From #CLIL to CSI?

23 May

I was quite impressed to spot, as a student in my class took an interminable amount of time to remove a pencil from her bag, that the science book she’s currently using was called “CSI“.  An inspired piece of textbook titling, though I do wonder whether they should have used a slightly different font…

Anyway, also leading on from Dave Cosby’s latest post, there are a few science based web resources I’ve been meaning to share, but haven’t quite got round to yet.

What you might do with them in an EFL context, I leave up to you!

An Illustrated Visualisation of what can happen in a single second:  a Maria Popova “Brain Pickings” post that reviews and contains illustrated excerpts from Steve Jenkins’ book “Just a Second”.

Leading on from what can happen in a single second, to “How far is a single second?” – from the MinutePhysics You Tube Channel.  Some great RSA Animate style illustrated examples of aspects and issues within physics (and by extension the world).  Somewhat fast paced and maybe not quite suitable for the lower level learner…

.

.

Here’s a BBC infographic on the history of cloning, another recent BBC article of note looks at colour perceptions and tries to work out why it might actually be imnpossible to agree what colour to paint the spare room…

If infographics are your thing, then take a look at the Nik Peachey curated “Pinterest” on Infographics.

But finally…  two truly jaw dropping tools that are really the reasons for this post, both of which try to put a bit of perspective on humanity’s place in the universe:

ChronoZoom looks at the scale of time involved in the history of the universe – you can zoom in and out from the earliest known events to present day, or at least events from the modern human era.  It’s a fantastic tool – if you can actually find the modern human era, it’s a bit small in comparison!  (It’s easier to find if you navigate via the “threshold” markers in the scale across the top).

Size, physical size in this case, is what is compared at “The Scale of the Universe“.  Your starting point is humanity and using your mouse or trackpad, you can zoom in to the see the smaller stuff – or out to see the larger stuff.  Click on any image you see to get more information about it.

UPDATE EXTRA:

Two late additions to this post:

Larry Ferlazzo has just posted about “Pearls of the Planet” live webcams - these are webcams that are set up in various locations around the world, some wild places and some zoos, aquariums etc, where you and your classes can watch live streams of polar bears, pandas and the northern lights.

Richard Byrne has also just posted about Learners TV - a vast collection of video lectures on a wide range of subjects from psychology to dentistry to accounting from what appears to be a range of Universities and colleges, mostly from the USA.  Well worth checking out for your ESP students.

Guest Post: Math in German, History in French

21 May

In his latest guest post on this blog, Dave Cosby thinks about variety being the spice of life and wonders whether taking a CLIL approach to language teaching might not be more motivating for all concerned.  After all, what’s the worst that can happen when you learn

Math in German, History in French

A dozen or so years ago my brother lived and worked Barcelona as a teacher. It was at an international school and they catered for the children of globe-trotting business people, diplomats and the like from all the corners of Europe. My brother is annoyingly polyglotal, and can rattle away in Castillian Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian, as well as his native English. He says he muddles by in German but to my untutored ear he sounds like Angela Merkel herself (well, she does have a fairly deep voice and my brother’s is high-pitched so they meet somewhere in the middle). The school had an interesting policy whereby language learning was simply a by-product of the students’ regular schooling in other subjects. So history this term would be taught in Italian, next term in French; Maths this term in English, the next in German. My brother said it used to tie his head in knots and was exhausting for him, let alone the students, and the amount of preparation time for classes drove him to distraction. That said… it worked.

A cross-curricular approach to English teaching is currently en vogue, and such an approach is something I think I approve of. Students get that they have to learn this infernal language of ours, but where’s the motivation beyond, say, intermediate level. After all with the basic tenses stashed away and a half decent vocabulary they can muddle by in most situations. I find that some often don’t see the need to go beyond this, to climb off that intermediate plateau as the learning curve again starts to steepen as phrasal verbs and idiomatic language really come into play, and the list of words the student needs to acquire stretches seemingly infinitesimally into the distance. The sheer vastness of the English language can be a demotivator all by itself. But by learning something else, by learning another topic, and using English simply as the medium picking up words as you go and when and as you need them just as native speakers do, the need and use of the extra effort is clear.

An IELTS student of mine paid me a compliment the other day, or perhaps paid a compliment to the authors of those exams in Cambridge perhaps. We were reading an exercise about the invention of the long-case pendulum carriage clock, a subject incidentally that bored me rigid. She, however, said that she enjoyed my classes not simply for their own sake but because she had the opportunity to learn about subjects she might otherwise never encounter. I paraphrase of course. Had she used similar phrasing to mine she might as well sit the exam tomorrow, get a ’9′ and sack me as her teacher, services no longer required. And it also goes to show you never can quite predict what subjects students might find interesting. The exams always seems to talk about such ‘safe’ subjects and I suppose it must be tricky to find texts which can go all around the world and not offend the sensibilities of one group or another and so must therefore be quite innocuous but still need to retain a modicum of interest. I imagine the authors of airline magazines have a similar dilemma.

To broaden my students’ vocabulary as much as possible I use as wide a variety of articles on different subjects as I can but unlike the exam boards or airlines I can add a bit of spice by picking subjects about which people are bound to disagree. I tend to avoid religion and football teams as class discussions can get just a little too heated; students in classes with just one L1 tend to switch over to it when they really get emotional, all the better to make their point clear, just as my Italian wife switches to her local dialect when I forget to take the rubbish downstairs, or leave my leave a beer glass on the floor or… oh, you get the idea. At this juncture I need to reign the class back in as the point of the exercise has been defeated, but a bit of practice is all that’s needed by the teacher to get the balance right. You often find that the class itself is in complete agreement; in such cases you need to play devil’s advocate. They will enjoy ganging up on you to knock down your arguments.

I am sure that you will have your favourite source for articles. I get mine online, all the better to cut and paste them, and use the Economist magazine a lot as I teacher higher levels. For leading language and real tabloid zing though I don’t think the Daily Mail can be beaten. There are always stories about neighbours warring over this slight or that insult or with boundary disputes or planning concerns. It’s fantastically parochial and good grist to the mill.

By mixing up the topics you discuss, read about and write essays and articles on you’ll find yourself less bored too. The exercise books we all use as teachers are really handy, and can act as a great spine to a course, but rely on them alone and both you and your students will be bored stiff in no time, you especially so, as you will have read the same text umpteen times before. A nice by-product of all this reading is a pretty good general knowledge, always handy in a pub-quiz.

Don’t forget to chase down tricky grammar when you come across it, and rather than preteach those troublesome words it might be better to see if students can divine meaning from context, though of course do concept check. Gist reading is one of those skills where there’s no such thing as too much practice. It’s also really useful to ensure that students keep a record of the useful vocab that has come up, along with a translation in L1. I know, I know, this is all stuff any half decent teacher does in their sleep, but it’s always worth bearing in mind so please forgive my reminder.

Incidentally, it’s often quite revealing to have a look at students’ translations. You’ve just given them five of six English synonyms, with different implications and grades of meaning and you lean over and read what they have translated each to, only to find that they have used the same word each time. Such are the pitfalls of translation, and its problems regarding the strength and depth of the English tongue. Now, as I have the afternoon free, I am off to learn about car maintenance… in  Portuguese.

Dave Cosby is a teacher of more years experience than he cares to remember and has worked in a variety of countries around the world, in a variety of roles from teacher to Director of Studies to language school chain troubleshooter.  Currently he’s based in Coimbra, Portugal.  You can find more posts by Dave in the Guest Posts section.

One for the Etymology geeks

19 May

There’s an interesting post on “Visualising English Word Origins” from Ideas Illustrated, which colour codes words according to their origins and then uses this process to analyse texts.

If you scroll down through the comments section, you’ll find links to sites where you can run a similar process  to the one the author describes on your own texts.  This was originally spotted via the Johnson Blog at The Economist.

In a similar vein, the Voxy infographic below takes a quick look at where English gets some of its constituent parts – thanks to @yya2 on twitter for spotting that.

#BBC Podcast – The Trouble with Moody Teens

16 May

There was an excellent podcast on the BBC – Podcasts – Documentary of the Week page recently.  Sadly, BBC policy is only to host these documentaries for a seven day period, which has no expired, so unless you know someone with a bootleg copy, you’re probably out of luck.

Which is a shame, because I think this is one of those programs that anyone who has a day to day professional or parental involvement with teenagers should be forced to listen to.  It looked at depression and mental health issues amongst teenagers, which is often dismissed by parents and other adults as just being a “moody teen”.

I don’t think the audience is just limited to parents, though parents will take a lot away from this, I think anyone who teaches teenagers should also definitely listen to this – it offers some startling insights and some first hand accounts as well as talking about measures and support networks that are in place in the UK to help.

One of the references in the program was to NICE (National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence), a UK body, and their guidelines for dealing with depression in children and young people.  You can find their web page here:  Depression in children and young people: Identification and management in primary, community and secondary care.

Another resource I came across is http://teenmentalhealth.org/.  This appears to be a Canadian based organisation, but it contains links and resources aimed more at families, the teens themselves and educators, and may be a source of more accessible assistance than the NICE guidelines.

 

Tags: , ,

#APPI 2012: Using Poetry in the EFL Classroom

14 May

Huge apologies to everyone who came to my session at the APPI conference on 29th April – this post contains the material and links I promised you that Sunday morning.  In hindsight, I probably should have posted it up there beforehand – lesson learned!

In any event, below you should find the prezi I used in the session along with a transcript of the talk I gave.  Any problems, please let me know via the comments section below!

The APPI talk was based on a seminar originally delivered at International House Coimbra, back in September 2011, which also gave rise to a short you tube version of the presentation, which I blogged about as “A Short talk on using poetry“.  That post also contains further links to a range of additional online resources for using poetry with your classes.

#APPI 2012: Claudia Ferradas – The certainty of uncertainty: meeting the challenge of change

28 Apr

A late session choice after I realising I was in the wrong room and the one I’d planned to see was full…

Claudia Ferradas – The certainty of uncertainty: meeting the challenge of change

Apparently we’re going to start with a song…  ”The times they are a’changin” – the Bob Dylan classic, to which I would link to via you tube, but apparently the content has been removed at the request of the copyright holder…  so if you don’t know the song, rush out and buy a best of Bob Dylan CD – it’ll be on there somewhere.

While the song progresses, the lyrics are being flashed up on screen: you can check them out on lyricsfreak.  And we’re being asked who Bob Dylan was asking to pay attention and it’s being pointed out that “teachers” are not being asked to change!  Why Not?

So this leads into the following Ken Robinson video – Changing Education Paradigms:

(If anyone’s interested, there’s a lesson plan on teflgeek for exploiting this).

Key Words from the video:

  • unpredictability of the future
  • cultural identity – globalisation
  • ADHD
  • standardisation
  • artistic education
  • divergent thinking
  • creativity
  • non-linearity
  • collaboration

Just because we don’t feel comfortable in their world, doesn’t mean we should impose our world on them.

Challenges:

  • how to contribute to the change within the system that holds onto the old model
  • how to control stress and demotivation
  • how to be encouraging … (lost the rest of that)

Quotes Umberto Eco on life-long learning and the anguish of upgrading – the fact that everything keeps changing:  we are not longer living calmly in the present and are constantly preparing ourselves for the future.

Liquid Modernity – Zygmunt Bauman:  (pages 10 & 11)

The only certainty (says Bauman) is change:

Learn- unlearn – relearn  /  the anguish of upgrading  /  new habits  /  new thinking skills

The unholy trinity: uncertainty, insecurity, unsafety.  Why not bring these ideas into the classroom to show learners that we consider these things as well?

Michael Rosen poem:  In our playground.http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/poems.html

(editor’s note:  the audio keeps cutting in and out and I keep missing bits – apologies)

Stability is now out of favour – variety is in.

we’re now nomadic – we travel light.

Clifford: travelling cultures:  not so much where are you from, as where are you between.  Human becomings rather than human beings.  Moving from the nation, to imagined communities (Salman Rushdie) to “postulated communities” – what aspects of your identity do you carry with you online?

We’re always wired, we’re always connected – yet we’re always alone.  Because we’re so dependent on connections we don’t know what to do without it.  We exist in a “screen state” – not our bodies.  Physical interaction is often an intrusion on virtual interaction, not the other way round.

Ubiquitous / mobile learning:

What we are used to, we too often become used by and so we must begin to see ourselves in where we are…  increasingly where we are is on the web.  (Michael Joyce 1998)

Intermediality – the blurring of media boundaries.  The use of video in a text on a web page….

“you cannot, with the web, go where no one has gone before” (Tchudi 2000)

Critical Technological Literacy:

ACCESS  /  CONTENT  /  LINKS

Globalisation:

Conflict derived from the contact with the difference

Construction of multiple fluid identities

definition of  the intercultural learner:  Corbett 2007: 41

World englishes

Conclusion – again, I think this one is going to need some thinking about, some working through and some rewriting.  stay tuned.

 

#APPI 2012: Anna Uhl Chamot – Teaching Learning Strategies in the English Classroom

28 Apr

I’m hoping this will be a follow up to the talk Anna Chamot gave yesterday at #APPI, which was more about the why of learning strategies, why they are important and how they can help.  This I’m hoping will be more about the what and the how, what learning strategies are useful and how to teach them.  She did say yesterday that “explicit instruction” is  often necessary, so that might feature.

This is another “live blog” – so apologies for any typos or missing bits, I’m going as fast as I can – I promise to come back later and try and clean things up a bit!

A brief biography of Anna Chamot and her academic background from George Washington University.

Anna Uhl Chamot – Teaching Learning Strategies in the English Classroom

Asking teachers what are your students doing to learn often comes back with and answer relating to what the teachers are asking their learners to do – which is not the same thing!

What are learning Strategies?

  • what learners do to complete a task
  • how learners understand, remember and recall information
  • how learners practice skills to achieve mastery of those skills

Why teach learning strategies?

  • understand how your students learn
  • share the strategies of good language learners – learners may have strategies to share – peer teaching
  • increase students’ self-efficacy (feeling of competence towards a task)
  • create a climate of thinking and reflection
  • use creativity to make learning strategies concrete (move from the abstract to the real)
  • motivate your students and yourself!

Tips on Teaching Learning Strategies:

  • build on students’ current learning strategies – all learners have learning strategies, but not all the strategies are successful ones.  Often it’s possible to transfer strategies from one environment to another – learners may feel that what they learn in one situation doesn’t apply to what they learn in another.  Think about what they are already bringing to the classroom.
  • model how to use the learning strategy – language can be a barrier to communicating successful learning strategies, so when learners don’t have the linguistic ability to understand learning strategy instruction, they need to see it modelled, teachers need to communicate the process, not just the task.
  • name the strategy in English (see bibliography at the end of this piece for strategies and their “names”
  • give examples of how to use the strategy (this is similar to the modelling)
  • let the students choose their own strategies – people are different.  If it doesn’t work for a learner, don’t force it on them.

Metacognitive strategies:  (these are applicable to any task in life, not just language learning)

  • Planning:  understand the task / set goals / organise materials  / find resources / is it working? – revise the plan if necessary.
  • Monitoring:  while you work on the task – check your progress on the task / check your comprehension (do you understand?) / check your production (are you making sense?).
  • Evaluation:  (post-task) – assess how well they accomplished it, teach students to self-assess and self-evaluate / assess how well the learning strategies they used worked – if not, try a new one?  / Identify changes you’ll make the next time you have a similar task to do.
  • Self-management:  manage your own learning – determine how you learn best / arrange conditions that help you learn / seek opportunities for practice / focus your attention on the task.

Social Learning Strategies:

Cooperation (working with others):  complete tasks / build confidence / give and receive feedback / learn from each other.

INSTRUCTIONAL CYCLE: (see graphic)

PREPARATION – ways to discover students’ learning strategies:  students describe how they figured something out / discussion (how do you do this, how do you learn new words, how do you know you’re right?) / class survey of learning strategies (find someone who)  / learning strategy diaries

PRESENTATION – model the strategy by acting it out (pretend difficulty and go through the thought process by “thinking aloud”)  /  ask the students if they use the strategy / give the strategy a name / tell the students WHEN  and HOW to use it / make it concrete with visuals and realia (see also icons given in the websites in the bibliography).

PRACTICE – choose a challengeing task / name the strategy to practice / remind students to use a strategy / ask student to identify the strategy / encourage students to use them independently

SELF-EVALUATION – discuss how they used the strategy / keep learning stratgy logs / identify and defned preferred strategies / relfect on themselves as strategic thinkes

EXPANSION  find new uses / contexts for thr strategy /  survey strategies used by others / teach a stragey to a friend or sibling / collect tips on using strategies / make a learning strategy book for other students (e.g. from this years class to next years class)

Developing Metacognition:

  • model your own thinking
  • students explain their thoughts about learning
  • students describe their plan for completing a language task
  • students explain how they monitor a task
  • students evaluate their own performance on a task

Websites / Bibliography:

Resource guides for teaching language learning strategies in primary, secondary and hihger education:  www.nclrc.org

List of Learning strategies and research references:  www.calla.ws

#APPI 2012: Nik Peachy: Developing materials and practices for the digital generation

28 Apr

This blog post reports from the APPI 2012 conference in Coimbra, Portugal.  The theme of the conference is “Motivated Teachers make a difference” – I’m updating as I go, so apologies for any typos, I’ll try and clear those up later.  Owing to coffee breaks and fresh air requirements, no time to do the abstract.  I think the title’s fairly self explanatory.

Nik Peachy;  Developing materials and practices for the digital generation

This should tie in quit neatly with Nicky hockly’s talk from yesterday.

Handouts and materials from the session c/o: http://technogogy.org.uk/techteens.pdf

In this session:

  • Some research
  • Some tools
  • Some ideas

(Everything is free)

Digital natives / digital immigrants (Marc Prensky) – levels of digital comfort vary, even amongst teenagers ….  some stats:

  • 75% of teens own cell phones
  • 73% use social networking
  • 38% share content online
  • Teens average 3,339 sent and received texts a month

Marc Prensky – “the app gap” the gap between students that have smart phones with app capability and those that don’t. What about the gap between teachers and students?

Thinking about the classroom…  what’s preferable?  NOT rows of computers, but wi-fi enabled, internet enabled devices, data projector, good broadband, with air, light, colour and comfort.  The model of the traditional computer room is outmoded already….

www.todaysmeet.com – creating a back channel with your students, another means of communication with and amongst students.  The teacher can “lurk” and see what’s going on, intervening where necessary!  Sharing links, so making classrooms more paperless.

Why use it?  Information sharing / Audience response / democratising the classroom / brainstorming / working without paper / provides a record of the interaction.

Some nice examples of literature via textspeak – including Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice and Shakespeare’s “what’s in a name”.  You can translate stuff into text speak via http://transl8it.com/.  Text speak is quite phonetic and can help work on pronunciation.

Why use it?  Increase enagement with short texts / understanding the genre /

Shared Work Space:  (www.posterous.com) works on the emailing principle – just email the blog and it’ll post.  Or text the blog.  Why:  publishing and peer editing learner work / collaboration / personal reflection / blended learning.  Also works well with audioboo, recording audio which you can then upload to the blog.

What do you use when you study?  How do you take notes?  try “scrible.com” – an online text annotator, highlighter and virtual stickynote generator, plus library or article collation system.

How has computer based information changed the nature of receptive skills?  The kinds of texts we access in our daily lives has changed and the way we access texts has changed.  So instead of referrring to a single source, learners need to access multiple sources and we can help learners by providing mixed media tasks.  An online tool to help with this: Storify – here’s Nik’s example: http://storify.com/nikpeachey/connectivism.  Can help avoid the cut and paste problem of learner research, as it means learners evaluate and assess and make an original contribution, while also including links to the original source.

Generic Tasks for digital comprehension. (see handout)

http://mailvu.com/ - good for learners to practice speaking and getting feedback.

Nik’s running out of time and I think the last part of the seminar will need some investigation via his handout, which are full of the links!

Conclusion – this is going to need a certain amount of time to process and re-organise!

#APPI 2012: Scott Thornbury – It’s getting better all the time: Motivating teachers

28 Apr

This blog post reports from the APPI 2012 conference in Coimbra, Portugal.  The theme of the conference is “Motivated Teachers make a difference” – I’m updating as I go, so apologies for any typos, I’ll try and clear those up later.

Scott Thornbury – It’s getting better all the time: Motivating Teachers

Quotes from the abstract: “Teachers typically start out full of illusions, but faced with the reality of their day-to-day work, this intial enthusiasm can soon turn sour.”  Oh how we all recognise that feeling I’m sure!  I’m looking at the title of the session and wondering whether the next line of the Beatles song has some part to play in all this:  ”It can’t get much worse…”!  Abstract continues:  ”It’s possible to retrieve some of that initial motivation by taking some easy steps towards personal, professional development.”

Looks like we’re about to get underway…

Scott’s managed to find a 1935 English language textbook in a Coimbra bookshop – an interesting insight into the teacher student relationship.  Also, the way the lesson was presented, to me harks back to direct method pedagogy.  An interesting vignette!

A nice video of a pre-service teacher talking about the reasons why he wants to be a teacher.  Some cynicism in the audience….

Lots of reasons why teachers are stressed out:  quoting Mike J Harrison’s blog post on teaching conditions.

The marketisation of education – terms such as outsomces, value added, knowledge transfer

Life cycle of teachers (generally):

  1. Novice – surviving, feeling out of depth and incompetent / stressed out about the additional paperwork.
  2. Mid-career – stabilisation, experiementation, taking stock
  3. Late career – serenity, disengagement
And within ELT:
  1. starting out
  2. becoming experienced
  3. new horizons: professional development
  4. passing on knowledge

Beliefs and attitudes that people hold about themselves are the most important drivers.  Teachers who possessed positive attitudes about themselves

Question to the PLN: What motivates you as a teacher?  Do a quick twitter hashtag search for #motivatingteachers for the PLN responses.

Quotes:  Atul Gawande “Better” and the struggle for

Ask an unscripted question – ask a question about themselves and their learning:  needs analysis techniques that move beyond the prosaic needs and think about ‘living’ in English.

Don’t complain – complaining never solves anything just depresses you.  Be prepared with something else to discuss (fallback topics).  Keep the conversation going.  Now plugging #eltchat as a means of having that conversation woth likeminded individuals and a

Count something.  Be a scientist – If you count something you find interesting, you’ll learn something.  This is the action research cycle, and arguing for peer observation / self observation / videoing your own classes.  (things we might want to look into….?)

Write something:  writing is a reflective process and by writing for an audience (i.e. blogging?)  you can get feedback on your ideas and problems.  Also discussion boards are a good source of feedback (cites the Dogme discussion groups)

Change – look for the opportunity to change, you don’t have to follow every new trend, but recognise what doesn’t work in your current practice and seek ways to improve.

You are not alone.  nvolve the school management, involve the students, publish it, seek feedback and

“Find something new to try!”

Handouts and Powerpoints - http://thornburyscott.com/

#APPI 2012: Nicky Hockly – Digital Literacies

27 Apr

This blog post reports from the APPI 2012 conference in Coimbra, Portugal.  The theme of the conference is “Motivated Teachers make a difference” – I’m updating as I go, so apologies for any typos, I’ll try and clear those up later.

Plenary Session:  Nicky Hockly – Digital Literacies

Again – some quotes from the abstract:  ”Digital Literacies are key 21st century skills … we look at some of the theory underpinning them and some practical classroom activities that can make a difference to students”.

(Editor’s note: I’ve spotted the telltale “prezi” navigation buttons in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, so I’m expecting lots of looping and whirling!  Fair play to Nicky who’s still hobbling around on crutches after breaking her leg some weeks ago!)

So here we go:

With a completely straight face,  Nicky Hockly’s trying to get the entire audience to dress up in a lumberjack outfits and march in support of the Pacific North West tree octopus.  She’s almost got everyone convinced…. and has now come clean!

Essentially, we’ve just had a fairly typical reading lesson: prediction, schema raising, etc – but with the spoof website (as above).  The point being that one of the skills learners need is to be able to assess the veracity of websites on the internet, in particular by examining the different features of websites and analysing them:  e.g.  news / blog / hyperlinks / links to official orgs / other research / content tabs / url / layout, font, colours / images & maps / style of language / quotes.  The website is a parody, so it does contain most of these features, but as it is a parody, they don’t match our expectations of authenticity.  Learners need to think about these things and use them to approach websites critically – in other words we need to develop learners’ digital literacies.

Digital Literacies (after Mark Pegrum):

  • Focus on Language:  texting / hypertext / multi-media / mobile / gaming / tech & coding / print
  • Focus on Connections: personal / network / cultural & inter-cultural / participatory
  • Focus on Information: search / tagging / info
  • Focus on (re) design:  remix

See: http://e-language.wikispaces.com/mr3 for more information.

Focus on remix literacy:

Taking original information, re-presenting it and adding something new and original.  Similar to the idea of remixing music, but extended into an approach to accessing and processing information, possibly with the idea of provoking thought or subverting convention.

An example of remix literacy:  literal videos:  videos that de-construct original content and re-describe the action from a literal, and occasionally subversive point of view.  Exploiting them:  http://www.overstream.net/ or http://www.subtitlehorse.org/ - get learners to redub / subtitle their own videos, using videos from You Tube.  Great examples of this include the parodies of Hitler’s tantrum from the film “The Downfall”.  Apparently copyright laws permit original material to be used for the purposes of parody.

Be careful with the distinction between copyright & fair use.

Implications of Digital Literacies:

  • integration into syllabus, using a web text instead of a paper text.
  • Digital divide – find out who in your classes have the access to the technology.  Technology use does NOT equate to digital literacy.
  • Student learning – use of technology needs to be principled, make sure you aren’t using the tech for the tech’s sake, but that there are clear learning goals involved.
  • Develop and keep up with development via a PLN
Bibliography:
Nicky has links to all the talk resources and videos, plus further reading here:

And I’ve just found her Prezi for this session online:  http://prezi.com/svpcbl8q_aml/digital-literacies-nicky-hockly/

Tags: , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 934 other followers