Sunday, July 16, 2017

Week 6 of INTE5340: Learning With Digital Stories - New Literacies

This week's reflection was again made using Plotagon. I thought I'd take this as another opportunity to play around with Plotagon and become more familiar with using it.



Daily Create Challenges

I have come to really enjoy the daily create challenges. Although, this week, I felt like I was in a creative slump and had to force myself to create. This experience reminded me of having to force myself to write every day as an academic, even when (and especially when) I don't feel like it. Due to deadlines and time constraints, we can't always wait for inspiration to strike. So, this week, I completed 4 challenges, and I forced myself to make media. One of the things I struggled with was keeping my daily create projects fresh and interesting, even when feeling not-so-inspired. All challenges were completed on a smartphone as a means for me to become more familiar and proficient with using the apps I have on my phone. Apps used include Aviary, Desygner, Poster Maker, and Overlay.




Assignment 7 - INTE5340 Horror Stories

This week, I conducted a social fiction experiment on Twitter. I used the Twitter handle @inte5340horror  and curated all of the crowdsourced tweets using a Twitter Moment. My write-up of this assignment can be found here. This is probably the most fun I've had completing an INTE 5340 assignment. And admittedly, I enjoyed the burst of confusion after my first few postings with the hashtag #inte5340horrorstory.





Case Study - Ignite Boulder

This week, I chose to study Ignite Boulder as an example of how storytelling can take on a social and community-building nature. In my write-up of this case study, I have included interviews with people involved with Ignite Boulder. My case study write-up can be found here. I thought for this case study, I would talk to people about their experiences and involvement with Ignite Boulder. With everyone's crazy schedules, it was easiest to email my interviewees a list of questions, and they could then email me back with their answers at their earliest convenience. One thing that is out of my comfort zone is soliciting people for interviews and bugging people for their interview responses. I had to send out a few reminders this past week, and I hated feeling like I was bothering people. Overall, it was a good experience, and I ended up with 3 great interviews.

Final Thoughts

What are some of the new literacies that you believe you have developed as a result of new technologies? What are some of the new literacies you recognize you lack?


I think back to when I first became a scientist. I had a background in psychology, but had to learn various new literacies -- how to understand and conduct molecular biology assays, understand how to read and analyze genetics articles, pick up a whole new vocabulary covering pharmacology, and finally basic coding. Yes, coding. A lot of the behavioral experiments I ran involved using recording and analysis software. And I had to learn to code in order to tell my operant conditioning boxes what I wanted them to do, the data I wanted to record and for how long. In other words, I had to learn how to give my computer programs the parameters by which I wanted to run experiments. Today, as a teacher, I've had to learn how to use various online data tracking tools, and through this course, learn the basics of media literacy in order to be able to teach my own students about media literacy. I still think I still have a ways to go on this, but through continued "playful tinkering," I hope to continue to build my computer and media literacy proficiency over time. This will help me to make my classes relevant and authentically engaging for my students who already spend a lot of time on their smartphones and computers.

How can schools support all members of their community — teachers, administrators, students, parents — in developing these new literacies?


I think the single thing schools can do to help develop these new literacies is to give both students and teachers the freedom, time and space to playfully tinker with new technologies. I believe this will be more powerful than a 2-hr professional development (PD) session. I'm not saying to do away with PDs, as this is a good starting point for helping teachers figure out where they stand on the technology literacy spectrum. But I think that once teachers are given this gauge of where they stand, they are given the time and freedom to continue to tinker and expand their understanding of the new technologies. For students, I think that by assigning more projects that involve playful tinkering, students are then given the ability to increase their problem solving repertoire and become more technologically proficient.

On to Week 7!


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