1. Renee Hobbs
University of Rhode Island
Media Education Lab
The Center for Innovation
Scarsdale Public Schools
October 18, 2016

2. Literacy is the sharing of meaning
through symbols

3. Literacy is the sharing of meaning
through symbols

4. Rhetoric
Print Literacy
Visual Literacy
Information Literacy
Media Literacy
Computer Literacy
Critical Literacy
News Literacy
Digital Literacy
Putting Literacy into Historical Context

5. 12
Flavors of
Digital
Literacy
SKILLS & ABILITIES
➢ Computer Use and Knowledge
➢ ICT Skills & Digital Skills
LITERACY
➢ Online Reading & New Literacies
➢ Media Production & Composition
➢ Coding
TEACHING WITH
➢ Technology Integration
➢ Digital Learning
➢ Blended Learning
➢ Connected Learning
TEACHING ABOUT
➢ Information Literacy
➢ Media Literacy
➢ Digital Citizenship

7. Learning to Write & Writing to Learn
How do students learn to take on the responsibility of authorship?

8. Digital authorship is a creative and collaborative process that
involves experimentation and risk taking. Students take on authority
when they have a real audience and strategic purpose.
When they create, students build upon what they have previously
learned through comprehending other media texts. Digital authors
enter into cultural conversation when they use, share and build
upon the ideas of others.
Classroom instructional practices reflect their complex & personal
love-hate relationship that educators have with print, visual, sound
and digital media. Digital authorship is a form of social power and so
students and teachers need to negotiate the exercise of creative
control.
PREVIEW

9. Who is an Author?
Lone Wolf Collaborator

10. Authors are the
guardians of
collective
memory
Who is an Author?

11. Authors are autonomous individuals with vivid
sensations and a powerful overflow of
spontaneous feelings that get articulated
through creative expression.
Who is an Author?

12. Authors express their
personal subjective
understandings, feelings
and drives, exposing the
irrationality at the roots
of a supposedly rational
world.
MODERNISM
Who is an Author?

13. Developing from the French
New Wave cinema of the
1950s, the idea is that film
directors have a distinctive
visual style, technical
competence and consistent
themes or interior
meanings.
Authorship is Multimodal

14. Authorship is about
control, power and the
management of
meaning and of
people as much as it is
about creativity and
innovation.
Authorship is a Form of Social Power
POSTMODERNISM

15. As you watch, consider:
Is becoming an author a
transformative experience?
Why or why not?

16. A Old Saying in Cambodia:
“Before you die, you have to write a book, plant
a tree, and have a baby.”

18. Authors are Unknowable
It is impossible to truly understand an author’s
motives, goals and intentions….

19. POSTMODERNISM
BARTHES
Death of the Author FOUCAULT
What is an Author?
The text does not release
a single meaning, the
“message” of the author,
but instead a text is
rather a “tissue of
citations” born of a
multitude of sources in
culture.
Authors, Sources and Meanings
Circulate in Culture

20. We are All Readers and Writers

21. As you watch, consider:
How does this video depict
the the way people learn by
creating media?

23. Digital authorship is a creative and
collaborative process that involves
experimentation and risk taking. Students
take on authority when they have a real
audience and strategic purpose.

24. At any moment, the reader is ready
to turn into a writer.
-Walter Benjamin

25. Readers and Writers

26. Readers Become Writers

27. In the late age of print, tensions between the authority of
the author and the empowerment of the reader have
become part and parcel of the writing space.
--Bolter, 2001

28. too much information
too little time

29. We know from Project Information Literacy that
students actively try to reduce the number of
choices they have to make in order to get their
assignments done.
We know from the Citation Project that first year
college students who use sources in their writing
rarely write about them with much understanding.
They don’t summarize sources, they harvest
quotes.
Nearly half the time, the quotes they use are from
the first page of the source.
We

30. Kami PDF & Document Markup
http://chrome.google.com
A Student PDF Annotation

31. A Student Annotates a Video
ANT Video Annotation
https://ant.umn.edu/

32. Finding, organizing & comprehending information are
all practices of digital authorship
comprehension
meaning
interpretation
filtering
storage & retrieval
curation

33. What is Evernote?
Knowledge management tools are online platforms that help people
find, organize and use digital resources

35. As you watch, consider:
What competencies are
engaged by making a
screencast?

36. Screencasting for Reading Comprehension
Screencast-o-Matic
http://screencast-o-matic.com

37. As you watch, consider:
What competencies are
engaged by making a
screencast?

38. Screencasting as Literary Analysis
& Prewriting

39. As you watch, consider:
What competencies are
engaged by making a
screencast?

40. Screencasting to Demonstrate
Problem-Solving Strategies

41. Video Commenting Tools Create
Space for Online Dialogue
Flipgrid
http://flipgrid.com

42. When they create, students build upon
what they have previously learned
through comprehending other media
texts. Digital authors enter into cultural
conversation when they use, share and
build upon the ideas of others.

43. Creativity is
rooted in
wonder &
exuberance
Creativity, Collaboration & Digital Authorship

44. Creativity is Combinatorial

46. SLEEP
How Students Improve their
Creative Competencies as a Digital Author

47. Cloud-Based Digital Tools Support
Digital Authorship
Writing
KidBlog
Google Docs
Titanpad
Wikispaces
Storybird
Animation
Animoto
Powtoons
Osnap
Moovly
Screencasting
Screencastify
Screencast-o-Matic
Screenr
Video Production
YouTube
WeVideo
Videolicious
Shadow Puppet
Multimedia
Kizoa
Storify
Coding
Scratch
Ready
Infographics
Infogr.am
Easel.ly

48. LOVE HATE
PRINT VISUAL SOUND DIGITAL
Attitudes about media, technology and popular culture shape
how educators use these resources for learning

49. As you watch, consider:
How do differing love-hate
attitudes towards mass
media, popular culture and
technology influence you
and your students?

50. …I started 8th grade with an absurd aversion to most technology

51. Sharing is a Practice of Digital Authorship

52. “How do I get started?”
Managing Student Creativity
“What is our topic?”
“When is it due?”
“How long should it be?”
“Do have to work with a
partner?”
“How do I get an A?”

53. Creating with digital tools involves a process of messy engagement

54. As you watch, consider:
What inferences can you
make about how the teacher
structured the learning
experience?

55. How to Take Care of Your Pet by Grade 1 Students at Russell Byers Charter School

56. TEACHERSTUDENT
FORMAT
CONTENT
DISTRIBUTION
PROCESS
Teachers Structure the Learning Experience through
a Balance of Creative Freedom & Creative Control

57. Transgression is Inevitable when Student
Creative Competencies are Unleashed

58. Perfectionism Kills
Creativitity

59. Classroom instructional practices reflect
their complex & personal love-hate
relationship that educators have with
print, visual, sound and digital media.
Digital authorship is a form of social
power and so students and teachers need
to negotiate the exercise of creative
control.

60.  Create an illustrated book about Cambodia
 Create a PSA for a target audience of adults to inform
& persuade on the topic of climate change
 Use of digital annotation & knowledge management
tools to find, filter, curate and comprehend
informational online texts
 Create and share a YouTube video on the immune
system
 Collaborate on a how-to video on taking care of pets
 Use of screencasts to advance reading comprehension,
as a form of literary analysis & prewriting, and to
demonstrate math problem-solving
 Use of video commenting tools for online dialogue
Examples of Instructional Practices
of Digital Authorship

61. Digital authorship is a creative and collaborative process that
involves experimentation and risk taking. Students take on
authority when they have a real audience and strategic purpose.
When they create, students build upon what they have previously
learned through comprehending other media texts. Digital authors
enter into cultural conversation when they use, share and build
upon the ideas of others.
Classroom instructional practices reflect their complex & personal
love-hate relationship that educators have with print, visual, sound
and digital media. Digital authorship is a form of social power and so
students and teachers need to negotiate the exercise of creative
control.
REVIEW

62. How are students “creating to
learn” in your classroom?
How are you supporting the
development of student autonomy
and authority as authors?
How could your students
use, analyze and create
with digital texts and
tools to experience the
power of authorship?

63. Renee Hobbs
Professor of Communication Studies
Director, Media Education Lab
Co-Director, Graduate Certificate Program in Digital Literacy
Harrington School of Communication & Media
University of Rhode Island USA
Email: hobbs@uri.edu
Twitter: @reneehobbs
LEARN MORE
Web: www.mediaeducationlab.com