Week 10 Assessment (BABR 10, 11, Johnson 9, Castek)

     Sorry for the novel.  I got inspired...pick one of the topics I discussed to continue a conversation that may build on my comments or take you in your own direction.  I've posted some questions in blue...if those interest you to extend a conversation, go for it, or add your own thinking.  Have a great week everyone!

     This week we read about using digital tools to provide formative responses to student writing and summative assessments of learning reflected by digital reading and writing.  We need to implement what we have come to know as best practices to move our students forward in their abilities to write.  You have heard it over and over…to become a better writer, one must write.  Writing takes practice.  There isn’t a short cut regarding this process.

     A take-away from our reading this week was the importance of feedback.  Feedback from those more experienced to help us articulate our thinking in words that are representative of our thought processes, content, and audience.  I’ve heard many times over that students hate writing due to the strict parameters that we place in what should be ones interpretation, response, and personal insights to the topic.  Thousands of articles, books, and video clips have centered on the dispositions that are being asserted for our 21^st century students.  The traits and abilities that are forecasted for our students now and in the future are creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and the ability to use these traits to communicate effectively with people situated globally, that view the world with various perspectives based on cultures different from our own. 

     To enable students to participate and practice in the skills and dispositions we know that are vital to the world of work (and outside of work), we must support and foster activities and processes that open the world to our students with the tools and guidance that reflect their future realities. Since my “rebirth” as I call it…my awakening of the fact that the role of teaching and teacher that I understood, is far from what I consider today to be one of best practices for our students.  Have you experienced an awakening in your teaching career?  When did your “awakening” happen, and what were the circumstances that led to your shift in mindset?”

     The Internet has become this generation’s defining technology for literacy and communication.  There is no doubt that new literacies redefine what it means to be literate in the 21^st century.  My awareness and knowledge of all the apps and digital tools leaves me feeling almost paralyzed due to being overwhelmed and excited at the same time, but it also made me realize how behind some of us are in our implementation of these tools.  Using many of these digital tools as they are intended, means our role as we once saw it, needs to change. 

    

     Meta-cognitive reflection is essential in fostering critical thinking, mindfulness, and awareness of our audience and use of social practices in context.  In order for this to occur, self-assessment must be in place.  Classrooms need to shift from teacher centered to student centered.  What are your beliefs in the changing role of the teacher?  Do you believe there should be a drastic shift in pedagogy to address new literacies and the role of teacher in the classroom?  If so, how do you envision the classroom and the purpose of the classroom teacher?

     Ideas as described in our reading support student centered classrooms by having students create their own rubrics (holistic or analytic) to foster accountability, ownership and motivation.  Static electronic feedback is a great source of collaboration and exchange in that the respondent is learning how to use language in a constructive way, while showing what they know through their content knowledge or perspective.  The writer learns that words carry meaning beyond ones intentions, and learning the power of language and voice based on different perspectives are valuable learning lessons for the future.  Classroom lessons using the applications of marginal commentary vs. intertextual commentary can only open windows to “the art of communication”.  I’m quite sure you have all experienced both marginal and intertextual commentary in regard to your work.  Was the type of commentary to be used discussed prior?  Did your receive intertextual commentary having wished it was marginal?  If you prefer one or both types of commentary, what are the factors that pertain to your preferences?

    Blogs and e-portfolios were two areas of focus for this week. Blogging has taken me on a journey of learning how to collaborate and exchange ideas. I realized that blogging was reflective of my abilities to synthesize and evaluate information whether the purpose was to be insightful, or as an exchange with another perspective.  I had to learn how to look within the text of those I was responding to.  I realized through my struggles to blog effectively, I was beginning my journey as a critical thinker, writer, and responder of text that would ultimately lay my foundation and awareness of content, perspective, and the skills to articulate what I knew or didn’t know.  I also realized (due to my conversations with Dr. Beach) that there may be content that has not reached a point of understanding, and the purpose of the exchange is to wrestle with the questions, articulate as best you can what you think you know, and work towards understanding with your peers, while being cognizant that each one of us is instilling our own background knowledge, experiences, and personal pedagogies in our posts. I realized blogging for academic purposes is a process to gain meaning through exchanges and perspectives. I began to look forward to the challenge.  Isn’t this what we are saying that our students must learn to do effectively and efficiently?  Writing in itself is an arduous task on its own, but constructing meaning through one another’s words and varied perspectives is hard.  Now imagine collaborating, problem solving, reasoning, and generating a synthesis based on mutual respect for varied opinions on a global level of communication?  That is what many, if not most of our students will be required to do on a daily basis.  Knowing the struggles we have as adults with this process of communication can only shed light on our instructional practices as we try and instill the skills and dispositions for new literacies in our students.  What has been your journey with blogging or other digital environments within your writing group or through another class?  Have you encountered struggles and frustrations when collaborating with other students to generalize ideas or synthesize information?  Perhaps this is a mode of communication that works for you?  What are the reasons you feel the way you do, and how would this impact your instructional practices?  Would you implement blogging within your curriculum frameworks?  Why or why not?

Week 9- Writing in Digital Spaces (Yim, Guzzetti, ILA, J 7, BABR 7)

Good Morning Wannabees! Hope everyone is doing well.

Below are our prompts for this week's discussion. My responses follow each question in wine colored font (infer as much as you'd like, however I assure you that I am currently sipping on a GIANT Diet Dr. Pepper, as caffeine is my best buddy these days).

Dr. Beach has asked us to address the following questions this week: 

1. For what kind of activity do you think it would be better to have students collaborate on a wiki?  For what kind should they collaborate on a blog?  Why? 

This question has me slightly stumped because I feel that they are two completely different entities with two very different purposes. From what I've read and personal experience, a blog is an individual's contribution of thoughts and ideas related to a specific topic. Others can reply or comment on the post, however I would not consider this to be collaboration. Perhaps I am misunderstanding and the idea is that the text is created collaboratively on another document (such as Google Docs) and then posted on a blog, but I feel like that's a different task. This class is my first experience actually writing within a blog myself, but my son James (you met him last class) wrote a blog in his First Grade class which he still talks about to this day!

As for a wiki, it is my understanding that a wiki is a website in which multiple people contribute/edit/revise the same site, which is collaborative by design. I am not sure if it is an optional setting or not, but the wiki that I have been a part of for several years now indicates which person contributed or edited each piece. This makes the accountability aspect very clear. 

As for what kind of activity would be better for each, I really have no idea. I think that the purpose of the activity would have to be pretty clearly examined to make this call. 

2. Look up your topic or look up New Literacies on Wikipedia. 

What did you find?  How accurate was it?  How do you know? 

(I am assuming that by "our topic" she is referring to the topic in which we are writing our chapter on, but if I have interpreted this wrong, please do not hesitate to correct me.)

I went ahead and looked up Project-Based Learning, which is the topic for my chapter. The information presented was accurate. It included references to research and other places where the information could be verified. I have a fairly decent knowledge of and experience with PBL, so I was able to identify that the information presented was accurate based on the background knowledge I had going into the reading. When reading the comments that were made about the entry, several readers criticized it as being slanted or "slick," as if the write was trying to sell PBL to the reader. I did not read it this way, but I can understand why someone who does not like PBL or is not familiar with the supporting research could. I'll be honest that I have on been on Wikipedia a handful of times prior to this, so I didn't even know that there was a "Talk" section for each article. 


3. Which of these ideas that you read about have you tried with your students? 

Which would you like to try with students? 

I will be very honest in saying that I haven't tried any of these ideas with my students. The one thing I could stretch a bit and say I have tried is the use of an eFolio. When I was teaching in Hawaii we had a standards-based report card and were required to keep a portfolio of our students work that reflected their abilities. I scanned my students work into the computer and kept these portfolios electronically, but they weren't interactive or anything. I've been out of the classroom for a few years now, but honestly, learning about all of these great tools and methods have me itching to go back into the classroom! 

I got really side tracked while looking at examples of blogs, vlogs, wikis, websites, and digital stories. I found a wiki that belongs to a Second Grade class in Canada that I think is awesome. It is several years old but contains all kinds of fantastic examples of the things we've been learning about this semester. The Owl Poems are really awesome! Be sure to click on the student portfolios at the bottom of the page to see how they used the wiki as an eFolio of their work. I would LOVE to have done something like this with my students when I was in the classroom! I am thinking that this is something I may want to try with my teachers, but I will have to think some more about the specifics and what I would want to include.


Additionally, I was thinking about our struggle with "conversation" via blogging and it sent me on a slight path of diversion. I'd like to know your thoughts on "one-size fits all" assignments, specifically in regards to those in digital spaces. Do you feel that there should be some element of choice regarding what tools are used to complete assignments or tasks, or do you feel that it is important for students to learn how to use the tools that you designate because you have selected them for a specific purpose? OR do you have a completely different opinion? 

The reason I bring this up is because as an instructional coach I work with teachers across the whole philosophical spectrum of learning, teaching, assessment, homework, etc. I have my own opinions, some of which are very strong, yet it is not my job to tell others what they are, but help them develop their own or reflect on their own based on student need and performance. So... if you're up for it, I'd like to hear what you think. :)

Week 8.2 -- Summaries

This thread is for us to post our summaries. Here's mine:

The W. Ian O'Byrne article, "Empowering Learners of the Reader/Writer Nature of the Digital Information Space" was a trip for me to read. It may be more useful to someone who is not my age. Having grown up with cassette tapes, I was able to "get" his metaphors, but as someone who came of-age with the Internet, it was strange to hear someone break down my free time as something that must be taught in class.

O'Byrne begins by telling the story of a boy who doesn't do well in class and has gotten in trouble for tagging his school's Facebook with some keywords that sent a lot of spam its way (they called it "hacking" lol); but the boy runs his own YouTube channel, plays video games with other people, and ships (some more of that lingo to look up) anime and manga online in his spare time, meaning he's highly literate. Rather than focusing on trying to teach traditional literacy to the boy who struggles at it (which I think is far more useful to him), O'Byrne uses him as a cautionary tale of a teacher not understanding his new literacies prowess to take advantage of it.

Anyway, personal opinion on his narrative aside, he did offer some good resources to the educator hoping to understand the read/write nature of the net to capitalize on it in the classroom:

The Online Research and Media Skills model of incorporating and understanding the interconnections between multiliteracies, multimodal design, and the web literacies offers three cornerstones to focus on when teaching these things (I would argue, when teaching this way):

• Online Collaborative Inquiry—A group of local or global learners who search, sift, and synthesize online information to collaborate and co-construct a text (O ’ Byrne & McVerry, in press ).
• Online Reading Comprehension—The skills, strategies, practices, and dispositions students need to locate, evaluate, and synthesize information during problem-based inquiry tasks (Leu et al., 2009 ).
• Online Content Construction—A process by which students construct, redesign, or remix texts by actively encoding and decoding meaning through the use of ever-shifting multimodal tools (O ’ Byrne, 2013 ).

The curriculum to this model can be found here for free: https://sites.google.com/site/ormsmodel/

He also offers this reference to better understand what skills make up a web-literate person.

Mozilla WebLiteracy Map located at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/WebLiteracyMap

As someone who hopes she got the best of both worlds between Gen-X and the Millenials, especially technology-wise, I agree with his caution at the end, warning us not to "schoolify" this kind of literacy.

It's playful. It's full of repurposing and remixing, reusing other people's so-called original creations to make another so-called original creation (they even have their own awards). There are even tools to help the n00bs learn how to remix their own. Even video games have remix-ability now. Those of you who had a little NES playtime in the past may enjoy Mario Maker for the Wii-U (Nintendo is known for making game systems that are easy to understand for the non-gamer too, so keep that in mind if you want to play it). Mario Maker is on the demo at Best Buy in Norman, if you want to try it out too.

And speaking of that link . . . Twitch. It's the best way to make a star out of someone using someone else's stuff. It's like YouTube for video gamers who want to stream games. YouTube is trying to catch up, but so far it's fail (not a typo, more online grammar for you--yes, fail is a noun now). It's also the best way for parents to understand what their kids are playing, so if you're not into interactive stories and online gaming, it can still make for fun TV.

Anyway, I went enough off topic that I'll wrap this up. Try out the links, though. Try things. Play, and remember, New literacies are playful--much like I'm sure books were when they became a thing.

Week 8.1 -- BABR 5, Ira critical literacy, Wood, Literacy circles, Kingsley, O’Byrne

Hi, everyone. I've been under the weather (and stressed beyond my limits, it seems) so this is a day late. This week is a little different. According to Dr. Beach's blog:

There are 5 articles and 1 chapter of BABR to read this week.  I'd like everyone to read the BABR chapter and the IRA Critical Literacy piece. Divide up the other 4 articles so each person reads 1 of the articles.  If there is only 3 in your group, leave out the Digital Lit Circles piece.  Then, the blog leader will lead a discussion on the common readings and summarize key points of his/her article and ask for connections to inquiry, research, critical thinking and the main readings.  The rest of the people in the group, as part of your response to the blog and your participation in the discussion will need to summarize your unique article and make connections to the theme of the week and the other readings.  Please use the following vocabulary in your discussions:  multiliteracies, curator, constructor, critical response, critique, online collaborative inquiry, searchability, annotations, integrate ideas, triangulate data.

So, this week, we need to divide the articles up. I was going to have everyone choose an article, but I know I appreciated it when John divvied up the apps for us, so in the interest of time, I'll just assign everyone an article to read.

John: Wood, et al., 2014 -- The Reading Teacher
Barbara: Kingsley, et al., 2014 -- Internet Inquiry
Mackinley: Digital Lit Circles
And I figured I'd take the O'Bryne article about the reader-writer in the digital age.

We are all supposed to read BABR and the IRA Critical Literacy article; and once our individual articles are read, we'll come back and summarize them here. However, we are also supposed to be talking "in person" in a virtual space this week, before the 18th, and summarizing it for Dr. Beach. I am in the PET/RCR training class this weekend and, since I work three jobs in addition to school, don't have much time to be able to meet with anyone this week. I do, however, have some time tonight and Thursday. If we can't do it those days, I'll get with Dr. Beach to see if there's a way you guys can all talk and I can make it up somehow.

One of the things I noticed in the IRA article was the repeated use of phrases like empowerment, collaboration, co-constructing knowledge, and so on. I love this. Now we are moving beyond what new literacies are and into what they can do and how they change the way we learn and communicate. So, Dr. Beach (in her infinite wisdom) has created a situation this week where we will be approaching "reading as a social collaborative practice," co-constructing a full knowledge of critical reading while critically reading and collaborating ourselves.

So, if you would, let's take today to decide when to virtually meet and, if you can, post your summaries (I know Barbara, like me, has very limited time to get all of this done with her sanity intact and I'm sure all of you are in the same boat, so lets get this hashed out). I'll be checking back throughout the day, but I am off to work right now, myself.

Have a great day, folks!

Week 7 - Inquiry (2)

Hi Wannabes,

As said, here is my follow up posting for this week's discussion. I curated this week's topic into three inquiries as below. Let's think about these questions; and any other inquiries, questions, or suggestions are welcome as always. :)

As for the question # 3 - technology tool assignment, I have categorized the tools in this week's readings into 4 groups and assign 1 tool for each category for one person. That means we have 4 tools on our hands to examine this week. As directed by Dr. Beach, please be a critical evaluator for each tools, apps, or sites and freely discuss here together. Questions to think about the tools would include, but are not limited to: what are the pros and cons of this app in your educational setting? at what phase of curriculum, can we incorporate that tool? what are challenges for both teachers and students? any ideas to use that tool more effectively in your setting?

Alight, 3 questions are here. :)


1. Let’s define the “inquiry learning.” How would you define it based on this week’s reading?    

    As the generative synthesis argues, let’s expand our thought altogether by locating,  

    integrating, repurposing, and curating our discussion about the concept.

2. What do you think about the notion of generative synthesis by DeSchyver? He argued that litbot would do the synthesis meaning more and more, so that humans will have longer time for “generative synthesis.” This argument sounds great for me because which fosters much higherER-order thinking time for human beings, beyond the traditional Bloom’s Taxonomy. At the same time, however, it would be very vague to determine or verify the acceptable boundaries of generative synthesis. I really like the concept of generative synthesis, because it seems to support critical thinking in temrs of post-structuralism. Nonetheless, in reality, we want to assess or grade our students' generative synthesized answers. So, at what point, can we draw the line?

3. As Dr. Beach mentioned, BABR chapters and other readings this week just overwhelmed me with the huge piles of apps, sites, and tools. Using the discussion leader’s “authority J,” I would like to curate the bombarded list more beneficial - I believe - for our group. So, I want to assign 4 apps for each of Wannabes based on the categories I curated just as below:

Again, any comments are more than welcome! Thanks all! :)

Week 7 - Inquiry (1)

Hi Wannabes,

1. As emailed, I will post more questions today before your dinner time. To start off our discussion however, I will give you a question to brainstorm our discussion. My first question is that Johnson book showed us an interesting case, where a student was constantly asking tremendous questions so that he/she bothers the lesson objectives. Have you had this type of situation in you classroom (or, in a meeting room for Jacqueline)? Who was he/she? What did he/she do? How did you handle it? Or, have you had any students asking a bit strange question, yet very critical, which makes other classmates silently yell at him/her? If you had no experiences so far, I have some actually, how would you deal with this type of critical, but a bit "bothering" student for the class as a whole in the future?

I'll be back with more questions and tech assignment plan. Thanks! :)