, however, we have some rights, too
- All those things you knew about the “30 second rule,” the “10% rule,” the “45 day rule” are not the law
  - The charts that you see, they are not the law — they are negotiated agreements that have “the appearance of positive law”
  - The guidelines actually limit our understandings of fair use
  - You can use copyrighted material in a variety of ways — criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship AND creative work
  - Peter Jazi — the benefits to society outweigh the private costs to the copyright holder, or else copyright law becomes a form of private censorship
Michael RobbGrieco, Temple — Responding to the Rise of Remix Culture: Challenges and opportunities for teaching, learning, and literacy
- Are you a part of remix culture?
  - Build on others?
  - Quote passages?
  - Do you have a website?
- Our students are fully immersed in a remix culture
  - Remix is how our students add their own personal experience to the wider culture and make their experience known to others
  - Can remix perpetuate cultural norms that are oppressive?
  - Critical remix for democracy, dialogue, and exchange
  - Single Ladies in Mayberry
- Develop media literacy skills
  - Balancing producer and consumer identities
  - Can create shallow engagement without critical interpretation (this is where educators come in)
  - How do we realize the potential of fair use while also facing the challenges that are present?
  - How can we be critical with our students and invite interpretation and argument?
  - Michael’s video: Copyright, What’s Copyright?

Kristin Hokanson, Upper Merion High School
- What does it mean to add value to other people’s work?
- Use of Flickr images for a biology project
- Use of Dave Matthews “Gravedigger” with Spoon River Anthology
- Media Lab’s “Teach Them to Reason” tool
- Ending Copyright Confusion Wiki
- Attribution is an ethical practice, not a legal one; citing sources doesn’t let you off the hook
- Fair use is a reasoning process that requires critical thinking; context and situation determine how fair use applies.
- Am I creating something new (through transformative use), or am I redistributing (which is, in contrast, a violation of the law)?
Joyce Valenza, Springfield Township High School
- Dorothy Fair Use Video
- Copyright Friendly Wiki
This project is a user-rights movement
- The Code of Best Practices for Fair Use is NCTE’s official policy on fair use
- The guidelines that have been created since the implementation of the 1970s copyright law were brought about from negotiations by the media industry; the guidelines that were created are not set down as the law

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Notes from “Integrating New Literacies into Classroom Practice and the Resulting Impact on Site Leadership”

NWP 2009 Annual Meeting

This session invited four teacher consultants/tech liaisons to discuss their personal experiences with technology and the ways in which these
experiences led to changes in their site’s work. Knowing two of these teachers through my work with NWP’s 2007 Tech Matters Institute, and
one as my wife and tech liaison for our site, I found the stories shared here very powerful. Each one of them talked about a key
technology and professional development experience that launched them into new work, both in their classroom and at their site.

Shasta Looper, Upstate Writing Project
- Used Voice Thread in her summer institute in 2008, then incorporated it into her classroom through the use of a persuasive writing assignment
Paige Cole, Red Clay Writing Project
- Experience at Tech Matters in 2007 which led to creation of tech team, the “Army of Dorkness”
- Advanced institutes came from Tech Matters mini-grant
- Learned iMovie and other technologies in support of classroom and site work
Joe Conroy, NWP at Rutgers
- Looking at the history of the writing project’s website over time; Joe’s history as webmaster
- Use of Yahoo groups; began there many years ago and it has worked for us
- But, the website didn’t filter into the site’s work — then attended Tech Matters in 2007
- How can I use Web 2.0 in the classroom without having access to Web 2.0?
  - Podcasts were still accessible, use of NPR’s This I Believe and Audacity via Portable Apps
- Shared work at site’s mid-winter writing conference through a technology strand and “Tech Thursday” workshop series
  - Topics for future Tech Thursdays
    - Bulletin boards for Socratic Seminars
    - Podcasting
    - Ignite
    - Voice Thread
    - Wikis
    - Blogging
- The site has integrated technology into the core of “what we do.”
Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, Upper Peninsula Writing Project and Chippewa River Writing Project
- 14-year veteran special education teacher, TL for UPWP
- Story about involvement in summer institute by organizing pictures in 2005 SI
  - Growth is not linear; there are all sorts of influences that impact your growth in technology use over time (created concept
    map/timeline with VUE and shared in Skim)
- Site development at local level and through participation in the national network
  - Summer institute to annual meeting to advanced institutes next summer
  - Also incorporated outside funding from state professional organization grants to fund tech team, many of them TCs, in one school
- Key Themes
  - Accessibility — trying new technologies and being willing to change; the issues are difficult for all of us in our own classrooms
  - Continuity — meeting regularly and sharing ideas and questions about tech use
  - Site Development — developing technology work at your site is a messy process
    - We are in a time where there is more questions than there are answers
    - You have to have patience and flexibility when you are in the tech world and with site development

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Notes from “The Social Media Portfolio: Using Technology to Promote Meta-cognitive Skill Development” at NWP’s Digital Is

The Social Media Portfolio: Using Technology to Promote Meta-cognitive Skill Development

At NWP’s Digital Is

Rafi Santo, Amana Kaskazi, and Shonell Richmond

Global Kids
- 20 Years in existence and focusing on significant global issues
- Issues: Local to global and global to local understanding
- Leadership: Skills necessary to affect change
- Technology: How does new media contribute to our mission of global citizenship; our mission to empower youth voice aligned well with the use of technology
- Youth: We work with youth in a variety of contexts, both locally and from a distance through technologies and in virtual worlds
- Afterschool: Need to overcome the stereotypes of afterschool technology programs that create “super geeks”; our students are not geeks, necessarily, but there is something much broader about how to use technology in these contexts
Media Masters
- Goals for addressing the challenges to media literacy
  - Giving students the means and skills to produce media who otherwise might not be able
  - Discussing ethical issues surrounding digital media production and participation
  - Promote active student reflection on skill development
- Creating a “digital transcript“creating a portfolio with Voice Thread
  - Examining media use (music, web, etc)
  - Visualization, negotiation, and other key themes
  - Recognize the skill, utilize the skill, and enact the skill (Do it, recognize it, talk about it)
- Discussion
  - Specific example of Harry Potter reading to discuss copyright, appropriation, and “whole life learning”
  - What can the assessment tell us — about students’ change in media literacy skills, attitudes, and abilities?
  - How can an assessment like this work in school contexts (very qualitative, not quantitative)?
  - How can we connect this to other academic skills?
  - Student preparation for portfolios — having earned the badges, it was easier to identify the project that connected to the skill, but then we had to add a reflection to it, and that was more difficult
  - Extending the assessments into different contexts; using this portfolio with meta-cognitive elements for other purposes, such as college admissions
  - Helping make explicit for young people the ways in which we are asking them to think
  - Power of ownership and the ability to hear someone’s voice, as well as the commitment behind the voice
  - How does having a framework help make the portfolio more powerful?
  - Using writing to teach critical thinking in different content areas

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Notes from Danielle Nicole DeVoss’s Opening Keynote at NWP’s “Digital Is…”

Danielle Nicole DeVoss asks us to think about what digital was then and is now…

Digital is…

Networked — we compose in networked spaces
Collaborative — people are able to connect and create through these networks (LolCats)
Multimodal — typography, kinetic type, digital stories
Re-Mediated — taking a media object and recreating it so it moves across media; moving across text to audio to video (StarzBunnies)
Remixed — taking bits and pieces and parts of other media to create new messages and meaning
Policed — digital millennium copyright act; You Tube copyright issues (Fair Use)
(Requires) Critical thinking — because of the visuals (Harry Potter, Redbook)
(Can be) Democratic — Iran and Twitter, YouTube Debates

Writing is Digital — this is, as Elyse put it, our moment.

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Reflecting on the Purposes of Digital Writing and Professional Development

Over the past few weeks, I have had a few opportunities to reexamine my thinking about the purposes of digital writing and professional development. As Sara begins her doctoral program at MSU and has started to share her own thinking through her “Connecting, Collaborating, Continuing to Learn” blog, it has given me pause to think about why and how we enact professional development in the ways that we do, especially if we are hoping to have teachers pursue (improve? discover?) the ways in which Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) can affect their teaching. Sara’s interests align with my own:

Connecting, Collaborating, Continuing to Learn » Thinking Out Loud

Teacher networks and professional learning communities have been shown to be very effective models for encouraging teacher professional development. These networks are successful due to the relationships teachers build, exposure to inquiry based research and the continuity of the professional development projects. Now there is a new phenomenon: the use of technology to enhance the notion of developing a personal learning network. Technology, in particular social networks, empower teachers to connect with other professionals who have the same interests and issues in a continual learning environment. The digital environment allows for customization of professional development in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner.

So, more recently, I’ve been thinking about how we can do this. What do we do to create networked learning opportunities for digital writing, especially when the process of digital writing is both part of the activity itself and an outcome that we hope to achieve? What can we reasonably expect teachers to know and be able to do as a result of particular professional learning opportunities, both online and face to face? I have been thinking about this as a result of at least four different PD invitations I have been pursuing in the past month, and here are some of my ideas.

One invitation I received was from NCTE, and I was able to present a webinar, Creating Your Digital Writing Workshop, about two weeks ago. Like the one I did last year, I tried to make this webinar informative and interactive, providing some “hands on” digital learning with some discussion of theory and some sharing of student examples, courtesy of Aram Kabodian. So, we tried to use the chat room, the white board, audio responses, and the ability to stream video during that session. Overall, I found the webinar to be a successful experience, but there were a few questions raised about the value of digital writing and its relation to the rest of the curriculum (including standardized testing) that we need to cover. One particular criticism was that digital storytelling could be considered a bit “plug and play.”

My response at the time may not have been as articulate, but I basically feel that we (and our students) get from the process of digital writing what we put in to it. Simplistic, I know. But, the idea is that if we have students just grab some photos, throw them in a timeline, and simply narrate over top, then yes, it is plug and play. But, if we really engage them in a recursive process, ask them to examine the choices that they are making about which words, images, and transitions they are choosing, then we can really focus on teaching them how to digitally write. Sadly, I don’t think that I was able to get that across in the webinar, and that may have been an issue of format and time constraints, so I wonder how I could do that better in future PD events such as this — how do you invite teachers into both the pedagogy and the process of digital writing through an online experience such as a webinar?

My second recent experience was a presentation to pre-service teachers about the digital writing workshop. In this session, I was able to do in a face-to-face setting what I had hoped to accomplish online with the webinar. The face-to-face setting, as one would expect, was richer in the sense that I was able to converse with the pre-service teachers directly and gauge their reactions to what we were discussing. I also had two hours, allowing them time to talk in small groups so they could have more time to process their own thinking. As I reflect on the experience of doing the webinar — and the value that it has in distributing a professional development experience widely — and the local experience of being in one classroom, I am torn. I wish that there were enough ways (and bandwidth) to have people engage in some of the smaller group discussions through a webinar. And, I wish that it were practical enough in the classrooms in which I was teaching to use some of the technologies we had in the webinar (such as a chat backchannel and interactive whiteboard). Not sure where I am going with this particular series of thoughts right now except to say that I do feel that teaching digital writing seems to be best when there are some elements of both online synchronous and face-to-face elements involved.

A third experience that is coming soon will be my hosting of three episodes of Teachers Teaching Teachers, all featuring my colleagues who shared lessons and ideas in the book. My goals for this PD, in conjunction with the Ning that I have set up, is to provide the teachers who are doing this work in their classrooms the opportunity to share what is working and engage in a conversation with other colleagues about questions and concerns that they have related to teaching digital writing. To me, this on-going conversation — both the actual conversation that happens during the webcast and the follow up that can happen on the Ning — seems to be a hybrid model where people may not meet face to face, but they do get to share their ideas, then go back to listen again, and continue the conversation. As we think about ways to develop TPACK, it is this recursive process that I find most inviting for novices and experts alike.

A final set of experiences will come through a variety of upcoming professional development sessions that I will do as a part of CRWP and other conference presentations, including UPRA next week. In these face to face sessions (some with computer access and some without), I think that emphasizing the ways in which digital writing changes our rhetorical contexts as writers will be very important, and it is that focus that I think helps keep the focus on the writer, then the writing, and finally on the technology. My hope is that engaging in these sessions, where I will be able to give some background and show some examples, then inviting teachers into conversations about how and why they could teach digital writing, will then inspire them to get online, join the community in the Ning, listen to the webcasts, and find resources from other interested colleagues.

All of this is just to say that I think professional development for teachers — like all other industries — is undergoing some changes. We can’t just say that it should all happen online (synchronously or asynchronously), or only count face to face sessions (through PD or grad classes) as a means to an end. Like their students, teachers need choices about how, when, and why to engage in learning. My thoughts are still evolving on this and, like Sara, I look forward to hearing other ideas about how you are helping your colleagues engage in digital writing and professional learning.

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Notes from “Digital Storytelling: Enhancing Language, Visual, and Media Literacies”

Digital Storytelling: Enhancing Language, Visual, and Media Literacies

MRA 2009 Presentation

Ledong Li, Tingfeng Luo, Wen Wu, Fan Zhang, Oakland University

What’s Your Story?

Stories Surround Us

What is digital storytelling?

Daniel Meadows: “short personal multimedia tales told
from the heart”

Educational Use of Digital Storytelling

Focus on specific topic and contain a particular point of
view

Topics range from personal tales recounting historical
events, exploring life in one’s own community, to the search for life
in other corners of the universe

They can vary in length, but in education they typically
last between 2-10 minutes

Procedure

Write script

Collect assets

Create storyboard

Draft, edit, and finalize

Publish it as a movie file

Hardware

Computer

External hard drive/flash drive

Headset with microphone

Scanner

Digital Camera/Digital Video Camera

Facilities with access to internet

Software

Movie Tools: Flash, Premiere, Photostory, Movie Maker,
iMovie

Imaging Tools: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, iPhoto

Audio: Audition, iTunes, Garageband, Audacity

Players: Windows Media Player, iTunes, VLC, Flash

Why digital storytelling?

Storytelling has been important to individuals since the
early days of civilization

In education, storytelling remains a way to teach subtle
points and make elusive abstractions concrete

With the latest development of computers, multimedia
systems, and the Internet, “images, sounds, animations, and video
clips” can be brought together with “texts,” providing a wide range of
story formats

The Changing World

Friedman, “The World is Flat”

Globalization 1.0 (1492 – 1800) Countries/trade

Globalization 2.0 (1800 – 2000) Companies/labor

Globalization 3.0 (2000 – Present) Individuals/internet

Moving from web 1.0 to web 2.0

Mode: Reading to writing

Primary Unit of Content: Page to post

State: Static to dynamic

Viewed through: Web browser to Browsers, RSS Readers,
phones

Architecture: Client server to web services

Content created by: Web coders to everyone

Domain of: Geeks to “mass amateurization”

What does this mean for learning?

Obvious answers

New technologies and tools

Different workflow processes

Competition and expectations of end users

Less obvious answers

New expectations for the relationship between learners
and instructors

New modes of writing and communication

New literacies

Web 2.0 to Literacy 2.0

Web 2.0 – business model focused on a service rather than
product that values participation, collaboration, and distribution

Literacy 2.0 – students are appropriating digital
applications, networks, and services; they are developing new ways of
reading, writing, viewing, listening, and recording — new ways that
embody this 2.0 environment

Literacy 2.0 necessarily involves extensive
participation, collaboration, and distribution of expertise and
intelligence

Purpose of our Study

Engaging graduate students (in-service teachers) and
undergraduates (pre-service teachers) in how to make digital stories

Examine the potential of digital storytelling used to
enhance traditional and new literacies

Bridging literacy methods, changing perspectives, how to
inform instruction

Roles that participants played

Writers

Text editors

Visual designers

Image editors

Voice recording specialists

Audio editing

Movie producers

Impacts on education

Practical and learner-centered

Meets ed tech standards

Enhances literacies: language, visual, media

Helps build useful skills in web 2.0/literacy 2.0:
participation, collaboration, distribution

Announcing MIT’s International Journal of Learning and Media

Today, I received an exciting announcement from Kellie Bramlet with MIT Press Journals. In addition to the series of books that they released last year with a Creative Commons license, they are now offering the following new journal:

The International Journal of Learning and Media

MIT Press, in cooperation with The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE), is pleased to announce the publication of the first issue of The International Journal of Learning and Media (IJLM). A first of its kind, the journal is devoted to examining the intersection of media and learning in multiple contexts. Volume 1, Issue 1, edited by David Buckingham, Tara McPherson and Katie Salen, is now available for FREE at http://ijlm.net . While IJLM retains the peer-review process of a traditional scholarly journal, its editorial vision and electronic-only format permit more topical and polemic writing, visual and multimedia presentations, and online dialogues. IJLM will allow the broad community interested in digital media and learning to share its insights using the tools of digital media. Sections of the journal range from shorter pieces on critical issues of a timely nature, through longer essays on keywords shaping the landscape of learning and media today, to traditional peer-reviewed scholarly articles.

http://ijlm.net is currently in its beta stage and we welcome your comments, questions and thoughts on how to improve the site. Please contact us by clicking on the Feedback button in the upper right corner at http://ijlm.net

The development and publication of IJLM is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of its 5-year, $50 million, initiative in digital media and learning.

Notes from “Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities”

Notes from “Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities” – Antonio Viva

Thinking about new humanities
- Context, conversation, collaboration
- How do we educate our students for success in the web 2.0 world?
- Can we harness the power of social media to provide students with a vehicle for exploring and creating original content?
Old School Creative Writing
- Genre based instruction
- Anthology as primary class text
- Student work not published
- Blogging/journaling
- Assessments were traditional and rubric based
- Mostly fiction and poetry
- Workshop style with peer editing and review
- In depth study of literary elements and terms as a vehicle for creation
What is the basis of the new humanities?
- Richard Miller’s presentation to MLA, December 2008
- See Digital Digs for a reflection and embedded video
Personal paradigm shift
- Communicating instantly and globally
- English is about human expression
- Humanists should be at the cutting edge of this
- Multimedia composition
Why should we reconsider thinking this whole thing? — connecting to panel discussion last night
- Creativity, collaboration, and courage
- Schools should be a place where student generate ideas
- Ability to try out new ideas
- Fostering new humanities rich environments
- Provide opportunities for students to convey concepts and original ideas through thoughtful technology rich collaboration
- Schools should be about communication
The WA Mash – Worcester Academy Mash Up
- What do we want to communicate?
- To whom and how best do we communicate this message?
- Model after Salon.com and Slate.com as an outlet for creative writing publication
Publishing Tools
- YouTube
- Flickr
- Facebook
- WordPress
- Twitter
Conversation with students about WAMash
- How do you get students engaged — turn some of the control of creating and sharing content over to the students
- What have you learned as a part of taking the class?
  - More technology
  - Enjoy writing more
- What does it mean to be a writer?
  - Before, I considered writing as an essay style, but now it has really expanded my horizons about writing and there are more ways than just essays and school work
  - What has changed for me is that I am a lot more willing to put myself out there for people to examine and I was questioning my own ability, but there are so many ways to express yourself in writing. I am more able to accept criticism now and having a good support group from peers and teacher.
  - For the past few years, just writing essays, now I have learned that I can express myself more; writing from different perspectives
  - Before the class, I thought that it was limited and you had to just write, but now I realize that writing is more about expressing and getting the word out there about something that you care about because people will listen. Writing is important, and I respect it. It is more of an art than I thought it was.
Thinking about change
- Change needs to be organic — comprehensive school change does not work
- It will cause chaos — people will not be doing substantive and good work with students
- Establish a culture for creativity, innovation, and the appetite to try new things are the norm
- Support the inventors, creative thinkers, risk takers, and innovators with resources, PD, and public accolades
- Don’t follow the trends, create them