Slides from my keynote presentation at the New Literacies, Digital Media and Classroom Teaching conference at the University of Tasmania on September 3rd 2011.

1. Martin Waller
Classroom Teacher and Educational Researcher
Holy Trinity Rosehill Primary School
New Literacies, Digital Media and Classroom Teaching Conference - University of Tasmania

2. Classroom Teacher of Orange Class (Year 2) at Holy
Trinity Rosehill Primary School in the UK.
Creative Learning Coordinator for Nursery through to Year 6.
Postgraduate student (MA in New Literacies) at the University
of Sheffield.
Independent educational researcher working with a
range of organisations.

3. Waller, M. (2010). It’s very very fun and ecsiting – using Twitter in the
primary classroom. English Four to Eleven, Summer, pp. 14–16.
Waller, M. (2011). ‘Everyone in the World Can See It’ - Developing
Pupil Voice through Online Social Networks. In G. Czerniawski, & W.
Kidd, (Eds), The Student Voice Handbook: Bridging the Academic/
Practitioner Divide. London, England: Emerald.
MA in New Literacy Studies research at the University of Sheffield.
Ongoing classroom research and projects.

5. New Literacy Studies (Street, 1984, 2003; Gee, 1996)
A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996; Unsworth, 2001)
Multimodality and visual design (Kress, 1997, 2003)
Critical Literacy (Comber, 2001)
Popular Culture and Literacy (Millard, 2003; Genishi and Dyson, 2009)

7. “I think it’s about learning about verbs and
different things and stories. Erm like punctuation
and different kinds of... well English”
Year 6 Child

17. Image by Iarstho

18. Web-based services that allow individuals to (1)
construct a public profile or semi-public profile within a
bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users within
whom they share a connection, and (3) view and
traverse their list of connections and those made by
others within the system.
(boyd and Ellison, 2008: 221)

19. Much of the moral panic around new media focuses on
the idea that they distract the attention of children and
young people from engaging with print literacy practices
and are a causal factor in falling standards in literacy in
schools.
(Davies and Merchant, 2009: 111)

22. Social networks are here to stay - so how can we use
them in schools?
What value can they add to an already
crowded classroom?
Is it safe to use social networks in school?
What’s the point?

33. Reading in this context means not simply
decoding, but involves the taking part in the
construction of social networks in which
knowledge is co-constructed and distributed.
(Marsh, 2010: 29)

36. Children must not mention their name or any o ftheir
friends by name under any circumstances.
Children must not check for replies or direct
messages.
Children must not navigate away from our Twitter
stream page or look at other people’s profiles.
(Waller, 2010)

41. Social media will not disappear so education needs to
adapt to the changed communicative landscape.
Teaching of safe practices within any online
social network is crucial.
Prescribed curricular definitions of literacy should be
challenged to take account of new literacy practices.

42. email orange class blog
martinwaller@me.com www.whatwedidtoday.net
twitter orange class twitter
@MultiMartin @ClassroomTweets
@MisterWaller
blog
www.changinghorizons.net