Week 12 - multimodal texts

BABR 8 intro -

Images, audio, and video are all common characteristics of multimodal text. All are included in the text help give the reader a deeper connection to the text and build a better understanding. In the 21st century, teachers are called to incorporate multimodal texts and learning into the classroom. Many of the Common Core Standards reflect the push towards multimodal learning.

Images

• Flickr - students and teachers can look for images on Flickr by search words. The text used a term "folksonomy" that I had not heard of before. The search terms for Flickr images were created by users as opposed to an outside source. 
• Google - google is a great resource for students and teachers to find online images by using search words.

Copyright 

Copyrighted images can be used as long as it fits with the "fair use" provisions. Criticism, comment, news reporting, and teaching all apply under the fair use provisions. It is important to teach our students about copyright and citing sources. Each website has its own copyright rules. Flickr has specific usage rules for each user. Users may require permission or even payment to use their images. Flickr has a section called "Creative commons copyright" that means that students do not have to ask for permission before using these images. 

• Images - need to be used in good faith 
• Text - brief quotations used to make a point 
• Audio - brief clips 30 seconds or less can be used 

Image Creation 

The smartphone or a tablet can be a great classroom tool for the students to be able to create their own images. Teachers can create a classroom Instagram or snapchat account for students to upload their images for classroom use or assignments. 

One interesting online tool I want to try out is VoiceThread. Students can import an image that they found online and add audio or written comments. Other students, teachers, or even parents can then comment their own thoughts on the VoiceThread and start an educational conversation. 

Haiku Deck is a good tool for presentations. Many times research presentations can turn into reading off a powerpoint. Haiku Deck encourages students to use more images to convey their information than a bunch of words. 

High school students used photography to create web-based autobiographies. They wanted the images to be highly intentional and personal. 

Responding to Images

It is true that images can be worth a thousand words. Students need to be able to form an opinion about images and describe what they think and feel. We also should encourage them to think about the photographer and the intended purpose for the image. 

Questions - 

1.  Image copyright is not something I think about often. I guess it is different because we use quotation marks and have specific citation rules for texts. How do you teach copyright rules? As a general lesson or tied to a specific lesson/project? Maybe this lesson could be tied with internet safety?

2.  What age should kids start learning about copyright?

3.  Have you ever asked kids to do a photography project? This interests me. I think it turn into a good writing project if students write about why they chose to take that photo and what they think about it.

Analyzing Digital Design

We need to get our kids think about how design of a text affects their understanding. A good activity to do this is giving kids a bunch of different sites to visit with various levels of design complexity. It is good to have a discussion about design, particularly the multimodal features of a text, and how they help our hurt comprehension. Analysis of digital texts is important before kids create their own digital texts because it lets them know how to design the text to suit their readers. 

Process - print vs digital 

When we read a digital text, we usually have a purpose for visiting the website. We may want to find out about movie times or find a new coat for the winter. Many times with print text, we are just reading to learn. Our eyes move left to right on the page. With a digital text, our eyes may go to the prominent feature(s) or the specific area of the website they need. If websites are too cluttered or the reader cannot find the information he/she needs, the reader may give up or go to a different site. 

Questions - 

1.  Do you think digital texts (and digital design) encourage our culture of skim reading? I feel that sometimes this is harmful because students do not want to read other than to find an answer. 

Dalton article - Level Up - Multimodal Composition in Social Studies 

This article taught me a new term! Level up means to improve in the gaming world. The author wanted to "level up" his multimodal composition skills. Working with his students, he found that his students were highly engaged and motivated to participate in writing these multimodal compositions. Dalton actually teamed up with a fourth grade teacher who taught mostly bilingual students. The kids composed the compositions using an iPad during social studies. Dalton introduced the lessons by showing them various digital designs to get them thinking about how design affects comprehension. The students' project was to be to create a digital poem with using an e-book. Dalton showed the students how to do this in small groups in the hallway throughout the week. Students were involved in the entire process of creation - from writing the poem, to typing it in (or voice to text), to finding images/videos to accompany their poem, to recording the audio for their book. Some students became "expert recorders" and helped students one-on-one with their e-book and recording. It took several composing sessions for each student to complete an electronic book page, but it was a learning process for all. Multimodal composition in elementary schools is a practice that is pretty new and will require more work than other text composition, but is worth it for the students.

Questions - 

1.  I know I need to "level up" on my multimodal composition skills as well! Have you had a multimodal composition project in your classroom?

Answer a question or two and provide some information about the sections you read :). Thanks! 

Week 12

Hi friends!

This post is about what we all need to read for this week.

All: BABR 8 intro and assessment section, BABR 9 design principles

Courtney: Dalton article, Images sections (ch 8), intro and analyzing digital designs, summary (ch 9)

Neka: Ebooks article, Audio sections (ch 8), presentation tools and creating e-books (ch 9)

Breanna: Digital storytelling article, Video sections (ch 8), online sites for sharing writing and learning to code (ch 9)

Angela: Ranker article, creating digital storytelling section and summary (ch 8), analyzing readability of digital texts and citing material (ch 9)

Main post will be up later this afternoon and I will be here tonight and tomorrow to comment! :)

Week 11 - Boche & Blinded Manuscript

In the Boche article, the author emphasizes the increasing need for multimodal text use in the classroom. CCSS ask that teachers begin emphasizing complex texts during reading instruction, instead of just teaching comprehension strategies from them, and in the midst of Web 2.0 that includes multimodal texts. Text should be the focus of literacy blocks. He says "the goal is to help students read and understand better and to view literacy as more multifaceted" (Boche, 580). How can we teach students how to break down multimodal texts for meaning? For my students, I think that I usually read the actual text first when I am modeling, then the pictures, diagrams, etc. I usually tend to view videos last as they tend to summarize or extend the content of the text itself.

In the Blinded Manuscript research paper, the researchers viewed teachers modeling and teaching 'close viewing' as a strategy with classroom games. They implemented an "I do, we do , you do" approach to playing the games in the classroom with students. They emphasized playing with the class in order to model the use of academic vocabulary and close viewing strategies. I loved their idea of 'gaming circles' of students playing together and using the strategies taught! How do you already model close viewing in your classroom? If you don't have a classroom, how do you think we could we effectively model close viewing for students?

Multimodal texts include various forms of 5 semiotic systems: linguistic, visual, spatial, audio, gestural accoridng to these graphics. Do you guys agree with these 5 forms? Would you include any more, or make any arguments against any of these as varieties of 'text'? 

How do multimodal texts help readers move to a deeper understanding of content? I feel that multimodal texts support various types of learners by providing multiple presentations of the content, meaning readers are given many different forms and levels of the subject matter. A video can explain, in deeper detail, or even in a different way, something that text cannot. Text can leave holes in understanding, which makes room for deeper information gleaned from visual and audio sources. 

What type of multimodal texts do you use in your classroom? How can you help your students critique them? I use eStudies weekly to go along with our classroom social studies units and they are decent. They are technically mutimodal, but the forms of text are separated by tabs. So we read the digital text/news article that goes along with the lesson, then we have to click on the videos tab to view videos about it, and then the photos tab to view images from the time period, etc. If they were embedded my students could get some practice maneuvering through a digital page like that. What do you guys use?

Has your definition of 'text' changed since these readings? How so?

Week 10: BABR 10/11, J 9, Castek

BABR 10 talks about the fact that different media (mediums?) are appropriate for different forms of feedback and assessment. For instance, some digital tools are most appropriate for students' self-assessment, and some are more suited for feedback from peers and teachers. What are some tools that you can think of that would be useful for each of these types of assessment? 
I love the idea of doing reader-based responses to provide feedback to and among students. I feel like this would be especially helpful in digital environments where writing incorporates text as well as other components like images, video, etc. that need to be integrated seamlessly. I also think that it's especially useful with digital writing because there are so many digital tools that allow for easily sharing these responses--one that I'm thinking of is VideoNo.tes, which would allow students to annotate their thinking with videos or with any sort of audio or written work that could be turned into a video. If you had students do peer review with reader-based responses, what guidelines would you give them, or how would you model it for them?

One of the teachers in the Castek article discussed the challenge of creating assessments for online comprehension and research that are "simultaneously authentic and motivating" (548). How do you think we can best accomplish this when we assess students with digital texts? 

What form of digital assessment do you think would best suit your current or future teaching situation, and what purpose would it serve for you? Consider whether it would be more suitable for you to provide static electronic feedback (intertextual vs. marginal/end commentary) or dynamic electronic feedback (asynchronous board discussions, recorded oral feedback, synchronous chats). If I had to pick one, I think that I would choose intertextual static electronic feedback. At the high school level, students would need to do fairly print-heavy writing quite often, even with multimodal texts. I feel like that type of feedback would be really useful for me, especially if I were taking a reader-based response approach, to tell them my thoughts at different points during my reading. I think that makes it easier for students to pinpoint specifically what they might need to work on, since they see where I had those thoughts, even if my comments remain fairly overarching.

BABR 11 discussed digital systems for automatically evaluating students' writing. I am really wary of them, especially considering the concerns listed in the chapter. Do you think these automatic evaluation tools could ever be viable methods of assessment? If so, how would you implement them in your teaching situation?

Have you ever used a program or service for maintaining records and data related to students' assessments over time, or an online service for building student portfolios? This year, my school implemented MasteryConnect. I really like it for its data analysis--it can let tie individual test questions to academic standards so you can see students' progress with each standard over time. The problem is that it only really allows for multiple choice assessments, and there isn't much of a way for me to enter scores related to other types of assessments. It's useful for rote knowledge related to language arts concepts, but I would ideally like something a bit more comprehensive and literacy-focused and less test-prep focused.

Looking through some of the rubrics in chapter 9 of Johnson, I can estimate about where my students would fall within the dispositions discussed in the chapter. I think that a lot of the types of assessments that the chapter discusses would be useful for helping students improve their new literacies skills through reflection, and the rubrics would be most useful for monitoring their progress. Which of these assessments do you think would be best for promoting growth and progress with students' new literacies dispositions? Personally, I like the idea of using checklists like the ones provided in the chapter. I feel like it creates a tangible tool for students to use to monitor their own behaviors, as well as showing them how they are doing.

Week 9

J7 talked about several different ways that students can collaborate and share writing. They include zines, blogs, wiki, vlogs, digital stories, digital anchor charts, and digital writing notebooks. What are some online writing that you have used in the past or are interested in using in the future?

One of the struggles I have in having students write is a lack of access to technology. What are the benefits of using online tools in the classroom for writing? What the potential challenges/disadvantages in the classroom for writing?

BABR 7 discussed collaborative writing and the challenge of engaging students in this process. What topics have you/would you have used to engage students in collaborative writing?

Week 8: BARB 5, IRA

BARB 5 describes several ways that students can take notes to deepen their comprehension of digital and traditional texts. I struggle with finding an appropriate way to take notes in kindergarten. I am also wonder if it is even a skill that I should be asking students to develop so early on. When do you think note-taking is beneficial to your students? How do you use note-taking in your class? 

BARB 5 also lists many social networking tools that teachers and students can use in the classroom. I think that using social media has many benefits, but right now I do not have access to enough technology to use it within my classroom. I also notice that kindergarten parents are very hesitant to have their students on even child-friendly social media sites. They were very nervous about kidblog when I sent my permission slip home! What are the potential benefits of using social media in your classroom? What are the potential challenges/disadvantages of using social media in your classroom?

IRA discusses how students can use critical literacy to explore questions/problems they find in the world around them. Students at different ages need different learning experiences and levels of scaffolding to engage in critical literacy. What do you think critical literacy in general looks like at your level? What activities do you/would you use to engage your students in critical literacy? What supports/extensions do they need?

We are supposed to divide up the following readings to summarize and connect:
Wood
Literacy Circles
Kingsley
Byrne

Week 7: J8, Leu, DeShyver, BABR 3/4

In the Johnson chapter this week she discussed inquiry in the classroom, specifically, as a way to influence every aspect of learning for students. Inquiry is a process to be carried out that begins with asking questions. Students are naturally curious in many ways and this chapter made great points about how to facilitate and "manage" questioning from students. For example, I really liked the FQR chart on page 135 and want to adapt it for my third grade class. Students can work together to synthesize an informational text you provide (or even read as a class), then ask a question they have regarding it, and make a connection to their findings by writing down a response. After that, students could carry out the inquiry process to research their question further. I think that the toughest parts in elementary classrooms will be to teach/model appropriate and effective search strategies and phrases, and also how to evaluate a source for reliability. How do we even model and practice this in an elementary setting? 

The articles were very insightful and reinforced the importance of inquiry as a process that needs to be modeled and practiced through classroom activities. Generative synthesis is different from synthesizing for meaning in that it involves inferring and using creativity to contribute something new or different to ideas already established. In this new information age, you can find almost anything on the interest if you use appropriate search phrases.  Generative synthesis takes the summarizing of information learned a step further by asking learners to creatively construct knowledge by repurposing and reinforcing existing ideas. By reinforcing, learners are able to background check their own ideas and locate sources that validate their thinking. By repurposing, learners are able to evaluate existing ideas and creatively think of new ways to integrate or modify them to fit their situation, while keeping one important aspect the same. Can you think of ways our students already use reinforcement and repurposing? How can we model, and have students practice generative synthesis through inquiry? 

These BABR chapters go into the inquiry process for us again, but Dr. Beach was not kidding about the resources! I have narrowed down a functioning list of elementary and secondary resources that I think we could try out and evaluate on here this week. Choose a few to try out and have at it!

Elementary:
-https://www.choosito.com/ This website filters searches for students and teachers BY READING LEVEL! (sorry, I got a tad excited there)
-http://sp.askkids.com/docs/askkids/ Ask.com for kids aged 6-12.
-symbaloo.com Students can search using only teacher-approved websites and social media.
-http://www.activelylearn.com/ MUCH better than AR!
-http://www.eduwidgets.org/#/
--https://www.proboards.com/
-https://www.mindmeister.com/ Similar to bubbl.us

Secondary:
-http://www.iseek.com/iseek/home.page This is a search engine for academic research.
-https://www.choosito.com This could be awesome for secondary as well!
-https://scholar.google.com/ This is a google search engine for academic research that helps create citations too!
-https://vimeo.com/12861706 This video explains (in a hilarious way) how to use phrases and terms when using search engines.
-http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/ This form helps researchers narrow down their search engines by pointing them in the right direction (super cool!)
-http://www.factcheck.org/ Gives them the real scoop on news and facts heard in the media.
-https://educlipper.net/about.html Very cool Pinterest-esque website for the classroom to share.
-http://www.teenreads.com/
-http://www.activelylearn.com/
-http://www.eduwidgets.org/#/
-https://www.proboards.com/ A chat specifically for your class to discuss in!
-https://www.mindmeister.com/ Similar to bubbl.us

That was a lot! Happy researching!