'literacy' Category
e-authoring our eduselves
I’m thinking about how the edublog genre might be like listening to a hatchling through the eggshell, if embryos could talk. It’s a public narration of the emergent self. The current Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (March, 2007), a themed issue about e-portfolios, got me going on this.
Troy Hicks and a cadre of teachers [...]In Names We Trust
One of the things I note about my blogging practice is that it lets/forces me to tie up various loose ends that would otherwise remain what they are - random threads of disjointed information. Sometimes I have a hard time coherently bringing them together. Like now. This post is a link-fest, and rather long.
Neal Postman’s [...]A Reading Continuum
“It’s important to explicitly acknowledge the downsides of any technological transformation - to “think of the underside first,” in a precautionary way.”
-Bruce Sterling, in Shaping Things
Bruce Shauble’s post, A Book in the Hand, raises an interesting question about reading. Bruce is wondering whether kids are missing the chance to read deeply because so much of [...]Transmediation and Visual Literacy
Transmediation is a process of bringing meaning from one sign system to another. Transmediation is the basis of all literacy and it’s the essence of media literacy. Graphic art, sculpture, dance, music, photography, all are bearers of meaning, and each medium constrains the types of messages it can express. Every sign system has it’s own [...]
Exploring Naive Misconceptions
A couple of years ago when I was teaching sixth graders, I took the kids on a science field trip to gather samples of water from a local stream so that we could gauge the water quality. We chartered a bus to take us from the mouth of our local river, the one the [...]
Symbol Makers
When I read the statement, “it’s about the pedagogy,” with respect to technology and school, I think (sympathetically) OK, but how does that translate in practice? Chris has a list, and he asked if anyone cared to add to it. This is my elaboration on the translation.
I noted several months ago that most examples of [...]Reading to Write
Paul Allision, on Teachers Teaching Teachers, posed a key question about what blogs can do, and what we want them to do for our students. The question is whether blogging is a means to achieve skill or content goals in school, or… “Does blogging have a set of intellectual habits and skills that are worth [...]
The Pendulum
Time’s How to Bring our Schools Out of the 20th Century article referred to a “high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries, business leaders and a former Governor,” aka The New Commission on Skills for the American Workforce, who released “a blueprint for rethinking American education.” This is not a document that inspires giddy optimism for [...]
Reading Fluency Thermometers
I was in the doctor’s office a couple of days ago with a broken hand (from a fall while walking our dogs on an icy road). The nurse put a thermometer in my mouth. I told her I wasn’t sick. She said, I know, but if I don’t do this the doctor will want to [...]
Me, A Nominee?
Looks like some fans of the Borderland blog want to push me into the center of things. Josie Fraser emailed me this morning to say that Borderland made the shortlist of best teacher blogs for the 2006 Edublog Awards. Fun stuff!
Been thinking about what I might say here to acknowledge this honor and [...]
