I am currently 37,989 feet above the middle of Iowa sending digital messages to people around the world. The next generation will be unfazed with this phenomenon. I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be amazed.

I am on my way to the American Educational Research Association’s 2013 conference in San Francisco. (If you aren’t on your way there as well, you can follow tweets with the hashtag #AERA13 to get updates. AERA is also streaming keynotes.)

At this year’s conference, I am involved in two sessions and one business meeting. The first session is bright and early Monday morning, April 29, 8:15 AM. This will take place at the Grand Hyatt, Theatre Level – Orpheum, in case you were wondering.

We are bringing five literacy researchers together who are currently enacting the title of our session:

Blurring the Boundaries: Emerging Literacies Research Methods

While considerable attention is currently being devoted to the educational implications of digital tools and multimodality for youth, the tools researchers use to investigate phenomena have remained relatively static. We are left with a gap in the conversation about how literacy researchers take up, shape and use digital tools. This panel addresses this gap by sharing a range of creative approaches to qualitative and mixed-methods research that enact theoretical imperatives in emerging methods of data collection and analysis–particularly those that make use of participatory, multimodal and digital methods.

I am pretty ecstatic to not only be on this panel, but that I will get to put my work in conversation with some killer scholars:

• Approaches for Co-Constructing Literacies Research With Young People in Arts Practice and Collaborative Ethnography, Kate Pahl (The University of Sheffield)
• Exploring Multimodal Methods for Analyzing Social Interaction in Composing Contexts, Matthew Hall (The College of New Jersey)
• A Question of Scale: Methodologies of Mobility and Relationality, Amy Stornaiuolo (University of Pennsylvania)
• Stand and Make Space: Methodologies for Investigating the Interpretation and Production of Thematic Map Performances, Nathan Phillips (Vanderbilt University)
• Discussant: Lalitha Vasudevan (Teachers College, Columbia University)

Writing and Literacies SIG Business Meeting
Monday, April 29, 6:30PM, Grand Hyatt, Theatre Level – Orpheum

It may sound funny to excited about a business meeting, but I am both for the topic and for my role this last year. I have been acting as the Social Media Coordinator for the Writing and Literacies SIG. This means I have been managing our Twitter handle and Facebook Group. I am hoping I get a chance at the meeting this year to brainstorm with others about what they’d like from social media efforts going forward.

In terms of content, Gerald Richards, CEO of 826 National, and Ernest Morrell, President-Elect of NCTE, will be the keynote speakers at the meeting. Both will be fantastic, I am sure! If you don’t know 826 National, check out when they were featured on TED:

[ted id=233]

And then, on Wednesday, May 1st at 2:15PM (in Grand Hyatt, Ballroom Level – Redwood), I am lucky enough to present with another great group in the session below:

Current Perspectives on the Role of Writing in Multimodal, Digital Composition

Presenters in this symposium address the overarching question: What is the role of writing in multimodal, digital composition? Findings from the series of papers will foster generative discussion about the roles, functions, and priority of writing, qua written language, in so-called ‘new media’ communication and learning environments, in which writing is increasingly only one among multiple co-deployed and integrated modes of representation (e.g., still and moving imagery, music, gesture). Drawing on research in a range of settings, from high-poverty elementary schools to out-of-school programs for high school students, presenters consider the notion of ‘affordance’ itself as a means of analyzing what written language may or may not be, do, and mean in any given multimodal orchestration.