Five years ago, I began teaching a digital poetry unit in my 10th grade English classes, in collaboration with my school’s library media specialist, Lora Cowell.  With iPoetry, students engaged in a process of multimodal composition where they integrated still images or video with music, voiceovers, text, and transitions.

In the recent issue of the International Journal of Learning and Media, Damiana Gibbons and I worked together to analyze one student’s digital poem.  Drawing on the work of Glynda Hull, Andrew Burn, and others, Damiana explains (and shows) the process of multimodal microanalysis.  As a graduate student, I’ve come to appreciate when authors explicitly present their methodology and walk the reader through their analytical process.  (In the field of literacy education, Karen Wohlwend’s work is an excellent example!)  In this paper, we tried to do the same.

I’m really grateful that my former student, Tommy Nouansacksy, gave us permission to analyze his work and to use his real name.  Tommy is in college now and an avid consumer and producer of social media.  Intentionally or not, he’s a comedian, an activist, and a role model.  (Case in point: a recent YouTube video where Tommy’s promoting the Trevor Project).

I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who gave us critical, formative, and insightful feedback.  Their comments led to an substantial revision of the theoretical framework and prompted us to draw on more work related to race and sexuality.  I know that reviewing journal articles can be a time-consuming process, but I think that it is an invaluable one.

Tommy’s digital poem is available on the IJLM website, but it skips sometimes.  I’ll share it here too.  In this poem, Tommy is responding to the work of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes to describe his America.

I, Too, Sing America by Tommy Nouansacksy from Jen Scott Curwood on Vimeo.

Check out the new online version of the Wisconsin English Journal!  For over 50 years, the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English has published this fabulous resource.  Last year, when the University of Wisconsin – Madison editorial team took over, we sought to update and expand the journal.  As part of our task, we’re also working to digitize and upload past journal issues, so they’re all housed in one location.

The journal will continue to be published twice a year, in spring and in fall.  We’ve added some regular columns, including Views from the Field by Assistant Professor Catherine Compton-Lilly, The New Adventures of Old Literature by Assistant Professor Dawnene Hassett, and Making Research Relevant by me and my fellow assistant editor Jessica Gallo.  In each issue, we will profile an outstanding secondary English teacher and we will feature a guest column on digital literacy.  If you’re interested in submitting an article for peer review, the deadline for the Fall 2010 issue is August 1.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to attend the annual conference of United Kingdom Literacy Association. I met some wonderful people, and it was so exciting to hear about the research happening in the UK and Australia. Mary Louise Gomez, Melissa Schieble, Dawnene Hassett, and I also have an article out in the most recent issue of Literacy, published by UKLA. We drew on Melissa’s research with pre-service teachers’ and adolescents’ use of Moodle, an open-source, web-based software, to theorize how their meaning making processes embody distributed cognition. Entitled Technology, Learning, and Instruction: Distributed Cognition in the Secondary English Classroom, the article examines how three key elements function as distributed tools to facilitate literacy learning and critical thinking around the graphic novel American Born Chinese.

I’m happy to share that Dawnene Hassett and I have an article in the December 2009 issue of The Reading Teacher entitled “Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education: Instructional Dynamics of Picture Books and Primary Classrooms.”  I’m lucky enough to have Dawnene as my advisor, and this paper draws from our research in K-3 classrooms over the past several years.  Next week, we will give a talk on this research at the National Reading Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Check out the Wisconsin English Journal, now housed at the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.  A publication of the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, it was founded in 1959.  On the UW-River Falls website, some of the article titles from a half-century ago still sound relevant today: “How to Help Students Write Better,” “Teaching Critical Thinking,” and “A New Method of Teacher Certification.”

The Wisconsin English Journal publishes reports of language and literacy research, critical reflections on teaching, descriptions of effective teaching methods and instructional tools, profiles of English programs and outstanding English teachers, book reviews, policy statements, conference proceedings, and columns related to young adult literature, student diversity, and current literacy scholarship.

Interested in contributing as an author or serving as a reviewer?  See the  guidelines on our website, and contact me or Jess Gallo with any questions.  Look for our next issue in spring 2010!

From June 2009 to June 2010, I am collecting qualitative data for my dissertation research.  I have been fortunate to find two incredible research sites, and every week, I am excited to visit them and work with the secondary English teachers, library media specialists, and technology coordinators.  Here is a current dissertation abstract.  As I work to analyze the data, the focus may shift a bit.  But it gives you a good idea of where I’m at right now.

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The Nexus of Continuity and Change: Designing Professional Development to Foster New Literacy Practices in the Secondary Classroom

This dissertation seeks to understand how secondary English teachers express, acquire, and challenge their cultural models about literacy and technology. Drawing on sociocultural theory, the goal of this year-long multiple-case embedded research study is to investigate how teachers’ participation in professional learning communities may afford or constrain the process of implementing new literacy practices in the classroom. To that end, I take a microethnographic perspective and closely analyze teachers’ discourses within the learning community. This work is guided by two key questions: 1) What kinds of professional development contexts facilitate changes in teachers’ cultural models about literacy and technology? 2) How are teachers’ opportunities to integrate technology in their classroom enhanced or constrained by power relations? In order to address these questions, the data analysis focuses on language at a micro level to understand how school-based discourse is shaped by macro-concepts, social institutions, and power relations. By using field notes, observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts to augment microethnographic discourse analysis, I trace how participation within learning communities influences teachers’ cultural models about literacy and technology. Furthermore, I suggest that this qualitative analysis sheds light on how teachers’ professional learning operates within social, cultural, and ideological contexts.

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(Image credit: MaxCarnage, Printed Circuit)

From August 2008 to May 2009, I worked as a producer at Community Knowledgebase to create Legislative Aide, an epistemic game.  This project is funded by a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the Department of Education, and it’s a joint venture between Lewis Friedland at CKB, David Williamson Shaffer at EFGames, and Peter Levine at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Legislative Aide is a computer based game that integrates service learning and computer gaming with Youth Map’s social networking capabilities. Legislative Aide is designed to help students in exploring their community, its resources, and their role in civic life. With Legislative Aide, students work in small groups to play legislative aides to a simulated elected official. As a part of the game, players conduct one-on-one interviews with real-life members of their community. Then, within the context of Legislative Aide, players use Youth Map in order to see how resources and information are linked within the community.

As part of my role, I worked closely with the team at EFGames, contributed to the game narrative, and once they created the game outline, I wrote the full content for Legislative Aide. Working together, others at CKB, EFGames, and CIRCLE then piloted Legislative Aide in Tampa-area schools throughout spring 2009; data analysis is currently under way, too.  After finishing the content, I then changed gears to create the Community Knowledgebase website and write/produce the Legislative Aide video.  It was an incredible experience to work on an educational video game, and I find it fascinating to think through the design process that allows for games to be integrated into K-12 schools in a way that is meaningful to students and teachers alike.

Legislative Aide from Jen Scott Curwood on Vimeo.

I’m at the International Reading Association convention in Minneapolis this week.  It’s only Monday, but I’ve already had the opportunity to hear some phenomenal presentations from literacy and language scholars.  It’s so exciting to hear about the research that has shaped the field – and to see the new directions in which it is going.

I gave my talk today, entitled “Teaching Visual Literacy Using Hypertextual Books.”  (For a PDF of the handout, click here).  I highlighted four changes in children’s literature, and talked with the audience about how we “read” multiple modes of representation.  These changes include (1) Words that express meaning through typesetting, (2) Interactive narration, (3) Images that carry and expand meaning, and (4) Multiple perspectives in a single story.  My advisor, Dawnene Hassett, has worked extensively to identify the interactive and multimodal elements of children’s literature and to situate these changes in sociocultural theory and new literacies.

The presentation today highlighted the children’s books themselves, noted the relevant learning theories that support their use in the classroom, and showcased research in K-3 classrooms to that effect.  At the end, I wondered aloud what the future directions of such interactive stories will be.  With touch-sensitive platforms like interactive whiteboards becoming a staple in many classrooms, what does that mean for such literature?  Maybe it will look like the stories on Starfall.com – or like Inanimate Alice.  Or maybe we’re still trying to figure out how the medium is the message… and what that means for interactive, multimodal stories in the classroom.

A week ago, my son Cole and I went to a Game Jam, sponsored by the Games+Learning+Society research group.  We had spent that morning working with his Odyssey of the Mind team, so we were ready to get down to business.

First, we had to suggest ideas for a theme… mine was “learning to read” and Cole’s was “Revolutionary War militiamen” (guess what he’s been studying in school?)  Others suggested “science” or “nature” – but the one that was randomly chosen was “deep sea vents.”  (That’s what happens when Brendan watches the Discovery Channel!)

So, we broke into groups, with the goal of making a playable game within the hour.  Cole’s almost ten, and he decided that he didn’t want to work in my group – so off he went with Brendan and Kevin.

Meanwhile, Ryan, Ben, and I got to work.  After a lot of deep thought (which you can see happening here), we used the available materials and some creativity to develop a board game called Battle of the Vents.

The rules for all of the games are posted on the Mad Designers website, but here they are:

Goal:
To eliminate the opposing sides bacteria, hence rendering their deep sea vent inoperable.

Equipment:
1 game board (we had it arranged as a rolling hill, but you may want to make it look like the symbol of infinity)
3 sets of 8 different colored tokens for your attackers/defenders
5 regular paper cups, 3 with their bottoms torn out
3 sets of 4 similar looking tokens (these will act as each player’s bacteria)
1 4-sided die
2 6-sided die
1 8-sided die
1 10-sided die
3 tokens to act as your movable character on the game board

Setup:
Need three players to play Battle of the Vents!

The three hollowed out cups will act as the respective bases for the players who will either be eels, octopi, or snails.  You may place them anywhere along the board that is not a playable game space.  Place your 8 fighter/defender tokens and 4 bacteria tokens around the cups.  The other two cups will be called “Fighter Purgatory” and “Bacteria Depository”.  They will be placed off the board entirely and will be used to hold the fighter/defenders and bacteria that are lost during gameplay.

Create the game board and make game spaces.  Place the following notations on the spaces.  Make sure to randomize them throughout the board.

+1 A – +1 attack (for one round)
-1 A – -1 attack (for one round)
+1 D – +1 defend (for one round)
-1 D – -1 defend (for one around
+1 B – Gain 1 bacteria
-1 B – Lose 1 bacteria
LT – Lose turn
+1 F – Gain one fighter
-1 F – Lose one fighter
Gain all fighters (place this VERY sparingly along the board as this allows that player to gain all of their fighters back)

Gameplay:
Each player rolls the 6 sided die to determine who goes first.  Game play starts when player rolls dice to move around the board.  The player is able to move to the end of the board and back again, there is no end spot.  The attribute on the game tile determines what the player receives.  Once this is finished, the player then decides whether to attack anyone on the board.  Player can only attack one group.  Player must have attackers in multiples of two, but can defend with just one.  The defender must also decide how many attackers to use to defend their vent.  The attackers/defenders of that turn determine what type of die the player may roll:
2 attackers – 4 sided
4 – 6 sided
6 – 8 sided
8 – 10 sided

If the player has a +1 or -1 A or D tile, they have to add or subtract from their die roll.  The player with the highest total takes that person’s tokens and places them in their vent where they are unplayable unless the player lands on a spot that gives them back fighters.

Once the player has attacked or defended the turn ends.  It is important to note that the attackers remain out of play until the next round of turns.  So if the player sends off 4 attackers to another vent, they only have 4 defenders for their own vent.

Once the player has lost all of their attackers/defenders, other players may then attack their bacteria to “finish them off”.  Each bacteria gets to roll one less die than the attacker.  So if the attacker goes at one person with a 8-sided die, the other player gets to roll a 6.  You can only attack one bacteria at one time.  During the time, the player can still roll to try to get attackers/defenders.  Each person moves around until there is only one vent remaining.

Later on, we played a game in which we were either tubeworms or nutrients.  Here, John, Ryan, Cole, and I are nutrients, about to be eaten.

I missed last weekend’s Valentine’s Day Game Jam, but Sean and John both blogged about it.  (I mean, how can you not enjoy something described as “Apple-to-Apples-styled fabulously-named “Temptation Island” game, a chess-like game of strategy that pit the Queen of Hearts and her court of assassins against St. Valentine and his Cupidian army”?)