This last week Amy Stornaiuolo and I had an opportunity to meet with teachers at the Annual Meeting of the National Writing Project to discuss the mobile dimensions of contemporary literacy practices. By mobile, we mean the aspects that can move and are moved in writing. Most obviously, the list of things that move in writing includes the people who are writing, and all the old & new mobile devices we use to compose (tablets, phones, pens, notebooks, etc.). Composed messages, too, are mobile, and with networked means, their distribution can reach wide, potentially global audiences.

However, there are other aspects of writing that are similarly mobile, but less obviously so, including our passions and interests (such as an interest in language, data analytics, or an invested way of being), aspects of written products (such as genre characteristics), and writing practices (such as a particular way of revising or composing).

The mobile dimensions of writing have not traditionally received much attention in schools; however, they are important to consider if we are interested in young people’s growth and development as writers. This is particularly true when thinking about the immobilities in students’ writing, whether those are in their writing products, processes, or practices, particularly as some students’ compositions and creations are impeded differently than others–at times in inequitable and unjust ways.

A thread of this session also focused on ways to sense and trace these mobilities, and we used our work in two networks of writers to discuss these aspects through our transliteracies framework we’ve been developing with Nathan Phillips. First we mapped posts from an international network of young writers created by Amy called Write4Change, and then discussed how we might take part in some networked writing ourselves in an online professional learning opportunity for educators that Anna has been a part of called the CLMOOC (Connected Learning Massive Open Online Community).

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In addition to the links available in the post and presentation above, there are some other resources that may be of interest:

An article on the mobilities of teachers’ posts in CLMOOC, called Remix as Professional Learning: Educators’ Iterative Literacy Practice in CLMOOC.

A webinar from the Connected Learning TV when we spoke with educators about possibilities of the transliteracies framework for their work with youth:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rkvYbkSH9g]

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