Saturday, September 27, 2008

Enter Here:

I always love to learn what other teachers do in their English classes especially when it pertains to older students.  I really enjoyed this article about personal narratives and digital storytelling (posted on Blackboard).  My 7th graders always create their own short stories during the fourth marking period.  Most of them retell a fairy tale, but I never really instructed them to think about their childhood.  Also, our stories are created in a bound book, not digital!  What a cool idea!  
Looking at that article, I was amazed at Niko's response to "what it means to be literate?"  He said literacy was "all the stuff that we don't learn in school that allows us to be who we are."  I wonder how my students would define what it means to be literate?  
I do plan to try to do more with media literacy with my students this year and possibly have the students create digital stories.  How do you incorporate digital literacy into your classroom? 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Phylissa,

How do you incorporate digital literacy in your classroom? I think again the blog idea you had early in the class. I think your seven graders will get a rave out of it. Who doesn't like to pretend?? In your post you describe most of the writing your class submitted was "REMIXED" fairytales". Go for it.

Or what about of those forward email chains. its digital and it they pass the "language" we have literacy.

jus some thoughts

Carey said...

Phylissa and Madison,

Great comments. I definitely enjoyed that article also. I have my bachelors degree in English and the remixing discussed and the way you added about remixing fairy tales reminded me of a class I took a few years ago, Children's Literature. For a good portion of the class we discussed fairy tales and how they have been remixed (although I don't think my professor ever actually referred to it as "remixing") or re-done. We read and discussed multiple different versions of "The Three Little Pigs" and I found it so interesting how many different versions there actually are. Also with "Little Red Riding Hood" there were some versions which are definitely not appropriate for a child to read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Riding_Hood#Interpretations

This is a link to wikipedia that shows some different interpretations of the famous children's story.

Enjoy~

Lindsay Zweibel said...

Hey Madison, Phylissa, and Carey,

I am very interested in reading the article you posted on Blackboard. I am not sure how I access it. Any hints?