Week Four in Multiliteracies: The Sociopolitical Lens

Image on Flickr by D Sharon Pruitt

I am still very late with my Multiliteracies homework. And, yes, I am aware that the session is now officially over. However, one of the many good sides of online courses is that they remain online forever.

Week 4 looks at Multiliteracies through a sociopolitical lens. Everything we do has sociopolitical consequences, I suppose, especially if we distribute our content over the internet for millions to see.

Are millions going to see what we have distributed? Or is no one going to see what we have distributed? What is the real impact of what we are doing?

The fear that amateurs are going to destroy our beautiful planet's culture and education by writing in bad English (or Spanish, or German, or whatever) and by trying to pass their mediocre work as art is, in my opinion, unfounded. Nobody is going to read your content if your content is bad. On the other hand, the chances of you winning the Nobel Prize for literature for your blog are... Well, what do you think?

Chances are, you'll end up talking to the people who share your professional interests, your hobbies and your passions.

Enter www. For, those people could be living on the other end of the globe and the chances of you meeting them would have been next to nothing 20 years ago. Now you can cooperate with them and learn with them. You can even create together.

What is the impact of this on education? These are the questions asked in the Multiliteracies wiki:

• What key literacies should we be teaching students in a digital world?, but also
• To what extent is it the responsibility of educators to teach/coach these literacies?
• Are there any drawbacks or dangers in teaching/coaching these literacies?

I am not sure I know the answers to these questions, so I will just think out loud here. I have always seen teaching as a two-way process. I learn something new every day from my students. The other day, for example, I found out that Rene Magritte's The Son of Man was a self-portrait. One of my students surfed to Wikipedia on his mobile phone and found that out. I had never asked him to do it (we were simply discussing the painting), but the way he found that information was completely natural.

Watching him do it made me think of something and that made me say out loud what I was thinking of:

Is it still necessary for us to fill our heads with lots and lots of data, when we have all the information we might need at our fingertips?

And what should we be teaching instead?

I am not one of those pessimists who think teachers are an endangered species and will become extinct once students learn how to create their own PLNs and PLEs. Because, to learn how to get the most out of their PLNs and PLEs, they need us, their teachers to teach them how to sift through information, how to pull the content they need and how to connect to the right people. In the other words, we need to teach them how to be multiliterate. I don't think digital natives are born with these skills, nor do they develop these skills through connecting with their friends on social networks.

However, if the teaching species is to survive, we need to evolve. I love new technology, but I know a lot of my colleagues do not share my enthusiasm. This is all right, you don't have to spend four hours on the internet every day to be multiliterate. The wonderful thing about PLNs is that people will support you even if you are not there all the time.

Teachers are adaptable and love learning. There are a lot of teachers online and our profession has really benefited from new technologies. Why, then, do we see no change in the way schools and universities are organised?

This is where the concept of edupunk comes in.

This is what the Mulitliteracies wiki says about edupunk:

And now for something complEATly different. The concept of edupunk suggests that there are issues regarding new technologies not being addressed by institutional learning, and it also suggests an 'in your face' approach to resolving some of these issues by stepping around the established authority and just doing it. This week we'll consider what some of these ill-addressed issues are, and we'll ask: when is it justified to simply take off on one's own tangent on the assumption that this is best for one's students? What are the up- and downsides to such an approach? In what way is this a multiliteracies issue? Participants should enjoy addressing the question: Do you feel that you, or anyone for that matter, is, are, or should be an edupunk?

I will try to answer the questions here.

When is it justified to simply take off on one's own tangent on the assumption that this is best for one's students?

Well, see, I am not a rebel. I use prescribed books and follow my school's curriculum. There is nothing bad in that. If I decide to do something more for my students and with my students, I am sure nobody is going to object. As for the second part of the question ( "on the assumption that this is best for one's students"), I don't take that for granted, either. It is their learning process, not mine. My role as the teacher is to offer, but I can't learn instead of them. I learnt this in my early internet days. Back then, I tried to get the students blogging and I was a little too enthusiastic about it. They saw blogging as additional workload and just ignored me.

Nowadays I just present my wikis to them and wait. Some of them decide to join me, a lot of them never do. I teach adults, which means that my students are not digital natives and some of them are actually technophobes. It was worse three years ago, but now people are catching up. I think the fact that I am not pushing this into their faces helps.

In what way is this a multiliteracies issue?

I don't think wanting to change the educational system is solely a multiliteracies issue. As I have said somewhere in this post, technology is just a tool. However, being blind to technology and refusing to admit it is there is not a good idea if you are an educator.

Educational institutions and educational policies have always been behind what happened "in the real world". They have also always been behind what ordinary teachers did in their very ordinary classrooms. I know, my mother was a teacher too. One thing I learnt from her is that, in order to be a good teacher, you need to break a couple of rules. I don't believe that institutions will change overnight but, by the time they do, the teachers will be more than ready.

This post has taken a ridiculously long time to write. I tried to work out my answers for the questions posed in the Multiliteracies wiki. I guess I don't have the answers. One of the reasons for this could be the fact that I never thought about the bigger picture when I got addicted to online learning. I still can't bring myself to think about the bigger picture. The global ELT community is like a village now. Everybody knows everybody else and you keep bumping into the same people over and over again. What we are doing here is just a ripple in the ocean, but it is a start.

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Why I Love Digital Storytelling

I am going to try and kill three birds with one stone. Or rather, do three pieces of homework with a single blog post.

Because everything is connected. I might be making a generalisation here, but I believe everything we do on the internet these days boils down to digital storytelling.

Let's look at it this way: we spend hours on the internet blogging, tweeting, posting images and audio files. We talk to each other and we listen to each other. We tell each other stories.

Week 3 in Multiliteracies was about digital storytelling. And Week 4 in Digital Storytelling is the Grand Finale of the course - the point where we actually get the chance to tell our story.

Where does Teacher Challenge come in? Well, Challenge Number 6 was about adding multimedia to your blog. Multimedia were compared to the nerves of your blog, the way images were compared to the eyes of the blog.

I have to confess that I was deliberately stalling with my homework both in Multiliteracies and in Digital Storytelling so that I could wait for the time that I had some stories of my own to share.

When we are talking about adding multimedia to your blog, what we are really talking about is digital stories. They can be in different formats: video, audio, slideshows, cartoons. Multimedia can serve the same purpose images do. They can illustrate the post, or inspire you to write it. They could be the centre of the post. You can try out an application and write a post explaining how or why you used it. The multimedia shared in your blog do not have to be created by you, but it feels great if they are.

Is digital storytelling different from ordinary storytelling? If so, how?

Digital storytelling uses multimedia. Stories are told in different ways - you can use images, or video, or words, or music, or any combination of the above. There are so many tools to choose from. In his 50+ Ways to Tell a Digital Story Alan Levine told the same story using 50 different tools!

Digital stories are short and succinct. Everyone attempting to write a digital story should bear in mind that the attention span of his or her readers is short. They land on your page, scan the text and they might or might not click on the multimedia. The shorter the story, the better your chances are. But then, your responsibility is to make the story really powerful with the little time you have.

Which brings me to another point: Digital stories are embeddable. Most of Levine's 50+ stories are embedded right there in his wiki. Digital stories can be shared in blogs, wikis, on Twitter and Facebook. If your friends like them, they might share them further.

Digital stories can be written by one person or a group of people.

Digital stories are multicultural and digital storytelling is truly democratic. It gives power to everyone to express their talent.

It seems that whole new genres are being born almost daily and there are probably thousands of ways you can tell your story.

I chose two. First I decided to bravely read a poem of mine, so I started looking for tools that linked audio to a single image. I tried out three, but liked Fotobabble best (really easy to use, good sound quality) and I am going to share the Fotobabble version of my poem here:

">Photo by ">Chelle on Morguefile

Then, I decided to learn how to use Prezi. I had tried once before and it seemed too difficult. This time I watched all their tutorials and it actually isn't difficult at all. I chose another poem and started copy-pasting it into Prezi

Prezi can turn plain text into beautiful images (a bit like Wordle), which gives it great potential for publishing 'digital poetry'. I am not very gifted for visual arts (even photography is difficult for me), so I felt not having to worry about images was great.

My poem is called Stop Drilling. It has nothing to do with practicing boring grammar in class:) You see, I live in a flat and two years ago one of my neighbours decided to redecorate his flat. He kept drilling and knocking down walls. Finally, I learnt how to sleep through the noise, but the silence would always wake me up. The poem got completely out of control. It rebelled on me and decided to turn itself into something completely different. Time you people saw my dark side:

Stop Drilling on Prezi

Keep hitting the Play button to read on.

I believe digital storytelling is something I might devote more of my time to in the future. I am even toying with the idea of starting another blog, just for poetry. What do you think?

In the meantime, I am packing my bags. I am going to a beautiful mountain with my family and we will be away for a week. I will have to press the Pause button on this blog and on all my workshops, but I will continue where I stopped as soon as I am back.

Your comments are very important to me. I won't be able to respond until I return, but I'll get to you as soon as I can.

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A picture tells... how many words again?

In Teacher Challenge number 5 we were asked to reflect on the role images play in blogging. Now, that is very convenient because I am also attending Digital Storytelling and last week we did Flickr stories.

I keep saying that multitasking is useful. The fact that I am involved in multiple workshops right now means two things:

1. My head is expanding very fast and it might explode any minute.

2. All I need to do is sit back and enjoy and the workshops will take care of each other's homework.

Don't ask me how many workshops I am attending, never ask a lady about the number of her workshops.

Anyway, here is what we did in Digital Storytelling last week:

1. Object Stories

We were asked to post an image of an object that means a lot to us and to write a short story about it underneath a picture. This is what I shared:

My Grandmother's Earrings

These earrings belonged to my maternal grandmother. She got them from her maternal grandmother when she was a little girl. In a way, they are a link to my female relatives.
I know the picture is not very good and it is a pity. The craftsmanship is really beautiful. The earrings are flower-shaped and the blue petals are made of turquoise, which happens to be my favourite stone.
A long time ago I decided I was going to wear them. They were different from anything my friends had. I wore them constantly for 20 years. The clasp is very strong and it was hard to remove them even when I wanted to. Until about a week ago when I lost one of them. I was really unhappy, but two days later it was found.
I was under the impression that my female ancestors were trying to tell me something.
What could that be?

The response I got from other participants was the best part of this activity. No matter which part of the globe they came from, most ladies could feel the pain I felt when I lost my earring. They understood why the earrings were so important to me. My apologies for the picture - it is not easy to capture a pair of tiny earrings and I am not much of a photographer.

I read a lot of fascinating stories about ordinary everyday objects. It is easy to apply this in an EFL classroom. Everybody has a favourite object and everybody can tell stories about it.

2. Colour Stories

We were asked to post an image in which our favourite colour dominated and to write a short story about it. We were allowed to use Flickr Creative Commons images. This is what I came up with:

Photo on Flickr by the Hidaway (Simon)

The Red Sun

His heart is red,
open for everyone to see.
He leaves red footprints
all over the sky
as he sinks into sleep.
One last flicker of fire
and he is gone,
invisible to us,
as he dreams his red dreams
at the bottom of the sea.
He wakes up, red,
the next morning.
He lights the sky
with his red love
and she stretches
her red-sleeved arms
to embrace him.

Images inspire us. If you don't know what to blog about, just find a beautiful image (with a CC licence), post it at the top of your blog, look at it and start writing. Words will come. I have done this exercise with some of my students who claimed they were bad at writing. I would put a photo cut out of a newspaper in front of them and asked them to describe how in made them feel. If words still wouldn't come, I asked them to describe the photo. I believe it helped. The trick is to use interesting images like the one above.

Before I move onto Activity Number 3, I have got something else to share with you. One of the tasks in Teacher Challenge was to use an Animoto video and I love Animoto, so I just had to make one. Here it is.

I swear, if I didn't know better, I would think that the Animoto people knew the secret of Artificial Intelligence. Animoto puts each image right where it should be and it is in sync with the music... I love it. And, instead of just sharing family photos, you can tell all sorts of stories with Animoto. It just takes a bit of imagination.

Finally, Task Number 3 in Digital Storytelling were Six Word Stories. We were asked to share an image (our own or a Creative Commons one) and to invent a six word story to go with it. Six word stories are addictive. People shared and shared. I made three, but only one of them is with the image of my own. That's the one I am going to share here:

Winter Love

The love will outlive the snow.

The great thing about images is that they can be reused. In the Teacher Challenge number 5 we were asked to create a five-word story. So, here it is, with the same image:

The sun will melt them.

And my question for you:

Which story do you prefer?

The one with the Hollywood ending...

or the other one.

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Week Two in Multiliteracies

Click on the image to enlarge

I am still struggling with the concept of multiliteracies. Or rather, I am struggling with putting what I instinctively "know' about multiliteracies into words. What does it take to be multiliterate? And how does a multiliterate person behave online? Words won't come (yet), which is why I have decided to create this mind map.

This is what learning in a MOOC (massive open online course) looks like to me:

1. First you need to find relevant information. You can search tags to find what other people are posting on the topic, or you can use RSS to pull the content you need from blogs. You might be puzzled by my use of the word 'serendipity', but I believe relevant information has a way of finding us. That's how I ended up in my first Becoming a Webhead session. We often cannot predict what we will come across online and we need to keep an open mind. I still do a lot of good old-fashioned surfing and Googling and I still subscribe to newsletters and I still read emails. Twitter is all about serendipity. Just spend one hour following the links shared on Twitter and you'll see what I mean.

2. Another thing you need to do is join the discussions. Any place is good - your blog (don't forget to tag), Twitter, the forums. As long as you are using all the right tags, others should be able to find you.

3. Apart from the reading texts provided in your MOOC, you should look at what others are sharing on Twitter or in their blogs.

4. Networking inside a MOOC never happens in a vacuum. Whatever I post here as my Multiliteracies homework will be read by different members of my PLN. The concept of personal learning network is complex. Is it one network, or are there many networks? If you look at the way I represented my network in the mind map, you will see that it also includes my students, members of my family and friends. These networks overlap and, with time, merge into one.

5. I have left reflecting for the end because reflecting is the most important part of the whole process for me. I am an introspective learner. I read and listen and then I have to go home and make sense of everything on my own. This blog is my home, so this is where I am sitting right now, trying to make sense of things. Another 'home' for me is my Netvibes eportfolio. It helps me organise what I have learnt and created into one place.

One of the objectives for week 2 is to create an eportfolio for this course. We should state our own objectives and goals in it and then add things to it as the course progresses. Once the course is over, we should check whether our goals have been met.

My plan is to write a post every week. Then I will organise all my posts, alongside with my objectives and any questions and problems I might come along into my eportfolio. I have started a new page in my Netvibes eportfolio for this purpose and it is right here. It is work in progress. I feel that it takes much longer than five weeks to grasp the concept of Multiliteracies.

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The Faces Behind the Name

I am running late with my Teacher Challenge homework. There is a reason for that: my blog was three years old yesterday and I just had to celebrate it. It was also my birthday and my online friends threw me a little surprise party:

Then I read and answered all those messages posted to me elsewhere. It took me two hours.

I have a large PLN (Personal Learning Network). It is comprised of the people I follow on Twitter, people I connect with on Facebook, people I talk to in different forums, people I go to online workshops with and, of course, "my bloggers". Those are the people I blog with.

Blogging may look like a solitary activity, but it is not. Whenever you post a meaningful comment on someone's blog, a connection is formed. You will continue to learn from each other. You might even become blogging buddies, supporting each other along the way, giving each other blogging assignments, linking to each other's posts. It is networking in its best sense.

What has it got to do with Teacher Challenge Number 4? Apart from the "My dog ate my homework" bit. Sorry, teacher, I had to write 'thank you' notes to members of my PLN.

I believe this has everything to do with the Create Your Avatar task. Because your avatar is how other people will see you online, and I mean this literally.

The title of this post? Well, let's say you have been to my blog a couple of times. You have followed my tweets and read a couple of comments I posted in my forums in the rare occasions I went out of my usual lurking mode. You know who I am then. The more you connect to me, the more you will get to know me as a person. Except, you have never heard me laugh or seen me wave my hands when I speak. You don't know what I look like.

It is exactly the opposite from what happens offline. You get to see someone first or you hear their voice over the phone and that is your first impression of the person. Then you get to know them. That's why I think profile pictures and avatars are really important.

This is what I look like on Twitter and in a lot of other online spaces. It is my default profile picture. It is three years old. A lot of people change their profile pictures periodically, but I am too lazy for that. Besides, those who know me will immediately recognise my picture precisely because I use the same one over and over. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

Sometimes I look like this:

That is the photo I use on Facebook, Blip and a few other places.

This is what I sound like:

Finally, what I call myself. My name, Nataša, is pronounced as Natasha. However, my usual profile name is lunas994. Whenever you see lunas994, it's got to be me. That is my Twitter name, for example. Back in the old days I was reluctant to share my real name or my photo, so I took the first letters of the names of my family members (Luka, Natasa, Srećko) and added 994 because 1994 was a good year for me. And it stuck. Like my profile picture, I am not going to change it because it is a part of my online personality.

So, should you use a real photograph as your avatar or something else? I prefer to use a real picture because it makes me look more like a real person, which, of course, I am. It is easier to relate to a 'real person' than a cartoon character. Of course, this shouldn't be a universal rule. If you are uncomfortable using your real picture, by all means post something else. Whatever you feel represents you the best.

#ksyb

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My Birthday Special

Three.egg on Aviary.

This blog was born three years ago on 22nd January. It happens to be my birthday too. I would like to celebrate this day by looking at my last year's posts. Starting with a post just like this one written on 22nd January 2010. Since I don't post so often, it shouldn't be such a difficult task.

Last year I attended three EVO sessions and the first couple of posts were about the workshops and what I learnt there. In the first post (EVO, HTML and the Voki Girl) I also boasted about how I managed to change the HTML in my Blogger template. I did this mostly by cheating, but I did it.

Let Me Tell You a Story is about using Mixbook to tell stories. I finished the post by a storytilling challenge for my readers. This is, I have to say, quite a good way to get comments...

Myna and the Sleeping Dragon is one of those posts that mean a lot to me, which means that it has got a poem inside. It also talks about Myna by Aviary which can be used to create short listening comprehension exercises.

In Which Came First - the Picture or the Caption I am musing about different ways to tell a digital story and the connection between the image and the written text.

If you are looking for EFL lesson plans, there is a free one in Trouble with the Mobile Phone.

Myrphy's Law for EFL Teachers is probably my most popular post so far. It is exactly what the title says it is - a collection of Murphy's laws. I am not sure, but it could easily be my favourite post as well.

Two posts that look at ways how (not) to cope with information overload are Swimming or Drowning and Back to the Future. Quite a few people related to them.

Jukeboxing the EFL Classroom contains some ideas about how to use music both in the classroom and as "homework".

Where I Stand on Dogme started like an answer to a Dogme challenge, but turned into a definition of my educational philosophy. Raised by NNESTs is the second 'Dogme post'. It also contains my observations on what it feels like to be a non-native English speaking teacher.

I Have to Be Who I Am is... I can't tell you exactly what it is. It was Christmas, you see. It is, in a way, a personal manifesto.

Photo on Flickr by Theresa Thompson

And here we are. Right now and right here. Right now I am using this blog to write my homework for my Multiliteracies class and for the Teacher Challenge. There is one Multiliteracies post (Information Is Everywhere) and two pieces of homework for the Teacher Challenge: My Life as a TEFL Blog (an "interview with my blog") and Five Steps to an Effective Blog Post.

I have skipped a couple of posts and, if you are like my students, you'll immediately go searching for them, but I have mentioned everything that was really important to me.

Thank you for travelling with me so far. It has been an exciting journey. As for what you might read here in the future and how often... Who knows? I am not making any promises. Blogging is like a journey, whatever happens - happens. One thing I can promise you is that I will keep posting. I love my little blog. After three years, it has really become a reflection of who I am as a person and as a teacher.

A toast to my readers. Because without you I wouldn't have made it this far.

Photo on Flickr by Waldo Jaquith

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Five Steps to an Effective Blog Post

Photo on Flickr by WordRidden

Before I start, I guess I should warn you: I am not a very practical person. I blog because I love blogging. I blog about TEFL because teaching English is another thing I love. It is as simple as that.

So, this is what I have to say about how to write an effective blog post:

1. Choose a topic you are passionate about. You don't have to have all the answers. I would say that blogging works even better if you don't have all the answers when you start. A lot of bloggers will say that blogging helps them think and it is true. And you can always rely on your readers to provide some of the answers for you.

Don't think about what "your readers" might want to read. You are not running a restaurant, you are writing a blog. Besides, you don't know who "your readers" are. Sure, there are a couple of regulars, people who love all your dishes, sweet or savoury, hot or cold. But most people will land on your page either by accident (by clicking on somebody's blogroll or simply the Next Blog button) or because they Googled the topic.

Don't worry about whether someone else has already written about it, because each blogger looks at the topic through their own lense. And each blogger has their own unique style. For example, right now a lot of us are writing about Five Steps to an Effective Blog Post because we are all taking part in the Teacher Challenge. But I bet that each post is going to be different.

2. Choose an effective title. A lot of bloggers will tell you that a title should be informative. A good example of an informative title is the one you have at the top of this post. And it is great because everyone immediately knows what this post is about. But I am impractical, remember. If I had to choose between an informative title and an effective one, I would go for the effective one.

Still, it is not all impractical. Remember those people who landed on your page because they clicked the Next Blog button? They are only going to stay on your page for a couple of seconds... unless something stops them. An effective title could do the job.

However, don't mislead your readers. Don't promise the answers if all you have got are just a couple of questions. Me, I usually come up with the title before I start writing. I have an idea about what I am going to put into a blog and immediately after that I have an idea for the title. Sometimes I change it after I have written the post, but not often.

3. Use interesting images. No, I am not joking. Images are important in the digital world. They are easy to obtain (just make sure they have a Creative Commons licence and that you credit the original author) and they add so much to your blog. They make the blog look more beautiful, but it is not just that. Images are very powerful in their own right, they speak to our subconscious. Not only will they keep your new readers in your blog longer, but they might actually help you write.

Photo on Flickr by Foodistablog

4. Be who you are. Your readers (your regular readers as well as new ones) will relate better to your writing if they get to know the real you. I use humour a lot here (I usually laugh at myself), but my readers claim that there is a certain melancholy in my blog. Never mind, that's me. You might create a lot of things on the internet, but nothing you create can represent the real you the way your blog will. Your blog is you.

5. Don't give all the answers. Leave something for your readers. You want comments, right? I have tried different things, from asking questions to giving my readers assignments, but nothing has worked quite so well as leaving the post slightly unfinished. Remember what I said at the beginning, about how it was OK not to have all the answers when you started a post? Well, it is quite OK not to have the answers by the time you have finished the post. Sometimes the real art is to ask the right questions.

#ksyb

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