New Literacy Studies 1 – Is the damage already done?
One of my main areas of interest/despair is the way in which the National Literacy Strategy has led to a narrow conception of what literacy actually is and how it should be taught in schools. I regularly talk about the way the strategy has focused on the acquisition of print-based decoding skills, completely ignoring multimodal [...]
Doctor Who – Infinite Possibilities
A few people have asked me to post some information about the Doctor Who work my class completed last week. It was planned with the aim of beginning to engage some of the learners who had negative attitudes towards literacy. I’ve always found using the children’s own popular culture in the curriculum to be an [...]
Opening eyes…
Every so often you come across something new. It opens your eyes to a culture or world that you have little experience or understanding of. At the same time it can fit with issues you have been thinking about and open your mind to new possibilities. Sounds very dramatic… I will explain. My Sky+HD box [...]
Finding a cliff by the sea
Thank you to everybody who sent really great feedback about the Brer Rabbit critical literacy project I really appreciate it. I’ve also heard that it was being talked about at the Decatur Book Festival after The Wren’s Nest (the birth place museum of Joel Chandler Harris in the USA) picked up on the project. All [...]
Hacking popular culture…
I’ve always loved the way that media can be edited, remixed and reinvented with the use of digital technologies. I started doing it myself at a young age (see previous blog post). I noticed how Angela has recently blogged about remixing as a means of transformative story-telling (here). She uses the term hacking popular culture, [...]
Creating Space for Critical Literacy
A few months ago I wrote about using texts of popular culture as a means of exploring issues of racial prejudice within a critical literacy framework. I then said I would reveal more about a project I was planning based around the issue. With a hectic workload and conferences to attend, I completely forgot… so now that the project is actually over I am able to give more detailed account.
Futurelab
A few months ago I recieved an email asking if I would be interested in visiting Futurelab to discuss the use of digital literacies in the primary classroom. For those of you who haven’t heard of Futurelab (you should have!) it’s an independent non-for-profit organisation interested in transforming how people learn through innovative practices mostly [...]
‘I miss the ocean…’
“I never thought fish swimming in a glass bowl could be so emotional” The title of this post and the above quote come from the video sharing website YouTube in response to the high definition video above that appeared on the site and has become ‘viral’ over the past week. My guess is that the [...]
Multiliteracies from MultiMartin
I have finally got around to uploading the paper I presented at the UKLA Conference earlier in the month. It was presented as part of a symposium about integrating digital worlds in the classroom with Lynda Graham, Angela Colvert and Jackie Marsh. The paper explores some of the work that Orange Class has completed over [...]
Flickr Feelings
Panther beach fireworks , originally uploaded by snakebite2. While I was at the UKLA Conference I went to listen to a symposium led by Julia Davies about the photo sharing community Flickr. It was fascinating to listen to Julia, Sigrid and David Barton talk about the different ways that people engage with the website. The gaming [...]