The document discusses developing multiliteracies in secondary classrooms. It summarizes perspectives from experts on 21st century skills needed in the workplace, including collaboration, digital literacy, and critical thinking skills. The presentation recommends teachers support these skills by thoughtfully integrating technologies, project-based learning, and encouraging students to develop their own ideas and share their work. It provides examples of digital tools and ends by emphasizing the importance of developing students' abilities to tackle complex problems and envision solutions.

1. Developing Multiliteracies in
Secondary Content Area
Classrooms
Michelle Schira Hagerman
Doctoral Student, Michigan State University
Research Affiliate, Albion College
http://mschirahagerman.com
A special presentation for EDUC 373, Albion College
Tuesday, February 5, 2013

2. Today’s Big Questions
• What are the key job skills and life skills needed in
our 21st-century world?
• To what extent should multiliteracies be used to help
students develop those skills?
• How should they be used?

3. Let’s hear what you think?
• What are the key job skills and life skills needed in
our 21st-century world?
• We’re going to talk about it…but we’re also going to
share what we think using Lino.
• Lino Board: What are 21st Century Skills?

4. What do the experts say?

5. Kylene Beers
• Basic, Scientific, Economic & • Teaming, Collaboration &
Technological Literacies Interpersonal Skills
• Visual and Information Literacies
• Personal, Social & Civic
• Multicultural Literacy and Global Responsibility
Awareness
• Interactive Communication
• Adaptability • Prioritizing, Planning & Managing
for Results
• Managing complexity & Self-direction
• Curiosity, creativity & risk-taking • Effective Use of Real-World Tools
• Higher-order thinking & sound • Ability to Produce Relevant, High-
reasoning Quality Products
Beers, K. (2007). The measure of our success. In K. Beers, R.E. Probst & L. Rief (Eds). Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice (pp 1-14).
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

6. Partnership for 21st Century
Skills
http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework

7. Douglas Thomas and
John Seely Brown
• Imagination
• Collaboration
• Playfulness
• Embracing change
• Making
Thomas, D. & Brown, J.S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY:
Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown.

8. Jason Ohler
• Discipline specific literacies
• Digital literacies
• Integrating new media into a cohesive narrative, or
collage – words, images, video coalesce to create
new meaning together
• Participatory digital citizenship
• Creation/Making
Ohler, J. (2009). Orchestrating the media collage. ASCD, 66(6), 8-13.

9. The Common Core State Standards for ELA &
Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and
Technical Subjects
Students who are college and career ready in reading, writing, speaking, listening and
language…
• Demonstrate independence
• Build strong content knowledge
• Respond to the demands of audience, task, purpose & discipline
• Comprehend as well as critique
• Value evidence
• Use technology and digital media strategically and capably
• Come to understand other perspectives and cultures
Common Core State Standards Initiative (2012). The common core state standards for English language arts and literacy in
history/social studies, science, and technical subjects, p. 7. Retieved from http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards

10. What are multiliteracies?
• This time, let’s try Hootcourse to see what we
understand.
• http://hootcourse.com/course/2941/w3uk66pjqjxd
8ms/

11. What do the experts say?

12. The New London Group
• Multiliteracies – two big ideas…
• Multiple modes of making meaning, e.g., linguistic
meaning, visual meaning, audio meaning, gestural
meaning, spatial meaning & multimodal patterns of meaning
based on the integration of the others
• Cultural and social ways of understanding/making meaning
• “Literacy educators and students must see themselves as
active participants in social change, as learners who can
be active designers – makers of social futures.”
New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review,66:1, 60-92.

13. New Literacies of
Online Reading Comprehension
• Questioning
• Locating
• Evaluating
• Synthesizing
• Communicating
Leu, D. J., Kinzer, C. K., Coiro, J. L., & Cammack, D. W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the
Internet and other information and communication technologies. In R. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.) Theoretical models
and processes of reading (5th ed, pp. 1568-1611) Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

14. How should we teach them?
• Ideas? (Hint: Ideas from your readings most
welcomed in addition to your own!)
• Tweet them in Hootcourse!

15. TPACK it…
• Imagine an activity for students in your content area that…
1. Includes collaborative construction of understanding
2. Involves reading, writing, listening and/or speaking
3. Integrates technologies in ways that support 1 & 2…but also the
development of digital literacies
4. Requires the creation of something that can be shared with an
authentic audience online
• Work with a partner
• 20 minutes for planning & sketching, then we share our ideas
• For tech tool ideas: Cool Tools for Schools

16. Where will you archive this idea?
With whom will you share it?
• Will you blog about it?
• Will you keep it in an Evernote library?
• Will you post it to a social network?
• Will you write it up on a publicly searchable Google
Doc?
• Will you share it with a professional community of other
teachers?
• Or…will it stay on your hard drive…never to be seen
again?

17. Voicethread
• Let’s try something crazy…
• Let’s record our ideas on a Voicethread.
• https://voicethread.com/share/4089383/

18. More from the experts…
• “School is all about little minds, not big Minds.”
(Gee, 2013, p. 165)
• “[…] the kind of learning that will define the twenty-first
century is not taking place in a classroom – at least not in
today’s classroom.” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 17)
• “Schools have kept digital technologies on the periphery
of their core academic practices. Schools often provide
computer labs, tech prep courses, and computer literacy
and programming courses to help students learn about
technology, but do not try to rethink basic practices of
teaching and learning.” (Collins & Halverson, 2009, p. 6)

19. Michelle’s Top 5 Recommendations for
Supporting Digital/New/Multi Literacies in
the Secondary Classroom
1. Think first and think deeply about the skills, strategies
and mindsets you need to help your students acquire.
This is your purpose. It must drive your choices.
2. Think second about the best pedagogical methods you
know for supporting the development of those
skills, strategies and mindsets. If you don’t know – ask
someone AND use technology to find out.
3. Ask yourself at every turn: Is there a way for me to
integrate a technology that would make this learning
activity more collaborative, more playful, more
authentic, more complex?

20. Michelle’s Top 5
4. Play. Make things. Share. Contribute. Repeat.
5. Remember that literacies give access – and that 21st
century literacies are diverse, complex and like all
other literacies, develop when scaffolded. Don’t
assume kids will just “learn them”in the absence of
thoughtful engagement.

21. Pink, D. (2013, January 7) Does the “school cliff ” matter more than the “fiscal cliff ”? Retrieved from
http://www.danpink.com/2013/01/does-the-school-cliff-matter-more-than-the-fiscal-cliff

22. What are the key job skills and life skills
needed in our 21st-century world?
Mind Visions: What do YOU think WE should do? If you cannot
help answer this question and motivate people to action for a
vision, or if you trust “experts” or politicians to answer it
alone, you have not been educated. […] How can school
encourage Mind Visions? This is what the Liberal Arts at their best
were always about: multiple visions, from art and science, of a
better, fairer, sustainable world. What we have to add to this is the
demand that each student become a maker of visions, a
visionary, and not just a spectator of visions. Today’s digital
media, used well, can facilitate students to be visionaries. […]
Digital media can make learning in and out of school engaging
[…], social, and life enhancing. Digital tools can make better
minds and a better society, but they cannot do this by themselves.
” (Gee, 2013, pp. 214-215)
Gee, J.P. (2013). The anti-education era: Creating smarter students through digital learning. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

23. Let’s end with a poll…
http://www.polleverywhere.com/survey/CGtlzC_IF

24. Resources in One Place
• Lino
• Hootcourse
• VoiceThread
• Evernote
• Google Drive
• Poll Everywhere
• Cool Tools for School Wiki

25. References
Beers, K. (2007). The measure of our success. In K. Beers, R.E. Probst & L. Rief (Eds). Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice (pp 1-14).
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology: The digital revolution and schooling in America. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Common Core State Standards Initiative (2012). The common core state standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and
technical subjects, p. 7. Retieved from http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
Gee, J.P. (2013). The anti-education era: Creating smarter students through digital learning. New York: Palgrave MacMillan
Leu, D. J., Kinzer, C. K., Coiro, J. L., & Cammack, D. W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the Internet and other
information and communication technologies. In R. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.) Theoretical models and processes of reading (5th ed, pp. 1568-1611)
Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review,66:1, 60-92.
Ohler, J. (2009). Orchestrating the media collage. ASCD, 66(6), 8-13.
Partnership for 21st Century Skills Initiative (2013). The framework. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework
Pink, D. (2013, January 7) Does the “school cliff” matter more than the “fiscal cliff”? Retrieved from http://www.danpink.com/2013/01/does-the-
school-cliff-matter-more-than-the-fiscal-cliff
Thomas, D. & Brown, J.S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: Douglas Thomas and
John Seely Brown.