View from the Seats: Watching Ready Player One

Ready Player One could have been worse. A lot worse. It also could have been better. A lot better. Split the difference? It was an entertaining movie with, as my older son noted afterwards, “more holes in the plot than you could poke a stick through.” My younger son, who has read the book by […]

The Fragmented Me (Exploring Selfies in an UnSelfie World)

We’re exploring the art and act of Selfies in Networked Narratives, as Mia Zamora and Hannah Kelley are researching the impact of selfies and plan to curate a public art exhibit under the banner of #SelfieUnselfie in Norway. Both are on Fulbright Scholarships right now and focused on digital literacies (I think). Take a look/listen […]

On Twitter, I’m a Teacher/ On Mastodon, I’m a Writer

Last month’s theme in CLMOOC to “audit” our digital lives and activities has been quite valuable. I’ve done some weeding of followers/following in Twitter and beyond, and cut back on my email notifications designed to draw me into social media spaces. I’ve spent time thinking about the role of social media, and my use of […]

Games, Learning, Literacy: Week 3.5 (Culture)

I’m off on a new reading adventure, diving into James Paul Gee’s book — What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy — with discussion prompts by my friend, Keegan.  Gee’s earlier exploration of digital identity within the framework of video games now bubbles up again around cultural identity and cultural understanding. He posits that […]

Book Review: The Hate U Give

If this book doesn’t win a slew of awards this literary season, I don’t know what will. A debut novel by Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give is a powerhouse of a story, gut-wrenching in its emotion and evocative in its experience. While often marketed as a way to understand the anger and frustration of […]

Visual Slice of Life: Avatars on the Window

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.) We’re in the midst of our unit on Digital Life, and we were talking about online identity and […]

Slice of Life: Playing Cards and Making Acquaintances

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.) We sat in a small circle, three middle school boys and I, and talked through the […]

Visual Literacies and the Emergence of “Picting”

visualliteracy flickr photo by alisonkeller shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license The term “picting” is new to me but it makes sense. In a recent piece at The Journal by Cathie Norris and Elliot Soloway entitled Picting, Not Wriing, is the Literacy of Today’s Youth, the question of whether the visual nature of literacy […]

Thinking it Through: I’ve Got Comics On My Mind

The conversations around the #DigCiz hashtag have certainly gone into different directions this past week. I’m still trying to create comics based off discussions, and blog posts, and tweets, and whatever folks are doing. The comic above, for example, was in response to wondering how people represent themselves different in different digital spaces, and how […]

#DigCiz: Making Comics as Keyhole for Thinking

I’ve been trying my best to engage in discussions about “citizenship” and digital identity and more with the #DigCiz work now underway (see the schedule and join in the discussions). And I have appreciated all of the chatter and the debate (the word ‘citizen’ has sparked a lot of pushback). I’ve also been on a […]