What a Gorgeous Class Pic

From left to right: Zack De Piero, Elizabeth Nardova, Gabe Baker, Michele Zugnoni, Wu Ti, and Karen Lunsford.

Text-to-Speech Video of the Topics We Covered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9d-oe71jkE&feature=youtu.be

http://www.screenr.com/dT7N

http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/

On the Agenda

themes:

• functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy
• how to write a review

texts:

• selber: multiliteracies for a digital age
• barron: her review
• spinuzzi: his review 

people, places, things, ideas:

• david selber, paolo freire, pfaffenberg, david taylor, parrin, critical literacy, critical theory, empowerment, democracy, taylorism, assessment, keyboard logging, malware, textual recall, literacy, technical communication, transdisciplinarity, black box concepts,  jane austen, mary shelley, Frankenstein, functional literacy,  man/woman versus machine, context, modules, information literacy, ACL literacy, 2nd Life, avatars, linden dollars, bitcoin, rhetorical audiences, interpretation of literary texts, play, constructivism, reviews, tactics for an opinion, clay spinuzzi, nancy barron, annual review/year in review, kairos, blogs, haystac, gray publication, self-positioning, ethnographic, the legend of muriel harris versus bob connor and jim berlin, grants, foundations, carnegie, rockefeller, mellon, annenberg, spencer

Wordle #1 - Gray Tones

From Wordle.net

Paraphrased: Questions Posed, Questions Linger(ED)

karen, on one of the major debates in the field

·      if we’re teaching digital literacies, to what extent do we use class time to teach students what we’d call “computer skills?”  how to program and how to use Word—to what extent is that someone else’s job?

karen

·      do you know where critical literacy stems from? 

karen, channeling the freire discussion

·      how does language work in systems of power?

wu ti

·      what does literacy mean to English/literature departments?  to computer science departments?

karen

·      independent writing programs breaking away from English departments, so what should be a part of them?  should technical communication?  what fits in well with the rest of the dept—given the methods that others within the department use for their work?

elizabeth, regarding the funding of transdisciplinary programs

·      who’s in charge of this?  who says this academic team is going to receive money?

z, trying to weave the threads together

·      what we’re getting at here is that these are questions posed within a critical computer literacy course, right?

z and elizabeth, on pairing functional literacy and critical literacy

·      1 course/2 courses?  how do you blend these two?  if an example of the culmination of a critical literacy course is the pursuit of this type of man/machine research question, how do you scaffold/incorporate these functional skills?

z, on finding a practical solution to the functional/critical literacy trade-off  

·      can’t this functional stuff be solved by modules?

karen, on the difficulties of relying on modules to teach the complexity of writing

·      do you think you can teach writing via modules?

z, to gabe re: 2^nd Life

·      what’s the discourse/rhetoric like in 2^nd Life?  Is it anything like the game Call of Duty—which is to say a racist, sexist nightmare?

karen

·      are we teaching writing when we teach someone to ~navigate through this world?  to build?  to design your own spaces?  think also: who is controlling the metaphors of these spaces?

z, wondering about how to base a writing course off of 2^nd Life

·      what outcomes are there?  if you were going to design a course around this, what would the pedagogically-sound learning goals be?

karen, on implementing technology into a classroom curriculum

·      when you’re setting this up, the question becomes: how much time are you going to spend to get/help people to understand this space? 

karen

·      with the sense of “play” that comes into it, another black box is: who gets to control the floor?

z, on gaming and constructivism

·      would this be considered constructivist?  and how do you attack constructivist theory?  something like it’s not absolute knowledge, not objective truth?  to me, it seems like the ultimate teaching and learning theory—why wouldn’t it be?

karen, responding

·      it could, but then the question becomes: how do you guide the learner?  to what extent do you scaffold?

karen, to gabe re: his plans to use 2nd Life

·      so how do you plan to teach your students how to participate in this world?

karen, on dissecting reviews

·      what tactics/strategies are the authors using to convey their opinion?

karen, on a reviewer’s thought process

·      the review author is thinking in terms of: in the landscape of our field, where does this fit?

karen, on a reviewer’s thought process part II

·      so if you were doing a review, you’d consider: what are the topics, how are they different/same, what are the trends?

elizabeth

·      in latin America, there’s “gray publication”—nothing counts, so what is intellectual production?

karen, to us re: dissecting the barron piece

·      pause and re-read that sentence.  what work is that sentence doing?

karen, on considering the authors of reviews

·      who is it that’s talking in the text, and what kind of authority do they have to talk about the text?  and/or in what way is this person a reader of the text, in what way, why?

karen, on the ideal reader

·      there’s often that move of: this is the ideal reader.  so as a reader, you can ask yourself—am I this reader?  can this help you determine whether/not you want to read it?

z, on unsolicited submissions

·      to whom do you direct a review query?  the editor? 

Wordle #2 -- Remniscient of a "Battle of the Bands" Poster

This one looks like a Battle of the Bands lineup, doesn't it?  If you asked me which one of these acts I'm spending my hard-earned money on, it's Muriel Harris Versus Bob Connor and Jim Berlin, hands down.  

Getting a Little Goofy This Go-Round