Literacy Update

My Short Manifesto on Digital Living (part 1)–comments welcome

peggysemingson — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 18:12:08 +0000

Most of our lives are or are going digital. I am open to this and embrace technological changes in the present and future.

Here are some of the ways I use digital tools in my daily life and my beliefs.

1.. Communication: text, email (work and email) is mostly online. Discussion boards on online classes, blogs, etc. My phone rarely rings!

2. I read digitally: iPad, Kindle for iPad, iBooks, read on the internet (websites, etc.), blogs.

3. I write digitally: Word, Notes on iPad, text messaging, blogging, videos on YouTube, Facebook.

4. Teaching: most of my preparation for teaching is done online. I communicate to students mainly through email (!) and also our course management software “Blackboard” announcements, etc. I post handouts electronically and link them to online resources like articles, websites, and podcasts. Even my on-campus classes use Blackboard quite a bit. I teach with YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/peggysemingson?feature=mhee

Our Master’s degree in Literacy Studies is 100% online.

5. Scholarship: nearly all the scholarly journals I read are online and located through online databases. I still locate books in the library. Manuscripts are submitted electronically.

6. I think digitally in interactive and dialogic ways.I think visually and how pictures interact with text and words. My thinking has always been multi-modal with sights, sounds, images, and dialogue.

7. Althought I own records (nostalgia), I primarily listen to digital fiiles and online streaming radio.

8. I am indifferent to bookstores and hard copies of text going away. I am open to the demands of the marketplace and evolving trends in technology.

9. Some thinkers who inform my own thinking about technology: Lawrence Lessig, Ray Kurzweil, Don Leu and colleagues in literacy studies, James Gee, Colin Lankshear, Michele Knobel, Colin Harrison, and more. I will update this later.

10. I am not sure doc programs are training doc students enough to teach online. This should be required preparation and training in all doc programs everywhere.

I wonder what the future holds for education, both K-12 and higher ed.

Questions I have:

How prepared are educators to teach digital tools to K-12 and higher ed students?

What changes will we see in the near and far future in terms of teaching and online instruction?

What will happen to the publishing industry, bookstores, and libraries as we know them?

Technology Goals:

Do more “real-time” teaching online. This includes using conference tools (like Adobe Connect, which I’ve used a little bit) and real time chat (never tried that with teaching).

Keep up with writing relevant blog posts on my literacy blog

Learn more about video production and editing

Learn more about digital photography and how it might be useful to teaching

Ramp up use of YouTube channel.

Getting writing ideas from pictures

peggysemingson — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:09:05 +0000

If you’re writing and/or getting students to write about personal memories, here’s a short YouTube video I made on writing from family pictures. It has several advantages. There are many instances where students are already doing this. They are likely posting pictures of themselves on facebook or at least sharing and narrating photos with others. There are also many instances of good exemplar “mentor texts” in children’s and young adult literature that do exactly this. Everyone has a story to tell. I guess, though, that some stories should be left untold! Nevertheless, here is the video. I welcome all comments!My favorite type of writing I like to engage in is the “vignette”. Sandra Cisneros does this well in House on Mango Street.

Questions, Hot Topics, and Issues in Literacy

peggysemingson — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:18:18 +0000

Does anyone have any literacy questions or topics they want to discuss? What’s been on your mind as far as literacy and instruction and literacy policy lately? I’ve been thinking a lot about how much is on teachers’ plates lately as far as “covering” the curriculum they are required to teach and assess in a limited time frame. I tell the pre-service teachers to integrate and incorporate content area literacies into language arts. What else are burning topics these days?

“Crazy, Baby”

peggysemingson — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 15:44:00 +0000

Why did all those cool expressions from the 60′s fade out? I watch old reruns of Hawaii-Five-O almost daily and they say things like, “Crazy, Baby” and add “Baby” to everyone’s name. What if we did that now, would it be seen as archaic? I’m reminded too of that Russ Meyer classic, “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!” and how the lead women did the same, added “Baby” when addressing each other, even though they savagely had a love-hate relationship with one another. It could be used with either male or female, addressed to either gender.
The 60′s must have been another time altogether. I don’t think our current era has any kind of gender-neutral moniker like “Baby” like they did in the 60′s. Maybe a modern equivalent would be “dude” but that terms seems to have heavy traces of masculinity attached to it.

And, on the question of gender, is Lady Gaga a feminist? Have you seen the latest “Telephone” video? Or is she just defiant with artistic license? What would Camille Paglia say?

Where do you write these days?

peggysemingson — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 03:40:46 +0000

There are so many choices of where to put down our thoughts. We have so many audiences, as well. As an aspiring academic, I’ve been saving a lot of my words for formal, technical writing like research reports and some personal narratives that have made it into print!

However, there are so many places we can write. Does anyone ever write with pen and paper anymore? Will it become a thing of the past, much like typewriters, both manual and electric? Many of our writings are digitized for digital audiences and friends (and strangers) we communicate with electronically.

Does anyone use Wikis anymore to record their own thoughts and ideas?

I dated a guy in Austin who had his own extremely complex personal wiki. Like many Austinites, his laptop went everywhere he did. I met him at the Bouldin Creek Coffeeshop and he told me about this ongoing massive knowledge wiki he had been working on for years, created in code. So, I started talking and he typed and typed and entered a lot of what I said on his wiki. I found that so strange–first that he found what I was saying as valuable to document it and then I was wondering how anything I said possible linked to other ideas within his intricately organized wiki. Maybe it didn’t but it was like his laptop was an extension of his mind. Then, after the date he sent me like a billion links related to the various topics of our conversation, like a follow-up. SOOOO Austin.

It’s actually not a bad idea to create a wiki of every brilliant thought you have or that others say so you don’t forget about it. I suppose we do this all the time in our scholarly endeavors with software that creates links, networks, and nodes of thought and thinking…..It was just funny that it happened on a coffee date.

Podcast

peggysemingson — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:52:22 +0000

Reading motivation among African American and Caucasian students with Dr. John Guthrie



peggysemingson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:45:41 +0000


         


Fascinating Historical Roots
peggysemingson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:19:50 +0000



I love the references to literacy in this. It’s fun to read old English, too. Click on the thumbnails to read the text.

         


Pics
peggysemingson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:51:17 +0000





























         


Cambridge Again!
peggysemingson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:59:05 +0000
We are here! The temperature is in the 30′s. I’ll take pics tomorrow of the impending snow(storm). At least 10-12 inches of snow is predicted for tomorrow during the day and evening. I guess they will plow the streets.

I really like it here. We arrived in darkness so it will be nice to see the daylight and Harvard again, albeit, with layers of snow all around! I didn’t bring a suitcase. I just layered on all my clothes like the Michelin man! In my carryon bag were my galoshes and a couple of journals I want to get published in.  I scrutinized them carefully on the plane. My mom, in first class, brought back the warm cookie to me in coach! 

We ate dinner at the deli in Harvard Square (quick). We wolfed the food down in about five minutes! Then we had mind-numbingly good hot chocolate from Burdick’s Chocolate. Savory.

Tomorrow will be exciting!