Designs for Literacy – Ch. 6 Pages 143-156

1. Designs for Literacy – Ch. 6Pages 143-156 6341 Summer 2010 Lynda Cannedy

2. Three Parts of Literacy • Symbols • Cognitive Processes • Discourse Images from Teaching with Technology FACTS Design

3. Literacy as Cognitive StrategiesComprehension • Comprehension as a product vs. comprehension as a process • Students do not succeed at literacy events until they develop cognitive strategies necessary for interpreting symbolic information Complex Transactions

4. Can you comprehend this photo?

5. Literacy and Discourse Forms • Definition of discourse – • Primary mode of thought (Ch. 4) • System of possibilities ordered by rules • Specifies a set of relations between the sender, receiver, and topic of a message • Choose form of discourse most suitable for message you wish to convey • Decide what focus will be when interpreting experiences: • Focus on what is happening (drama) • What happened (narrative) • What happens (exposition) • What may happen (logical argumentation) Photo by Cookelma from Dreamstime.com

6. Discourse Forms (continued) • Students must learn the larger patterns used within their cultural context to structure messages • Electronic technologies have their own unique information patterns • Literacy comes from understanding their organization and how to navigate each form, how to find information, how it is connected, and how to see potentials of a diversity of discourse forms Photo from experience-it-all.com

7. Discourse Forms (continued) • Whether print, video, television, or computer forms of discourse, literacy depends on the student’s ability to work within the frame of that discourse form. • Danger of placing more importance on the act of publishing than on the quality of the publication • Studying the masters (models) helps students become masters. • Good literacy designs give students opportunities to use discourse forms as patterns for communicating their own ideas and understandings. • There is no “best” discourse form or medium. Photo from dreamstime.com

8. Using the Microsoft Word ribbon samples below as a guide, what are some rules students would need to know to understand the discourse of this computer program? How does this form of discourse structure the message? Images of ribbons from Microsoft Office Word 2007

9. Communicating with Symbols • Literacy pivots on one’s ability to encode and decode content embodied in different forms of representation. • Decoding – process of translating symbolized information into experience and thought • Encoding – process of translating experience and thought into symbolized form • Promoting literacy in instruction combines a balance of decoding and encoding

10. In this photo taken in Nepal, what are some examples of decoding and encoding that you can see? photo by Lindsay Cannedy

11. Summary • Literacy can no longer be defined as the ability to read and write or to use print. • Literacy is the ability to encode and decode meaning using all of the symbolic forms of representation available to a culture to communicate and create meaning. • Designing opportunities to support literacy include understanding and using a variety of symbolic systems, mastering cognitive strategies for getting meaning from symbolic forms, and understanding and interpreting patterns used by a culture to organize symbols into larger texts or discourse forms. Photo from dreamstime.com

12. Attributions • All photos taken by author unless otherwise specified • Chapter 6 information and text taken from Teaching with Technology by Priscilla Norton and Karin M. Wiburg (2003) • Presentation prepared with Microsoft Office Power Point 2007