developing writers
Anna Smith, educational researcher & teacher educator blogging about composition in the digital age, contexts for learning, theories of development, and global youth.
The #literacies Chat is Born!
Below you’ll find the birthing story of the #literacies chat, a weekly chat on Twitter bringing together educators, researchers and thinkers fascinated by contemporary literacies. Our first chat will be June … Continue reading
Getting the Picture: Writing in a Parallel Pedagogy Classroom
It has been a while since Joel Malley provided the following video in preparation for a congressional briefing on digital literacies. However, after a couple of months of conference attendance, … Continue reading
#ethnog12 Presentation Slide: Silent & Silenced Identity Work
I just presented at the University of Pennsylvania 33rd Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum with colleagues Tracie Wallace at UC Berkeley, and John Scott and Dee Anne Anderson at … Continue reading
A New Ethic for Digital Composition: Cosmopolitanism
Do youth need thoughtful, guided practice composing for potentially global audiences? Recently, a friend on Facebook posted a question asking what age it is appropriate for a child to have … Continue reading
Alternative Metaphors for Classroom Texts
This post was written with Teaching Reading in Secondary English Language Arts class members, who are all Master of Education candidates at New York University. These are the same authors … Continue reading
‘Invented Adolescents’ & Classroom Activities
Guest Post from Lucia Brockway, a preservice English teacher working toward her Master’s of Education at New York University. Lucia is part of the #teachread project within which her work … Continue reading
2′s Day Post: Internet 1996 vs 2011
There’s much to say about the changed nature of the Internet circa 1996 and that of Internet 2011, and this infographic from Online University captures several aspects. In this blog, I’ve … Continue reading
Digital Tools for 21st Century Content Area Classrooms
This is a Guest Post from class members of Language Acquisition and Literacy Education in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts, who are all content area pre-service teachers in math, social studies, … Continue reading
Define Urban, Please
Recently, Emily Pendergrass tweeted a request: Define urban, please.— Emily Pendergrass (@Dr_Pendergrass) October 14, 2011 ‘Urban’ has been on my mind for a while—most recently on my trip to Peru … Continue reading
Welcome to the United States, Developing Writers!
Although only the hardback version (a.k.a. expensive collectors’ item) of our new book, Developing Writers: Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age, shows up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the Buy … Continue reading
2′s Day Post: The Digital Divide Goes to School
As of late, I have been enamored with infographics—the epitome of “a picture is worth a thousand words.” So, beginning this week and running indefinitely, I will be posting infographics … Continue reading
We Learn With & With is Messy
I was in Duluth, Minnesota the week school was starting. I was standing out on the lighthouse pier on Lake Superior enjoying the summer evening air and the full moon … Continue reading
Take a Poll on Plagiarism in the Digital Age!
A poll in preparation for an upcoming guest post from Roey Ahram, expert in education equity issues and urban school reform, as well as photographer extraordinaire (featured in The Local East Village New York … Continue reading
Multimodality is Old News: The Incas and Khipu
I have been off the grid for a bit, but more importantly, I have been on vacation. With some old and some new friends, I hiked the Inca Trail through … Continue reading
From Frames to Framing
Guest Post from Richard Andrews, Dean of Faculty and Professor of English at the Institute of Education, University of London. Richard Andrews is also co-author of our newly released Developing … Continue reading
Rethinking ‘Global Audience’ & Networked Digital Composition
Though not synonymous, digital composition and networked digital composition are often thought of as one and the same. In addition to the ease with which text, image and video can … Continue reading
Tips on Tech in Class: Using a Strategic Writing Framework
Following last week’s blog posts about the affordances of composing with various tools both on and offline, writer and educator @erinehsani and I had a quick exchange on Twitter: @writerswriting … Continue reading
A Digital Phenom: Increased Presence of the Past in our Lives
In the Music section of The New York Times, music critic Simon Reynolds explored how and why The Songs of Now Sound a Lot Like Then. Right in the middle of … Continue reading
Imposters and Doppelgangers: Plagiarism Remixed
This post comes again from running in NYC’s Central Park. If you are one of the thousands of runners who frequent the park, you already know of street artist De … Continue reading
From Positive/Negative to Affordances/Constraints
Yesterday, the International Business Times reported on a couple of studies regarding the relationship between memory and the Internet. Like many titles, the purposefully evocative title of this article, “Google … Continue reading
Composing as Making: 21st Century Bricolage
I paused mid-step. A red-bellied bird had just hopped in front of me and she too had suddenly frozen in her tracks. In her beak hung a long, droopy piece … Continue reading
Seeing the Writer
Guest Post from Matthew Hall, teacher, teacher educator, and educational researcher at New York University. As a teacher, what do you see when you look at student writing? We all … Continue reading
Duh, Duncan
Education is coursing through the veins of public media from Wisconsin’s attacks on unions (and Jon Stewart’s apropos responses) to Capital Hill’s review of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). And what is the … Continue reading
The Two-Faced Coin (Part 2 of 2): Education’s Two-Face–Time
What do you think? Is it going to be heads or tails? At this moment, can you tell? What will determine on which side it will drop? A gust of wind? … Continue reading
The Two-Faced Coin (Part 1 of 2): Development and Deficit
Alright. Let’s go in. Progress, improvement and development are—in essence—the project of education. Sounds pretty good, right? But it’s not so simplistically altruistic. For one, there have been many people who … Continue reading
Meditation on a Run (Part 1 of 4)
Those who know me on a personal level will immediately know the location of this picture: New York’s Central Park. If it were possible to have an affair with an inanimate object, … Continue reading
YouTube Initiation
This last week, I found out that I had been featured on YouTube for over a year and didn’t even know it. It is my initial foray on the YouTube … Continue reading
Check Out the Book!
What I’m Diggin’ on Scoop.it
- That can be my next tweetGenerates your future tweets based on the DNA of your existing messages...See it on Scoop.it, via Developing Writers
- Twitter use | Pew Internet & American Life ProjectAfrican-Americans — Black internet users continue to use Twitter at high rates. More than one quarter of online African-Americans (28%) use Twitter, with 13% doing so on a typical day. Young adults — One quarter (26%) of internet users ages 18-29 use Twitter, nearly double the rate for those ages 30-49. Among the youngest internet users (those ag […]
- How Twitter & Texting Saved WritingThe end of literacy as we know it? Get over yourself. These popular tools force people to write more clearly and concisely.See it on Scoop.it, via Developing Writers
