Communication for IT: Unit 1

Communication for IT: Unit 1 • Welcome and admin arrangements • Big picture overview of the course • Explore understanding of literacies • Work together on the tasks related to act. 1.2

Literacy: NCTE definition(2008) Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the 21st century demands that a literate person possess many literacies. Successful participants in 21st century global society must be able to: ●Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology; ●Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought; ●Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; ●Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; ●Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts; ●Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.

Multimodal Literacy Multimodal literacy is all the different ways in which meaning can be created and communicated in the world today. • Silverton PS Catalyst Team (2008) • Includes print literacy, visual literacy, information literacy, media literacy and graphic literacy

Academic Literacy According to Cliff and Yeld (HESA 2006: 20) successful students are able to: • negotiate meaning at word, sentence, paragraph and whole-text level; • understand discourse and argument structure and the text “signals” that underlie this structure; • extrapolate and draw inferences beyond what has been stated in text; • separate essential from non-essential and super-ordinate from sub-ordinate information; • understand and interpret visually encoded information, such as graphs, diagrams and flow-charts; • understand and manipulate numerical information; • understand the importance and authority of own “voice”; • understand and encode the metaphorical, non-literal and idiomatic aspects of language; and • negotiate and analyse text genre” (Ibid.).

Literacy Narratives: Key Features Awell-told story. As with most narratives, those about literacy often set up some sort of situation that needs to be resolved. That need for resolution makes readers want to keep reading. Some literacy narratives simply explore the role that reading or writing played at some time in someone's life. Vivid detail. Details can bring a narrative to life for readers by giving them vivid mental images of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the world in which your story takes place. Dialogue can help bring a narrative to life. Some indication of the narrative's significance. By definition, a literacy narrative tells something the writer remembers about learning to read or write. In addition, the writer needs to make clear why the incident matters to him or her. You may reveal its significance in various ways.

Some guidelines Choosing a Topic In general, it's a good idea to focus on a single event that took place during a relatively brief period of time. For example: • any early memory about writing or reading that you recall vividly • someone who taught you to read or write • a book or other text that has been significant for you in some way • an event at school that was interesting, humorous, or embarrassing • a writing or reading task that you found (or still find) difficult or challenging • a memento that represents an important moment in your literacy development • the origins of your current attitudes about writing or reading • perhaps more recent challenges such as learning to construct a Web page

Considering the Rhetorical Situation PURPOSE • Why do you want to tell this story? To share a memory with others? To teach a lesson? To explore your past learning? Think about the reasons for your choice and how they will shape what you write. AUDIENCE • Are your readers likely to have had similar experiences? Would they tell similar stories? How much explaining will you have to do to help them understand your narrative? STANCE • What attitude do you want to project? Do you wish to be sincere? serious? humorously detached? self-critical? self-effacing? something else? How do you want your readers to see you? MEDIA / DESIGN • Will your narrative be in print? presented orally? on a Web site? Will photos or other illustrations help you present your subject? Is there a typeface that conveys the right tone?

Generating Ideas and Text • Describe the setting. Where does your narrative take place? • Think about the key people. Narratives include people whose actions play an important role in the story. In your literacy narrative, you are probably one of those people. A good way to develop your understanding of the people in your narrative is to write about them. • Write about "what happened." At the heart of every good narrative is the answer to the question "What happened?" A good story dramatizes the action. Try summarizing the action in your narrative in a paragraph • Consider the significance of the narrative. You need to make clear the ways in which any event you are writing about is significant for you now. How did it change or otherwise affect you? What aspects of your life now can you trace to that event? How might your life have been different if this event had not happened or had turned out differently? Why does this story matter to you?

Basic elements of literacy Practices and Events (Barton & Hamilton 2000; Hamilton 2000)

For next time: • View sample literacy narratives from Act 1.3 • Own narrative due week of 4 August • Investigate multimodality • Investigate PB Works and see guidelines for setting up • Choose Wiki Group members (max 8) • Select, watch and summarise one TED talk of your choice • 1 page group summary + be ready to present in next class Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world (20 minutes) http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world Yu-Kai Chou:Gamification to improve our world (16.59 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Qjuegtiyc Gabe Zicherman: Changing the game in education (17.45 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axk5-i8oTIU

Communication for IT: Unit 1