Tran, Fall 2020 1 Final Project: Digital Literacy Autobiography For this assignment, you will compose a Literacy Autobiography with the primary purposes of 1) examining and reflecting on your own personal reading and writing practices and the familial/cultural/historical values that have shaped these practices—or as Deborah Brandt would say, how your literacy has been or is sponsored 2) placing these practices and values into some sort of historical/cultural context or Discourse Community so that you and others can better understand the relationships between literacy practices/values and culture/society/history. The definition of literacy we are using for this class includes the practices of reading alphabetic texts (shopping lists, magazines, books, web sites) and visual texts (e.g., television shows, computer games, photographs), and the practices of composing written texts (e.g., poems, newspaper stories, essays), visual texts (e.g., photographs, pictures, advertisements), and hybrid texts (e.g., multimedia, computer games, etc.). Literacy also includes the social, cultural, familial, and personal values that are associated with such texts. Where the digital component comes in: In lieu of a traditional essay, you will present your autobiography using interactive elements. You will create a website or blog with various sections/pages that will represent the different parts of your Autobiography. This digital format will allow you to include images, music, videos, and any other applicable forms of media. Consider this an interactive assignment with each page acting as short essays, that will be linked in a final conclusion section. Directions: 1) Reflect and analyze the various discourse communities that have influenced your literacy experience thus far. Think of how you would categorize your Primary and Secondary Discourses and which literacy practice belong to each. While this is autobiographical, focus on significant moments or life events in each discourse community that changed or shifted your literacy experience, rather than retelling the entire history of your life—keep it focused and specific. For example, if you choose being in high school band as a discourse community, analyze how learning to read music and playing in an ensemble has informed other areas of your life and your literacy development; relate this to specific concepts learned throughout the course. Use the texts from class or other scholarly sources to help analyze your experiences. You are required to analyze: 1) A primary discourse community (most likely home/family based) 2) A secondary discourse community (primarily school/community based) 3) A third discourse community of your choice. (primary or secondary) Some examples of discourse communities are: • Religion/Religious community • Organizations you are working with: Peace Corps, Red Cross, or other volunteer or student groups, etc. • Sports or another team-like community Tran, Fall 2020 2 • • • • • Academic Disciplines (sociologists, Business school, dance major etc.) Music & the Arts (band, theatre, acting group, photography etc) Institutions (The Armed Forces, Veterans, prison, vocational training, etc.) Other Interest/Hobby groups (Motorcycling, cars, films, etc.) Immigrant/ethic/marginalized communities 2) Research your chosen discourse communities and collect the necessary materials for analysis, both original and outside sources. • Primary (original) sources can be written or visual work of which you are the author/creator. This may require you to go back and look at old essays, poems, works of art or other things you’ve create, read or written over the years— documents or images tied to memories. Collect and save these as examples to display and analyze on your website or blog. You may also conduct interviews if you have time. For original source examples, you can use as many as you would like to help illustrate and analyze, (5 minimum). • Secondary (outside) sources are written works about a subject or topic by other authors/creators. These sources can be scholarly from academic journals, or nonscholarly from newspapers, websites, etc. You are required to use a total of at least 10 written sources, which includes 3 assigned course texts, 2 scholarly/academic sources not from our course readings and 5 additional non-scholarly sources. • Visual Sources should be included to make your essay more interactive and personal. These sources can be images (both personal or found online), artwork, music, and videos. An unlimited amount of these visual aids may be used. 3) Create your digital presentation and design it however you like. Get creative! However, make sure that all of your tabs/pages are easy to find and navigate. You should have separate tabs/pages/sections for each of the following topics: 1. Introduction/About you 2. Primary Discourse (home/family/peer) 3. Secondary Discourse (school/community/institutions) 4. Third Discourse Community of your choice 5. Conclusion/Final Thoughts: how all interact/come together 6. Works Cited/Bibliography (ALL outside sources need to be cited, use MLA) You can name and label these sections however you like, again, get creative. Treat each section as you would any essay, but you can include links to things you want me to see, the sources you are using, and integrate other useful resources. All outside sources should be properly cited both in-text and on the works cited page. All of your sections combined should come to 9-10 pages in a traditional essay format. That means at least 500 words (1 page double-spaced) for the intro and conclusion, and at least 1000 words (or 2 pages double-spaced) for each of the other sections. Tran, Fall 2020 3 Website Creation: Websites that you can use for free and that are easy to follow are Wordpress.com, Wix.com, and Squarespace.com, PLEASE DO NOT PAY TO CREATE A WEBSITE, the free templates should work just fine. Another option (which is more labor intensive) is to create an interactive infographic using sites like Piktochart or Canva. Please do not code your own websites, spend the time working on the essay. I will not have time to walk you through how to create your website, however each site does a good job of providing tutorials and easy to follow instructions. Trust me, if I can do it, you tech-savvy students can too! Lastly, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you give yourself time to create interesting presentations, don’t think you can start the night before and get a good grade. You won’t. I place a lot of value on hard work and visible effort. Past students have created projects that included these interactive examples: • Acting monologues, • Video game walk-throughs • Original photography • Composing classical music • YouTube videos • Primary source examples: old exams or writing from grade school, journal entries, personal blogs, social media posts, notes from phone etc. • Music videos • Children’s literature and tv-shows • Links to helpful resources, websites, or organizations • Memes/gifs To submit on BB, in the submission portal you will provide the link to your website (and password if required) and a 1-2 paragraph explanation of your project, how you want me to navigate through it, or anything else I should know before viewing it. It is your responsibility to make sure the link works, I will NOT track you down if the link is broken or incorrect. Tran, Fall 2020 4 Some helpful Brainstorming questions to get you thinking: Family Literacy Values/Practices • • • • • • What value did your parents/grandparents/guardians place on reading/writing? At home? At school? What were their thoughts about education? What kinds of reading/writing/computing did they do? What stories did they tell you about reading/writing? Did your parents etc. go to school? To what level? (treat mother and father and grandparents separately) Can you tell us any stories about this? Did your mother and father/grandparents read at home? If so, what? (newspapers. magazines, the Bible or the Koran or other religious texts, signs, pamphlets). Did your father or mother/grandparents write on a regular basis? If so, what? (letters, shopping lists, religious documents, community or organizational material). Can you remember anything that your mother/father/grandparents said about reading? Writing? Education? (deal with each term separately) How important did/do your parents think reading and writing was? What kinds of values did/do they place on reading and writing? Early Literacy Practices Values • When did you learn to read? To write? Who taught you? • Tell us the story of how you first learned to read? To write? • What kinds of things did you read (e.g., comics, cereal boxes, magazines, library books, computer games, etc.) and write (e.g., stories, e-mail) at home when you were a young child? Be as specific as possible about authors, titles, etc.. • An older child? (e.g., plays, songs) • An adolescent? (e.g., a diary, letters, notes to friends, IM exchanges, music, scripts, short stories) • Did your parents read to you or have you read to them? If so, please describe these situations. • Where and when did you read and write when you were a young child? An older child? An Adolescent? • How did you get access to books? Was there a library near your house? If so, did you use it? When? How frequently? • Did you have a computer in your home? Did you use it as a young child? An older child? An adolescent? If so, how did you use it at each of those stages? For what purposes (e.g., www surfing, word-processing, programming, computer games, etc.).? • Who helped you? Hindered you? (include personal computers, computer games, etc.). • What kinds of things did you read/write online? (e.g., web sites, games, e-mail). School Literacy Practices • What kinds of reading/writing activities did you learn/do in English classes in elementary school? Junior High school? High school? Tran, Fall 2020 5 • • • • • What kinds of reading/writing did you do for other classes in elementary school? Junior High school? High school? What kind of reading/writing/speaking activities do you do in college? (e.g., passing notes, writing essays, reading novels) What kinds of reading/writing activities are your favorite? Your least favorite? What kinds of reading/writing/speaking do you learn/do in English/Humanities classes? For other classes in elementary school? Junior High school? High school? Describe how/why you use computers for each of the following purposes. Identify how often you do each of these activities (e.g., not very often, occasionally, pretty often, frequently). Can you tell us any stories about this: o reading and writing e-mail or letters o programming doing research on the web downloading music from the Internet o designing web-sites o playing computer games downloading software from the Internet o downloading movies from the Internet o completing multimedia/new media design o visiting chatrooms o contributing to listservs o doing graphic art designs o designing and publishing printed documents (desktop publishing/page layout) o preparing oral presentation slides o consulting online dictionaries, thesauruses, language translation software, bibliography software o making movies/ reading scripts o making greeting cards o making digital photographs or the manipulating photographs o creating artwork o other (e.g., global positioning systems, CAD-CAM, simulations, language learning, 3-D rendering, etc.—please be as specific as possible) Historical/Cultural/Social/Familial Events That Provided a Context for Literacy • • • What important historical/political/social events were happening in your state, country, or around the world when you were a child growing up? When you were a teenager? Please list as many of these as possible—especially those that shaped your literacy practices/values. What important family events happened when you were a child growing up? When you were a teenager? Please list as many of these as possible—especially those that shaped your literacy practices/values. Who were your heroes when you were a young child? An older child? An adolescent?
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