Monday, September 08, 2008
NewLits.org has launched!
Dana Wilber, Colin and I--in conjunction with our wiki developer, Christian Blair--are extremely happy to announce the birth of the NewLits.org wiki!
The NewLits.org wiki has two central aims:
1. to host and promote a rich and varied range of professional development resources for middle school language arts educators
2. to support and encourage the meaningful take-up of new literacy practices in classrooms
NewLits.org is built upon the principles of the "wisdom of crowds" and "creative commons". It believes that collaboration among diverse people usually yields a “better” outcome than is achieved by individual experts working alone. It also recognizes the importance of creating resources for educators that are free to use (with appropriate attribution) for non-commercial purposes for enhancing our professional field.
To get things started, 10 prominent authors in the field were commissioned to write articles for the wiki. These include:
- James Paul Gee: Lucidly Functional Language
- Donna Alvermann: A Hybrid Approach to Content Area Literacy
- Jabari Mahiri: Digi-Pop: New Literacies Need New Learning
- Michael Hoechsmann: From the Classroom to the Newsroom: Teaching Media Writing
- Rebecca Black: Publishing and Participation in Online Affinity Spaces
- Jon Callow: As I see it - integrating viewing across the curriculum
- Chris Shamburg: Podcasting and Fluency
- Laura Nicosia: Adolescent Literature and Second Life: Teaching Young Adult Texts in the Digital World
- Lalitha Vasudevan: Media and youth literacy: Addressing the needs of struggling learners in middle school classrooms (in process)
- Glynda Hull: Narrative and digital storytelling (in process)
You yourself are invited to contribute to the wiki by:
- Reading contributing authors' papers (these were commissioned specifically for this wiki) and posting your responses to the ideas they advance
- Uploading resources you’ve developed in your own classroom for others to use for non-commercial purposes
- Adding links to sites or online resources relevant to new literacies that you think others will find useful
- Downloading resources posted by others and using them in your classroom; then posting an account of how things went
- Showcasing your students’ new literacies work
- Creating a space within the wiki that focuses on a particular interest of yours (e.g., middle school students and lucidly functional language in the sciences; addressing literacy difficulties in middle school classrooms)
- Creating a space within the wiki dedicated to using particular digital resources in your classrooms (e.g., editing anime music video remixes)
- Suggesting and actively developing other options (and there are many)
NewLits.org is funded by the Improving Teacher Quality Project (ITQP), which is a is a federally funded, three-year partnership (running from 2006 to 2009) between Montclair State University and East Orange School District, New Jersey (USA). While this wiki is a component of this partnership, participation in the NewLits.org wiki is not limited to the project and interested participants from everywhere are welcome to use and contribute to this wiki.
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I think this is brilliant! Thank you for this site, Michele! I can hardly wait to dive in. It's not easy finding resources for New Literacies. I will post more later when I have perused the site further.
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