P2PU | July 12: Writing in the "Real" World

Peer 2 Peer University: Making Writing and Literacy Learning Connections is a reflective group I have joined to become a better teacher of digital literacies.

P2PU | Making Writing and Literacy Learning Connections | July 12: Writing in the "Real" World

This group of educators has been discussing Digital Literacy in terms of a transition of the teaching and learning of reading and writing in today's classrooms.

I highlighted in Diigo the words from our second task and considered why they resonate as powerful possibilities.

1. Goals

"collaboration, shared writing, community building, and relevant and clear communication"

These ideas we have discussed as important to digital literacies, and are goals on which we can continually improve both our process and product. When we embark into digital literacies, we have the opportunity to build a better world, a world where diverse voices are heard and recognized, where they can come together in an online space and build a community of learners and citizens to solve problems anywhere. We could.

These fourth grade students grew into a community that provided lessons within their school and without:

Fourth Grade Service Learning Project:  http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/366

2. Purpose


"help students to understand the ways in which the choices they make regarding when, how, and why they use writing to communicate to particular audiences can have a profound social impact"

When we communicate and collaborate, when we work together, we build a community. What we think, say, and write impacts ourselves, our communities. Our purpose is to help students find a voice, join voices, and act with those voices to impact their world -- choosing the most effective words and presentation to convey that voice, their purpose. Using audio, sound, text, images, video, diagrams, interactives, and more, students constantly consider TAP: topic, audience, and purpose. We've just expanded the repertoire of choices in "how" we share; critical thinking and planning in creative ways will be the norm, if we help students understand their choices in "digital writing" (multi-media) and in reading those choices by others. We guide them to see the impacts of media on their lives and how their media can impact the lives of others.  Now more than ever, we help students "touch the future" and build that better world.

These students show how that power of choice through critical and creative revisions of their vision do just that.

Literacy in our Lives:  http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/2783

3. Impacts


"student choice, online responsibility and ethics, social justice, and real world change through communication"

By expanding the choices in how students read and write, we encourage more engagement, and therefore more learning. The internet is filled with questionable content as well as the enormous wealth of helpful information. Through our classrooms with more choice and engagement, we promote the online responsibility and ethics of good citizens and encourage students to work for social justice. These are real world issues students can now become the powerful voice of change.

The example below transformed a traditional unit on Shakespeare into a message of understanding and clarification of identity that transcended their own classroom and reached out to build that understanding for others.

Redefining Romeo and Juliet: Reclaiming the “Ghetto”:  http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/2248

4. Implications

"teaching and learning practices and writing in the real world"

"use Digital Is to help focus, enrich, and complicate our interest in authentic writing/writing in the real world"

Do you see how projects such build a local and global community with a reciprocation of sharing? Do you see how  students and teachers applied these skills: creative and critical thinking with reading, writing, and producing strategies?

Do you see the need to find the ways to build the foundation in pedagogy, curriculum, and infrastructure to implement projects?

How do we start?

A good example that also started with the traditional history curriculum, but built a community of help and history is:

Students Doing History with Voicethread Technology:  http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/415

Now more than ever, digital literacy bridges the schools and the "real world."

What projects have you considered or implemented that also demonstrate the need for more projects like this?

How about joining the conversation at P2PU  and Digital Is?

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Cross-posted at: Pause2Play