PP 107: Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments - 2006

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 11-October 8, 2006
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 will be set to deny guest access between Sept 11 and October 7, 2006.
Registered participants, get the enrolment key for the Moodle at Desire to Learn

Visit the new wiki: http://pp107-2006.pbwiki.com
Syllabus for 2006 | Resources (2005) | 'Multilit' Yahoo Group | http://webheads.info

Beth Bertelsen Costa Rica	Doris Molero Maracaibo, Venezuela	Elderbob Brannon Grand Prairie, Texas http://www.elderbob.com/elderville	Gordon Peterson Paris, Texas
Gwen Cary Brazil http://www.gwencary.com	Hala Hassan Fawzi Sudan	Maryanne Burgos Buffalo, NY	Mary Jane Danan Oregon
Mary Reinhardt Taiwan	Moira Hunter France	Norbella Miranda Cali, Colombia	Roger Drury Atlanta, Georgia
Facilitator: Vance Stevens Abu Dhabi, UAE ... What am I looking at?	Teresa A Lucas Miami, Florida	Sonja Williams Durham, NC	Joseph Rosa Vacaville, California

"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 more information

A multiliterate teacher understands the many ways that technology interacts and intertwines with academic and interpersonal life, and actively learns how to gain control over those aspects impacting teaching, social, 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 training in technical skills required for coping with information overload
utilizes video, web cam, image, voice, and social networking technologies in communicating through communities of practice which in turn model collaborative, constructivist learning settings.

Topics covered include:

Week	Topics covered	Skills developed
September 11-17	What is multiliteracy?	The mechanics of online communities: social networking and collaborative learning portals / Skypecasting
September 18-24	Theoretical framework for multiliteracies and how they apply to collaborative learning environments	Managing information: Utilizing RSS and bloglines, podcasting and podcatching
September 25-1	Types of multileracies: Functional, critical	Web 2.0 and an overview of free presentation portals
October 2-8	Types of multileracies: Rhetorical and others	More read/write Web and other media

Notes for Next Year - Multiliteracies 2007

A good model for 2007 - Anya Ixchel's long post on My Teaching Semester in Second Life: Pitfalls, Challenges and Joys, is an interesting read about how she conducts a New Literacies course in Second Life: http://www.slatenight.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=40

Course-specific requirements:Internet Explorer 6.0, sound card, some means of reading/accessing and composing/sending e-mail, and optionally iPod or similar mpg player.

Vance Stevens is a Lecturer in Computing at Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi. With 30 years experience in ESL and TESOL’s CALL Interest Section, he is currently "On the Internet" editor of the TESL-EJ, Editorial Board member of CALL Journal, Executive Committee member of APACALL, EVOnline Liaison and special advisor to TESOL's Professional Development Committee, and founder of the Webheads online communities of practice.

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, for 2006

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:

These portals are in use in 2006

The main course portal for 2006 -
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 2006 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).
Wiki
http://pp107-2006.pbwiki.com
This is a space where participants can maintain their own pages and links to their own pages. The instructor can also put simplified instructions and notices here on the fly.
Desire to Learn: http://uwec.courses.wisconsin.edu
This is TESOL's portal for the course. We used it extensively in 2004 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. In 2005 we were able to access the previous years' discussions, which were excellent and rich in resources discovered by the participants, but this year in 2006 it is necessary to copy components over to the new rendition, too tedious a process to be worth the effort. At the moment there is a link here directing folks to enrol in the Moodle.
YahooGroups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilit
In 2004 I set up a Yahoo Group to handle our listserv traffic and invited members of that group to rejoin us in 2005 and 2006. There is an RSS feed of our YahooGroups output here: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/multilit/rss. I don't anticipating using this portal in 2006.

Further information

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
  New developments in 2006 include an archive of presentation portals Webheads are currently experimenting with.
- 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.
I placed a recap from 2004 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
An optional 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)

Up-to-date resources for 2006 are listed in the Course Moodle at http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23
and there is a list of Resources we used in 2005.

Here is LAST YEAR's Portal

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

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Last updated: September 24, 2006

(C)opyright 2006 Vance Stevens