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In
order to actually complete this Independent Study, you need to be comfortable
in the most basic digital technologies -- word processing, email, searching
the Web for information--before we even begin. Respond to my first email
by completeing the "Comfy Quiz" and send it back to me as an
attached Word doc. Initially, create a blog, send me an email invitation
to join. Your blog will function as the major interface between us. Each
class day, you should post in your blog a thoughtful response to the prompt
for that day, which will be posted here.
Project
#1: Your blog -- Due: Friday 24 June 2005
You'll
need to respond each night to the prompts posted for that week in your
blog. For this first week, the major project will be the blog itself as
a place to begin thinking about questions like these:
How
would you define literacy? compuiter literacy? information literacy?
Project
#2: Your Technology Autobiography-- Due: Friday 1 July 2005
TThe
following questions are drawn from a assignments developed by two of my
colleagues, Dickie Selfe (formerly at Michigan Tech; about to be at The
Ohio State University) and Pamela Takayoshi (University of Louisville)
for a variant on the literacy autobiography, that Dickie calls the Technology
Autobiography (TA). Basically, a TA tells the story of your life in relation
to your encounters with technology. It is an account of how you came to
be technologically literate, and, as such, requires that you begin by
clearly understanding and defining both technology and literacy. The readings
you did last week combined with your blog entries and Monday’s readings
should give you the ground you need to begin. Your goal for this assignment
is to produce a clear, coherent, concise essay (3-5 pages should be more
than enough) recounting your experiences as you developed technological
literacy. Yo can take this essay in any direction that makes sense to
you. This is the assignment for Week 2; you’ll modify it a bit later,
adding hyperlinks and revising it for your web project.
One further suggestions:
Given your personal situation (senior non-trad English Ed major about
to have her third child) you bring a unique set of life experiences and
goals to this. Think about also incorporating the perspective of a mom
to very young kids as well as that of student and teacher-to-be. What
will it mean to your little ones to be technologically literate? How might
you need to adapt your approaches to accommodate their needs? Most of
all, you should have a bit of fun with this.
Invention/Pre-Writing Activity
Your Background:
What early experiences with technological devices or artifacts can you
recall? What do you remember about your earliest use of technologies?
Or what stories do your parents tell about your interactions with technology?
What were the popular gadgets in your house while growing up?
Who do you identify as being most "technologically literate"
person in your life? What makes that person's relationship with technology
so special; that is, what behaviors or characteristics does he or she
exhibit? Give examples. What have you learned from him or her?
Your
Present:
How do you learn technologies? Among your friends, are you considered
an "early adopter," a "late adopter," or somewhere
in the middle?
What's on your desk at home? What technological devices are you carrying
now? What's on your technological "wish list"?
What is your preferred way of learning new technologies? What process
do you go through? Is it hard, fun, easy, traumatic, boring, annoying,
or some combination?
What advantages and problems do you see with the way you approach technology?
Your
Future:
Do you think there are social consequences or potential impacts on your
lifestyle that depend on your technological capabilities? What might these
social consequences or potential impacts be?
What will it mean to be technologically literate in the near future?
How do you expect to deal with new technologies in the future?
What technologies do you own or know about that would be of benefit to
your students? Your children?
Some links you might like:
Dickie’s
page for this assignment
An
NCTE site using this for public schools
This NCTE site has TONS of stuff you will find useful . . . don’t
get lost in there!
Project
#3: Your Powerpoint -- Due: Friday 8 July 2005
This
project has two goals: 1) to enable you to explore a facet of technological
literacy that interests you--and which you believe will be interesting
to the audience you identify, 2) to enable you to explore and then demonstrate
your understanding of visual rhetoric, and 3) to enable you to develop
and demonstrate your skill with presentation software.
Facet
1: Explore a topic of interest
Your topic can be anything related to technology and literacy and the
teaching/learning of English. You might want to explore resources for
your own teaching or sites that would appeal to students in your classes.
You might choose to present an argument via Powerpoint for or against
some element/aspect of technology in outr lives currently or in the future.
You might create a lesson. I am pretty open here as to the general topic.
Facet
2: visual rhetoric
This is trickier to accomplish in a virtual setting, since I can't lecture
and provide examples, etc. But you are an amazingly bright wman, so we'll
go with your being an auto-didact here. I'll send you to a bunch of readings
for visual rhetoric and we can email on any questions you have.
Here's
a site on Visual
Literacy ; a chapter
from William J. Mitchell's The ReconfiguredEye: Visual Truth in the
Post-Photographic Era ; the website
for the International Visual Literacy Association; Cara Finnegan's website
on visual rhetoric (don't get frustrated--there are some broken links).
And just in case, here's a link to an IU syllabus
for a bsic intro to rhetoric.
Basically,
you want to observe all the requisites of good rhetorical behavior: begin
by identifying an audience, and be sure to sculpt your presentation to
address the perceived needs of that audience.
Project
#4: Hypertext Analysis Essay-- Due: Friday 15 July 2005
Hypertext
is one of the most deceptively simple aspects of digital literacy. Your
assignment for this week is to produce an essay (the usual 5 or so pages)
analysing the concept and its manifestation in English education. Here
are some sites to explore: this is an introdcution
to hypertext from WWW3; another website
offering an excellent introduction to learning in hypertext; and one more
website
intro; philosopher David Kolb's website
-- pay particular attention to his Socrates in the Labyrinth and the following,
Socrates; Apology.
You'll
need to be doing a great deal of self-directed research in order to come
up with your essay topic. You want to make this essay something that will
be of use not only to you, but potentially to your students and to other
teachers who are facing the inclusion of technology in their teaching.
Project
#5: Your Web Site -- Due: Friday 22 July 2005
Now
you need to pull of this together. Your Website should be the equivalent
of a seminar paper, the culmination of a term's worth of learning and
growing. We can discuss the format--that is entirely up to you, within
reason. What I am interested in seeing is how you bring together the different
elements of literacy and technology that you have explored this past month.
Like a seminar paper, the site should include all of the requisite elements
of those academic artifacts. . . somewhat altered by the medium in which
you present the information. You are presenting an argument, based on
your own original research and thinking, as well as experiential evidence,
and supported by secondary sources.
The
overall TOPIC must be clear and focused; just as you would provide coherence
to a traditional essay by using transitions and subheadings, you should
ORGANIZE your website clearly and provide an understandable NAVIGATIONAL
SCHEME.
Specifics
we can discuss online or meet to go over anything you want at any time.
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