An interesting session I attended at ThatCamp Digitial Pedagogy was about digital story telling...
• Hyperlink allows readers to make connections authors did not realize
• Collaborative narrative hypertext for classes
• How do we demystify DH for our own publications
• How mobile friendly is your document?
• What about accessibility?
• Twitter cosplay of characters in the classroom
• Storify could help with digital storytelling
• A few of us brought up hypertext fiction like The Unknown
• If you summarize what happens in a hypertext you will get many different answers
• Mentions of IFTTT and Yap
#RThink
Last summer, I was thrilled to be asked to return to Stockton for the #RThink (Rethinking Thoughts) conference. The afternoon was spent among old friends and some very interesting and eager students. The Literature program at Stockton is in great hands.
Here are my notes from the day:
Twitter hashtag=#rthink
Creating a New Media certificate
Students would create a portfolio that could be shown to employers/schools/etc
New Media assignments should be memorable
Allowing students to make up their project (see Kinsella senior seminar in the spring) gives students agency over their work and which projects they worked on)
I allow my students to have a say over their paper topics. We brew them in class during discussions. This gives them ownership over their writing.
I also mentioned the “Peer Review Speed Dating” that I do
Giving students options for New Media assignments is important
Could do a podcast or book signing or calendar or newsletter
There was some discussion of the good ole pop-up projects
I have thought about using those in my classes.
What is the role of service learning in all of this?
Something Tom said gave me a great idea for an assignment for my Composition II classes
About half way through short story period (which is first 6-7 weeks) have students pick a YouTube song that relates to a story we have read.
Write a 500 word essay about the song and story.
For example, if we read The Yellow Wallpaper, I would pick Systematic Death by Crass
Live experience of tweeting shared reading of a chapter/scene/etc
I think this would work best in an online class
Create an “exhibition” of it via Storify
An idea I loved was putting together an epub of the best work of a class
Students could be involved in the curation and editing process
General consensus in the room of “what good is one more essay?”
ThatCamp Jersey Shore: Games Games Games-Thinking With Teaching
Sometime during the first afternoon at ThatCamp Jersey Shore I attended a panel which started out about using games in the classroom, but then evolved into a discussion of various games and applications which have aided us as teachers.
- A very interesting game discussed was the High Tea game based on the British opium trade.
- Preloaded.com offers a lot of information about publishing games.
- One of the participants commented that they don’t “get” Civil War reenactment, but they get playing games about the Civil War. I completely agree with this.
- Gaming is very visual in history (I would argue literature too).
- At some point, I commented about some games ideas I have had in the past involving literary scavenger hunts and perhaps some geolocation.
- Playthepast.org is a historical gaming website.
- I think literature classrooms could use more games. Imagine Ibsen’s A Doll’s House The Game, with explanations of women’s issues. Nora tries to leave with children and screen comes up explaining why she can’t.
- We discussed Storify as a document of collections.
