e632 - professional concerns:
Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age
Professor: Dr. Cindy O'Donnell-Allen
Course Description
In recent years, definitions of literacy have changed in light of the rapid pace at which new technologies for information and communication have appeared. As these definitions change to reflect what societies expect literate individuals to know and do, the role of secondary school educators has changed as well. Such changes raise methodological concerns regarding how literacy practices get studied and pedagogical questions about how these practices get taught. Rather than focusing primarily on skills and content or teaching students how to use technologies that are likely to be outdated in a few years, teachings must help students "learn how to learn" by developing flexible strategies for examining, using, and producing texts in particular contexts. In short, teachers must develop a set of critical literacy and teaching practices that is responsive to change.
This course is designed to help you
Trace the impact and implications of these changes for both students and teachers
Examine classroom-based research grounded in theories of critical literacies, media literacies, and/or new literacies
Explore ideological and ethical aspects of literacy teaching and learning in a digital age
Examine, use, and produce digital texts, tools, and platforms
Design instructional materials/learning opportunities formed by this theory, research, and practice
We will be meeting these objectives by addressing the following questions and themes (among others that are sure to emerge according to your needs and interests) throughout the course:
In light of new literacies, what counts as texts? What counts as reading, writing, and composition?
In a digital age, what is the place of traditional print texts in the English curriculum? How does the incorporation of digital literacies affect the teaching of the traditional language arts (e.g., reading, writing, speaking, and listening)? As Green (2004) puts it, what shall we teach and how?
How do/should students' out-of-school literacies interface with those privileged in schools?
How do teachers help students, examine, use, and produce texts and genres that shift from word to image, from page to screen, from singly to multiply voiced? How has the changing nature of texts resulted in new relationships between readers and writers?
What impact have evolving definitions of literacy had on curriculum development and revision of instructional standards in language arts as well as on educational reform in general?
What constitutes a unit of analysis and literacy research---single texts or chains of literate practice? What methodological tools are available for analysis of the various products and processes associated with production, repetition, and use of print, multimodal, and digital texts?