PP 107: Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments

TESOL Certificate Program: Principles and Practices of Online Teaching
This course: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=664&DID=2642
September 12-October 9, 2005
Session Leader: Vance Stevens, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Portals: Moodle: http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23
This course has been set to deny guest access until after October 9, 2005.
Registered participants, get the enrolment key for the Moodle at Desire to Learn
Resources | Syllabus for 2005 | 'Multilit' Yahoo Group | Webheads
Each name below links to the Participants page for 2005
Preview a forthcoming article in TESL-EJ explaining the progression of documents in this course

Angela Waigand Sharjah, United Arab Emirates	Bob Palmer Sapporo, Japan	Buthaina Alothman Kuwait	Claire Bradin Siskin Pennsylvania	Dafne Gonzales Caracas, Venzuela	Doris Molero Maracaibo, Venezuela
Dennis Oliver Phoenix, Arizona	Elderbob Brannon Grand Prairie, Texas	Graciela Martin Buenos Aires, Argentina	Holly Dilatush Virginia	Hyman Wong Hong Kong	Maryanne Burgos Buffalo, NY
Lilia Joy Hanson, Kentucky	Norbella Miranda Cali, Colombia	Vance Stevens Abu Dhabi, UAE What am I looking at?	Roger Drury Atlanta, Georgia	Shelly Peters Nagoya, Japan	Mary Jane Danan Oregon

"At first people used to say it's not the e that's important, it's the learning. I don't think that's true. I think it's the e that's important. It's networking, it's management, and it's learning how to deal with computers." - Jay Cross, in Abu Dhabi for an eMerging eLearning Conference, quoted in the Gulf News, Sept. 13, 2004, p.6

Session Overview
See the syllabus (for 2005)

A multiliterate teacher understands the many ways that technology interacts and intertwines with academic life, and actively learns how to gain control over those aspects impacting teaching and professional development. Multiliterate individuals are aware of the pitfalls inherent in technology while striving for empowerment through effective strategies for first discerning and then taking advantage of those aspects of changing technologies most appropriate to their situations. These strategies include managing, processing, and interpreting a constant influx of information, filtering what is useful, and then enhancing the learning environment with the most appropriate applications. This course

models effective approaches and strategies for responding to technology issues in the academic environment
provides opportunities for expansion of technical skills required for coping with information overload
utilizes video, web cam, image, and voice technologies in communicating through communities of practice which in turn model collaborative, constructivist learning settings.

Topics covered include:

Mechanics of an online community
What is multiliteracy?
How multiliteracies apply to collaborative learning environments
Managing information
Theoretical framework for multiliteracies
What kinds of multiple literacies are there?
More detailed examinations of
- functional literacy
- critical literacy
- rhetorical literacy

Schedule overview and resources (for 2005, update in progress)

Syllabus
Follow this link to see the Syllabus and day-by-day outline of the course

Course portals

Since this is a course on Multiliteracies, we utilize various free and open source groupware tools in order to explore their particular benefits as well as help us organize the course. Multiple venues can potentially disorganizing a course as well, so it is important that participants understand the purpose of each portal, their relationship to one another, and relative importance to the course:

The main course portal
This is my offline space for setting up the course. It serves as an anchor for linking all the other tools we use. For an instructor with an HTML editor, access to web space, and a laptop which is not always online, working through such a portal is a great convenience, for thinking through the material and uploading the results when connected.
Moodle: http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23
This year 2005 I'm using a Moodle to serve as a groupware portal and handle our threaded discussions. Its only disadvantage is that it can only be worked on through an Internet connection (except that you can work on the text of threaded discussions offline and post when it's convenient to you). As an instructor I find a Moodle to be my tool of choice for browsing Internet resources and recording them in an organized way for retrieval later (better than browser bookmarks or the two online equivalents, or blogs).
YahooGroups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilit
Last year I set up a Yahoo Group to handle our listserv traffic. I have invited members of that group last year to rejoin us this year. There is an RSS feed of our YahooGroups output here: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/multilit/rss
Desire to Learn: http://uwec.courses.wisconsin.edu
This is TESOL's portal for the course. We used it extensively last year and found its threaded discussion facilities to be excellent. From an instructor point of view it's not well documented or supported by a huge community of users as is Moodle, and there is no way to carry off a backup of the course in a zip file as there is with Moodle. This year I will be using it simply to link to our other portals, and to reference last years' discussions, which were excellent and rich in resources discovered by the participants.
Communities of Practice: These tools encourage community building which is so important to constructivist learning environments (reference: my TESL-EJ article from my Cairo plenary). Also:
- For an overview of what's involved in community formation on the Internet, please see the Webheads in Action portal at http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm
- The Webheads in Action model of community formation has worked for Webheads over numerous sessions where communities have been successfully formed, and in some cases still thrive. See Stevens (2004a) for one report on these communities.
Multiliterate Collaborative Networking (or if you prefer, 'chatting' with friends and colleagues)
- For an overview of the MCN/chat tools we might use, see: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/software.htm
- The Webheads in Action syllabus is a collaborative effort documenting training in use of various community building tools: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/syllabus.htm
- Explore the portal (and week by week activities) for my TESOL Online Academy session October 27 to November 23, 2003 on Enhancing Online Communities with Voice and Webcams: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/academy/portal2003.htm
- A similar program also entitled Enhancing online communities with voice and webcams was presented at a Pre-Convention Institute (PCI) at the annual TESOL Convention, Long Beach, Tuesday, March 30, 2004: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/pci2004.htm
- See Stevens (2004b) for a presentation at the annual TESOL Convention, Long Beach, on how these tools are used.
The 'assigned' text for the course: Selber, Stuart. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (See a brief description at http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/s04_titles/selber_digital.htm)

News

I placed a recap from last year of 'what is multiliteracy' in the Links area of my web pages http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2004.htm#links.

Blogging Safari:
~\ Let's go blogging now, everyone is learning how /~
~\ Come on and safari with me! /~ (a la Beach Boys)

Why all this interest in blogs? http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/week5.htm#blogs

Getting Started - Sept 1, 2004 - The following gives insights into what 'multiliteracy' might be ...

Carla Meskill issued a call for papers for a special issue of Language Learning & Technology which will examine the many issues related to electronic literacy, especially as it applies to second language learning. To quote from the call: http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num3/call_for_papers.html

This special issue of Language Learning & Technology will examine the many issues related to electronic literacy, especially as it applies to second language learning. While it is clear that what we see and hear on television and computer screens is unique from what we read in print, frameworks for conceptualizing, analyzing, and integrating into instructional practices the ways we understand the world through these media are lacking. What processes constitute our reading of these electronic texts? What does it mean and will it mean to be electronically literate? How do the experiences we have with what we see and interact with on screens influence language use? In what way is electronic literacy impacting the ways we use, teach, and learn language?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Influences of socialization processes with and through electronic texts on second language learning
Use of linguistic/paralinguistic strategies with electronic texts
Mediation of first language literacy practices in second language interactions with electronic texts
Frameworks and/or processes for seeking, retrieving and making use of electronic texts
Second language learners' electronic literacy development in classroom or out-of-school settings
Language educators' understandings of electronic literacy and integration of electronic literacy in the classroom

Other resources are listed on our Resources page and in the Course Moodle at http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23

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Last updated: October 3, 2005

(C)opyright 2005 Vance Stevens