Two wonderful colleagues and I have successfully proposed a course in digital literacy for the English department at my school. The class, open only to juniors and seniors, promises the “tools of tomorrow” in the hands of students “today,” a global audience for meaningful communication, and guidance in using digital composition tools safely and effectively. /
We envision a set of projects to anchor the course, which collectively will make up a portfolio for assessment. The central inquiry will be ethnographic–asking them to help define their school–and the artifacts/modalities will include:
- podcast/netcast
- screencast
- webpage-building (portfolio site)
- with a sub-unit–maybe just a day–of html coding?
- infographic
- social media postings (online identity-forming “fingerprint making,” with implications )
They can do some in groups–the podcast and info-graphic projects make sense as collective endeavors–and the rest by themselves. They need to define themselves, start crafting their own narratives as they begin emerging as adults. A tweet stream over time and a 6-min. or less screencast explaining something the student is passionate about fulfill socio-emotional needs of the student while fostering his/her technological capabilities.
If I had a kid in the school, I’d encourage him/her to check it out. It does provide a credit toward graduation. We should know in six weeks if there’s enough interest.
all images responsibly sourced from Google advanced image search; sounds found via http://dig.ccmixter.org
The Wikiness 
Leave a Reply