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Empowering Students through Creative Technologies a digital literacy primer

Welcome to the Adobe Spark Page guide for today's (1/29/21) Continuing the Conversation webinar series. My name is Justin Hodgson, Associate Professor in the Department of English at IU Bloomington, Digital Literacy Thought Leader for Adobe, and this page is both presentation aid and resource for participants.

Today's Webinar Breakdown:

  • Part 1 - Framing the Conversation
  • Part 2 - Breakouts (discussing possibilities)
  • Part 3 - Sharing Ideas and Extending the Conversation

My starting point

How can I help students, basic and developmental writing students, meaningfully connect concepts & practice?

In what ways could I spark interest, invite engagement, and encourage play and learning over grade performance?

What I've Learned

  1. We need to focus on building better learning experiences, not simply making better lectures.
  2. When we give students the opportunity to learn new media authoring skills, we quite literally expand their capacities for expression. This helps them not only to tell better stories but, more importantly, take on greater or different degrees of agency in an increasingly digital world.
  3. When we invite students to work in and across different forms of mediation, we create opportunities for them to access ideas in new ways.
  4. As an extension of three, working in creative media can also help students have meaningful academic success outside of traditional modes discourse.
  5. When creating digital things, students actively want to share their work, sharing the creations with family and friends or as part of work portfolios.

But then the Pandemic...

  • Flattened the student engagement to primarily text.
  • Repositioned course design around (often lifeless) modules and task-lists (assignments, activities, pages, etc.).
  • Invited wide-spread talking-head videos (recorded and live).

Not all is lost! A few strategies:

Think/Pair/Make/Share

Making Images to engage course ideas:

Video Making/Thinking

Digital Writing

Scrolling, Multimedia Exposition (A Multimedia Essay - Adobe Spark Page)

Creating a Course Journal/Magazine (Disciplinary Magazine - Adobe InDesign [Jenny Goforth])

Other Resources

Todd Taylor's OER Textbook: Adobe Creative Cloud across the Curriculum: A Guide for Students and Teachers

Adobe at IU - adobe.iu.edu

Your Turn - Breakouts

Participants will have 12-15 minutes to discuss and/or offer a set of responses to the 3 prompts. If the conversation takes off organically, stick with it and see where it goes. Groups do not have to get through all three--these are just starting points for conversation. Be prepared to share your work (verbally and/or in writing).

The Rules/Guides:

  1. Identify your Spokesperson (person whose first name starts with the letter closest to the letter A). This person will report back to the larger group, should your group be interested in sharing.
  2. Identify your Notetaker (person whose first name starts with the letter closest to the letter Z). This person will take notes of the conversation and, if the group is willing, share those thoughts via our shared Google Doc.
  3. Prompts:
  • What are some key strategies you've used to bring digital literacy or digital creativity into the online class experience? What worked well or didn't work well, and why?
  • What are some core considerations for bringing digital media into the online class?
  • What are your reservations/concerns? What would be helpful in addressing these reservations/concerns?

Justin Hodgson | Associate Professor | Dept. of English | IU Bloomington

@postdigitalJH | JH on LinkedIn | justinhodgson.com

Created By
Justin Hodgson
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Credits:

Created with an image by Blue Planet Studio - "E-learning and Online Education for Student and University Concept. Graphic interface showing technology of digital training course for people to do remote learning from anywhere."