Literacy in the 21st Century

Remember when we used Etherpad to collaboratively write a poem? Well here’s an interesting cross between collaborative writing (there’s only one person doing it) and screencasting (as Joanne demonstrated in her talk on podcasting). Check out 13 Sentences About Startups. It’s brilliant, but I need to spend some more time with it and see if I can slow it down. Think about this as a visualization of composing and editing, and the way that every change (and every mistake) can be meaningful. Cool stuff.

Then we have yet another take on the future of books — this time, though, the problems we’ve discussed (not simply replicating paper on screens, for instance) is being addressed! The NYT reports on Vook, a new company designed to make electronic books … well, more electronic. Check it out.

This next article was sent to me by a former student (hi, Jay!), and it speaks to many of the things we’ve discussed in class: psychology, tailoring messages to particular audiences, market research, and the way we’re programmed to respond to certain things, but not others. Disney is researching teen boys to develop shows designed to appeal especially to them. That’s not earth-shattering, of course. All companies research their target demographics, but this article gets into some of the details of how detailed they are in their research. It’s creepy. And a fantastic read. You should definitely check it out.

Next, for all of you Blade Runner fans out there, io9 is reporting that Boom! Studios is adapting Philip K. Dick’s classic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a graphic-ish novel. As Graeme McMillan writes:

The series, appropriately titled Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? will include the full text of Dick’s 1968 novel - famously adapted into the movie Blade Runner - alongside brand new sequential illustrations for something more than just illustrated prose.

I’m excited, but I really have no idea what it will look like in the end. Perhaps that’s why I’m excited. The first issue of PKDDADoES? goes on sale in June.

And finally, all is not well in Puppetland. Click the link to read all about the game (it’s a very concise game manual). Click here to download your own puppet character sheet. We’ll be filling them out in class on the 29th, but you’ll be much happier if you’ve thought about your character ahead of time. As we’ll all be taking turns gamemastering, I’ll explain the situation next week so you can also have enough time to come up with a good scenario. Trust me… Punch the Maker-Killer has come up with a truly insidious plan this time!

As you might have noticed, I changed the background image on the blog and added the course calendar.

As always, if you’ve got questions, e-mail IM, or drop by my office.

Following yesterday’s post, Jill Walker Rettberg dropped by to let us know that the slide wasn’t original to her, but was from a Flickr set she found. Check out her comment for the link to the Flickr set. (And if you’re not already reading her blog, check that out, too. You know, she’s the person who came up with the definition for “blog” for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.)

Also, I got an e-mail from the people who create the online work Inanimate Alice. I taught IA to my TAP seminar last semester, and the freshfolk weren’t terribly impressed, but according to the IA blog:

They are all high school special education students, many with learning disabilities, and many that really dislike reading and writing. When I first discovered the Inanimate Alice episodes, I thought they would be perfect for my students. I made up a Unit for them, including some ideas from the educational pack your site provides and adding some of my own ideas. The images, sound, and interactivity truly engaged them and still lent itself to “teaching” literary elements such as setting, mood, characterization. When we completed the 4 episodes, my students couldn’t stop asking, “When is Episode 5 coming out?” I finally said, “You guys are going to create your own!” I had 4 different classes, each working as a collaborative group. They used a program called PhotoStory 3, which I’m guessing is similar to iStories. My students wished they could have had their episodes “do more”, such as moving text, or clicking on objects, etc. Overall they were happy with their results. I actually had them use an evaluative rubric to score them to see which episode “won”. It was a great learning experience. Have a look at these links to see what the students have created.
http://aronowsenglish10.blogspot.com/
http://aronowsenglish11.blogspot.com/

And some of you may have wondered why I reacted so strongly to Jim’s video of the exploding chair. Here’s why.

Gizmodo is reporting that: “A 14-year-old boy in China was killed when his chair exploded, sending chunks of metal into his rectum. The bleeding this caused killed him. The alleged explosion came from the gas cylinder that was in the base of the chair, the part that allowed the user to adjust the seat up and down.”

Gizmodo wonders whether the story is legit, but the posting-trail seems to head back to a Japanese blog, which means that’s where my investigational skills stop.

Joanne mentioned links to online short stories in her presentation. Here’s a new one with very short stories — Brain Harvest. The stories selected so far aren’t exactly my favorites, but they’re certainly interesting. In a sometimes head-scratchingly sort of way.

And finally, for today, Bill Simmons at Candleblog posted this a while back, and I’m still not sure how to respond. Here’s a how-to guide for presenting while your audience is Tweeting their brains out. (And why that might not be a bad thing.) What do you think?

Quick reminder: next week we’ll be reading Gunther Kress’ Literacy in the New Media Age instead of the Multiliteracies book.  And yes, we’re reading all of the Kress book.

Your Reading Response prompt:  RESPOND TO KRESS.  This is due by 10am on Tuesday February 24th.

Your mission: GET THE MULTILITERACIES BOOK!!!

That is all.

This is the course blog for ENGS 340, Literacy in the 21st Century, a graduate seminar at the University of Vermont.

I’ll be posting the course syllabus, assignments, and resources here soon.  Throughout the semester, I’ll be adding posts on literacy-related topics and events.

Welcome!