Literacy in the 21st Century

Required Texts:

• Bill Cope & Mary Kalantzis, eds. Multiliteracies: Literacy, Learning, and the Design of Social Futures
• David Crystal: Txtng: The Gr8 Db8
• Jeff Gomez: Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age
• Michele Knoebel & Colin Lankshear, eds. A New Literacies Sampler
• Gunther Kress: Literacy in the New Media Age
• Sven Lindqvist: A History of Bombing
• Sean Stewart & Jordan Weisman: Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233
• Maryanne Wolf: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

Overview:

This graduate seminar will examine the question: what is literacy?  Is there more than one form of literacy?  What effect does technology – computers, cell phones, iPods, or the World Wide Web – have on the literacy we use every day, teach in our schools, and need in order to function as 21st century citizens?  The academic discipline of literacy studies long ago moved past a simple and reductive understanding of literacy as “reading and writing,” and as new modes of communication arise and circulate, literacy studies finds itself at the forefronts of textual, interpretive and cognitive research.  In this course we will examine a wide range of readings in classic and contemporary literacy studies, grounding these theoretical readings with examinations of current communication and storytelling practices.

Seminar Standards:

• Informed Participation in weekly seminar discussions.
• 5-minute presentation to open discussions.  These presentations should help open up the discussion of one of the major assigned texts by focusing on a passage, re-focusing on an issue raised in another work, or by bringing a critical/theoretical perspective to bear.  You may wish to prepare a handout for the class to help guide our ensuing discussion.
• 5-minute presentation on a “problematic” work or literate practice; a report to acquaint the rest of the seminar with another work or area of interest, which should have some relation to the assigned works and which could also be connected to the seminar project.  You should prepare a handout for the class providing details and/or excerpts from your chosen work/practice.

Assignments:

Reading Responses:    There will be a Reading Response due each day we will be discussing readings.  (Readings we may discuss over more than one class period will only have one Response due on the first day of our discussion.)  I will provide you with topics for discussion or questions to address for some of the readings, for others you will be free to respond as the spirit moves you.  I do not expect you to demonstrate perfect mastery of the readings in your Responses.  Rather, I’m looking for serious engagement with the pieces under discussion, which may take a number of forms.  Reading Responses will be due, by e-mail, no later than 10am on the days of our reading discussions, and should be about 1 page, single-spaced.

eLiteracy Technology Presentation & Report:  You will research and present information about a type of eLiteracy technology chosen by you.  Below is a list of potential topics for your presentation, though you may propose other modes of literacy.  Your presentation will be between 5-10 minutes long, and should include a brief demonstration of the type of literacy you have chosen, as well as your reflections on the impact on and implications for literacy your form of literacy offers.   You will sign up for presentation dates, and on the day of your presentation, you will give me a written report detailing your findings.  Your report should be around 5 pages long.

Blogging (text or photo) Cell/Mobile Phones eBook Readers (Kindle, Sony Portable Reader, etc.) Facebook/MySpace Flickr iPods

Online Casual Gaming Online Multiplayer Gaming Podcasts/Video Blogging Second Life Texting Twitter YouTube (watching & posting)

Weekly Blogging:  Each week you will be responsible for posting something substantive and relevant to the topic of literacy to our course blog.  You may wish to post a reflection on the course readings, something literacy-related that you found online or in the news, your thoughts on a new or otherwise interesting mode of literacy, or a review of a literate event of some sort.  You will also be required to post at least one substantive response to a blog post by one of your classmates.  Blogging will be graded on a did-it/skipped-it basis, which means that if you completed all of the required posts and comments, you’ll get full credit.  If you fail to do so, your blogging grade will be lowered proportionally.

Final Project:  The Final Project will present you with the opportunity to choose from many different options.  Think back to the questions that guide this course:

• What is “literacy”?
• How does digital technology affect literacy?
• What is “reading” and/or “writing” in a digital age?

There is no single answer to any of these questions.  Likewise, there is no single approach to answering them.  Your final project will engage one or more of these questions in a way that feels appropriate, interesting, and hopefully productive to you.  You may choose to compose an analysis of one or more of the course texts.  You may choose to create a literate work in an interesting format and then reflect on that process.  You may choose to expand the scope of our course examinations into other literate practices.  The range of possibilities for your final project is limited only by your interests, imagination, and comfort-zone.  To help you feel more comfortable with your chosen final project topic/form, you will give me a proposal explaining briefly your topic and the form it will take.  Your proposal should be no more than one page long, and will be due via e-mail by Friday, April 10th.

Grading:

Reading Responses: Weekly Blogging: eLiteracy Report: Final Project:

30% 15% 15% 40%

An Important Note:

If you have (or suspect that you may have) a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, I encourage you to contact both myself and UVM’s Office of Accommodation, Consultation, Collaboration & Educational Support Services (ACCESS), A-170 Living & Learning Center, 656-7753 (www.uvm.edu/~access) as early as possible in the term.  The ACCESS Office will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodation for this course.

Tentative Reading Order:

• Wolf: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
• Gomez: Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age
• Lindqvist: A History of Bombing
• Cope & Kalantzis: Multiliteracies: Literacy, Learning, and the Design of Social Futures
• Kress: Literacy in the New Media Age
• Stewart & Weisman: Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233
• Knoebel & Lankshear: A New Literacies Sampler
• Crystal: Txtng: The Gr8 Db8

Important Dates:

• Friday, April 10: Final Project Proposal Due via e-mail by 10am
• Monday, May 11: Final Project Due by 10am