Friday, July 29, 2016

Bread Loaf Santa Fe 2016 Video

Composing Alongside My Class

This summer, I taught a course titled Multimodal Literacy in a Digital Age that asked the members of the class to reflect on their uses of multimodal/digital technology in their reading and writing pedagogy. Members of the class wrote alphabetic texts and remediated them into first infographics, and then digital videos using iMovie. We watched as their philosophies evolved as we thought about our beliefs about using technology as we composed across different media.





Above is the video that I composed as my students composed their teaching philosophies. It highlights my experience with the program, told through some of the most emblematic voices of the program. 


\\Credits\\

Photos:
Cruz Medina, Elizabeth Micci, Pam Nelson, Alfredo Lujan, Tyler Curtain

Music:
"Luz Interior" by Limbo Deluxe (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NonDerivative):
freemusicarchive.org/music/Limbo_Deluxe/Salma_Y_koko/07_-_Limbo_deluxe_-_Luz_Interior1
"Gracita y tu" by Konsummerprodukt (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommericial-NonDerivative):
freemusicarchive.org/music/Konsumprodukt/Rumbero_elegante/laridae048-02-konsumprodukt_-_rumbero_elegante_-_cracita_y_tu


Interviews (in alphabetical order):
Lars Engle, Alfredo Lujan, Elizabeth Micci, Jeff Nunokawa

To learn more about the Bread Loaf School of English, click here:  http://www.middlebury.edu/blse

Friday, July 15, 2016

Bread Loaf Santa Fe Faculty Symposium

On July 9th, I had the privilege of taking part in a dialogue with Rachel Lee, professor of English and Gender Studies at UCLA. We asked one another questions about our books and discussed intersections that we saw in our works.
One of my students encouraged us to be more performative than a traditional presentation of research, so we began by asking volunteers to act out gestures for particular words that we introduced, which were related to our work.

Rachel's work The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Posthuman Ecologies provoked some interesting questions about representation, the social construction of identity, and how biology might be discussed in the humanities within the context of racial identity.

I spoke a bit about the visual rhetoric that responded to the anti-Ethnic Studies billed passed in Arizona, and I was pleased to know that so many of the students were aware of the ban, with some having seen the documentary Precious Knowledge.
The Bread Loaf Faculty Symposium was an excellent way to discuss topics and themes related to the course I was teaching, while at the same time discussing past research that resonates into current projects.

Student Led Activity

Today in class, Ashley Kirk asked us to reflect on our experiences in Bread Loaf here in Santa Fe. See the Activity description here: AshleyKirk.wix.com

Based on this question, I would have to say that I have been especially pleased and feel rewarded with this teaching experience because the students who come to Bread Loaf are extremely self-motivated, intellectually curious and value their roles as educators. For these reasons, conversations about class material is never limited to the walls of the classroom, but extend to extracurricular activities that include hiking, symposia, meals and guest speakers.

  (Me, students and faculty at Symposium)

Students genuinely seem to value these opportunities to "nerd out" on the material we discuss and speak with like-minded professionals about concerns they have for their classroom practices and how incorporate their learning into the pedagogy and curriculum.

Here is the pdf from the Google doc collaborative narrative activity.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Bread Loaf Guest Speaker Donnie Sackey


On Teaching with Technology Philosophies

This past week, my Bread Loaf Multimodal Literacy class read "Teaching with Technology: Remediating the Teaching Philosophy" by Phill Alexander, Karissa Chabot, Matt Cox, DĂ nielle Nicole DeVoss, Barb Gerber, Staci Perryman-Clark, Julie Platt, Donnie Johnson Sackey, Mary Wendt. DĂ nielle DeVoss was great about consulting with me on this course when she visited SCU in March, and the article was well received because of how it spelled out the exigency and outcomes for the assignments we're currently composing.

(Donnie Sackey skyping in)

Today, Donnie Sackey was generous with his time and skyped into Santa Fe, NM from Germany and answered questions from members of the class about his experiences with the writing of the article, the motivation behind the article and how he continues to (re)mediate with students.

(Class squeezing into corner to be visible on webcam)

The class appreciated hearing the perspectives on how digital media can be used in social justice contexts, how multimodal writing can be hand-drawn field journals, and why (re)mediating alphabetic texts can inform pedagogical and writing practices.

Thank you again Donnie for your generous contribution to our classroom dialogue!