Resistance is never futile.

There is a new game in town, and it’s called Ingress.

It’s an Augmented Reality Game (ARG) and it’s only available for Android – you get it from the Google Play store. But before you can play, you have to request an invite.

Once you have an invite, it is very important that you join the RESISTANCE team. Because that is the team I am on. And it is the best team. (You might think that I would go with the Enlightened, but oh no…I’ve seen the Terminator series. I know about Skynet.)

Click here for more information about factions in the game.

If you want to get an invite faster, you can join the Google+ community for Ingress and submit an artwork or other offering. Because the game is made by Google, this strategy actually does get your invite to come faster! Here is one of the art offerings I made to get my invite – a digital collage made using Polyvore:

Ingress invitation to play

After playing this game for a few months I am now up to level 6 and fairly active in protecting the portals in my university precinct.  It’s been a great game for learning about where historic landmarks and public art is in Brisbane, as well as for getting a lot of exercise walking around the city to find portals!

Review of Ingress: November 2012, Android Police

If anyone in Brisbane starts playing, let me know!

Ditto friends in Sydney – we can go for an Ingress run next time I’m down south

BUT ONLY IF YOU JOIN THE RESISTANCE!

Uploaded in February this year, a colleague shared it with me today. It has been viewed over 665,000 times.

As well as being a stand out piece of speech, this poem would be useful for English teachers looking for texts to explore issues of immigration and racism (arguably with links to ‘numeracy’ capabilities as well!)

Press Play. Sit Back. Enjoy:

Part of my overseas stay was, amazingly, in Cairo. I had never been to Egypt before, or anywhere in the Arab region. Most of my time was spent at the MILID Week meetings at Cairo University, which was the event I was there to be part of.

Cairo University, Egypt

What is MILID?

MILID stands for ‘Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue‘. UNESCO, together with the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC) have created a UNITWIN Cooperation Program and Global Chair on ‘MILID’, to focus resources and efforts across partner universities from around the globe on Media and Information Literacy.

To give you an idea of what the group does, here are two of the seven objectives of the MILID network:

• Act as a Observatory for critically analyzing: the role of Media and Information Literacy (“MIL”) as a catalyst for civic participation, democracy and development; for the promotion of free, independent and pluralistic media; as well as MIL’s contribution to the prevention and resolution of conflicts and intercultural tensions and polarizations.
• Enhance intercultural and cooperative research on MIL and the exchanges between universities and mass media, encouraging MIL’s initiatives towards respecting human rights and dignity and cultural diversity. (http://www.unaoc.org/communities/academia/unesco-unaoc-milid/)

How did I get involved?

Across the globe there are eight universities involved as Chairs in the MILID program. My institution, Queensland University of Technology, is the Chair from Australia. Other countries represented are: Spain (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Egypt (Cairo University), China (Tsinghau University), USA (Temple University), Brazil (University of Sao Paulo), Jamaica (University of the West Indies), Morocco (Mohamed Ben Abdellah University).

This semester QUT has run a pilot course in Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue, using the UNESCO Curriculum for MIL. Along with Michael Dezuanni and Hilary Hughes, I’ve been teaching the course to students online, for free, from over 70 countries.

Most of the MILID Global Chairs

MILID Week

MILID WEEK is a space to promote contact and cooperation between international organizations, associations, NGOs, universities, media, research groups, researchers, teachers, and students from around the world working in media literacy and information and intercultural dialogue. (http://milidweek2013.blogspot.com.es/p/presentation.html)

This year Cairo University was the host of MILID week, which ran from 22-25 April. Last year the week was hosted in Barcelona, Spain; next year the week will be hosted in Beijing, China.

What I liked best about my first MILID week was the opportunity it provided to speak in depth with colleagues in this specialised field. Over the days of debates and presentations we shared information about how media is being used (and subverted) in our countries and regions, as well as the politics of information literacy in schools and communities. This event gave us space to find common interests and develop shared strategies for promoting the concept of MIL.

MILID week media pack and audience

What did I learn?

It was eye opening to consider such questions during the MILID week as: How can we plan collaboration via social media in a group that includes members from China? How can we share media texts across national boundaries to promote intercultural dialogue? How can media and information literacy support social justice initiatives?

Mostly I was interested to learn about how other universities worked and how much attention is given to media literacy and/or information literacy in different places. I came away with the impression that Australia is relatively well-placed in terms of access to traditional and new media, connection to the internet, and use of social media. But I wonder whether Australian students are exposed to practices of citizen journalism as much as they might be? It struck me that in a place like Egypt, citizens currently have a lot of motivation to produce their own stories and information…by contrast the culture of media consumption in Australia seemed complacent to me.

And, as always when spending time with folks from a range of countries, I was reminded of how monolingual my world is. I speak next to no words in other languages; most of the people around me from Anglophone countries were in the same boat.

If I can’t go in person to the MILID Week in China next year I’ll be disappointed now, as I feel like I only just got to know this group and my place in it! However with the week falling in April/May, right in the middle of semester 1 in most Australian universities, I can’t say I will be able to take this kind of a break away from classes again for awhile. Either way, I’ll be continuing to promote the new MILID journal and contribute online to the Clearinghouse.

Soon the MIL Curriculum will be available via an interactive module-based website, to complement the existing PDF of the Curriculum. I’ll be sure to post again with details once the site is launched!

Thanks to QUT Faculty of Education and UNESCO for supporting this travel and development opportunity.

It stands for First Year Experience, and now that I’m the FYE Coordinator for my Faculty, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

As a school teacher, the role reminds me a LOT of being a Year Advisor, but with one difference. Instead of staying with my year group and looking after them until they graduate, at the end of the year I send my group off to second year, and prepare to look after the FYE of a new cohort.

My FYE jobs

This is my first year in the role, and one of my ‘big jobs’ is to consult with unit coordinators to identify students in need of help with academic literacy. Students have a raft of assignments due around weeks 4-6 and using those we can make early recommendations for study skill support.

I’m also one of the main points of contact for first year students, and I get to go to many (very interesting, seriously) meetings about student engagement and improving campus life. My personal engagement project is a knitting club that I am launching for Education students in Week 5 of semester

Enter Twitter

Something else I am trying this year is the establishment of a Twitter account (1styear_edu) to communicate messages relevant to students in first year Education. I’ve stated nice and clearly in the bio that I am behind the tweets, and the profile pic is a shot of our lovely main admin building at Kelvin Grove campus. I’m not following students back (yet), but am following things that I think they would like, or that I would want to retweet from.

So far I’m up to 93 followers, out of a potential 650 (ish). It’s Monday of week 4, out of 13 week semester, and on the whole, I am happy!

Yes, yes, some things I already know:

• Almost all first year students use Facebook, with only about 10% entering our courses using Twitter. We know this from a student survey. I think this is great, because it means most of them are up to date with the digital literacy skill needed to use Twitter, and just need some guidance to transfer those practices.
• Not many students like Twitter when they first join it. I know this anecdotally, but I don’t see this as a reason not to persist with the service. In fact, I think it’s good to put students out of their learning ‘comfort zone’ … especially students that are trying to become teachers!
• Most students won’t go to Twitter regularly for announcements. That’s OK! They should be going to the institution’s ‘Blackboard’ (or other LMS) for essential announcements. Although I do repeat some key announcements on Twitter, it would be inequitable to announce important stuff there without also placing it on Blackboard. Twitter is for engagement, tips, and social study support.
• Students don’t use their social media for learning. Well, I know that some already do, actually – you should meet them! But I sincerely hope that by the time the others graduate from a year (or four) at QUT that their attitude to Personal Learning Environments will have changed! Using Twitter is just one thing I can do to help them over this threshold.

What is to come?

I hope that students will increase their take-up of Twitter for crowdsourced note taking. I’ve attempted to lead some tweeting using the unit codes #EDB006 (for ‘Learning Networks’, the only core unit that first year students share) and #CLB320 (a unit on ‘Studies in Language’ that about half the cohort undertakes).

I also want to show other teachers the power of using tools such as Storify to collect tweets about a topic that can be used later as a teaching aid. For example, here is my collection of tweets from the start of EDB006:

http://storify.com/kmcg2375/edb006-tweets-and-media-weeks-1-and-2

Other than that, I think I’m just hoping for some more discussion between students … but I don’t mind if that doesn’t really kick in until later in their degrees. For now I’m just stoked to have seen any interaction at all!

93 followers, baby … how long will it take me to double it? I’ll be sure to report back when we hit 186

In this presentation I was returned to the idea of ‘the rhizome’, something that had interested me when I encountered the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The idea behind looking at things rhizomatically is that we can stop focussing on binary oppositions, or organising concepts into ordered taxonomies and such. Instead, rhizomatic analysis involves looking at things and ideas spread/propagate…and at where new possibilities ‘shoot off’ out of of what already exists.

A rhizome in plant form

This talk by Masny was interesting for a number of reasons to do with designing research methodology, as well as considering MLT from new angles. One thing that inspired me was the way that her presentation was organised around ‘entry points’ to her own topic as a rhizomatic collection of findings. This is in contrast to a presentation that tries to summarise ‘key findings’ or ‘ways forward’. Seeing as I most often use my blog to reflect on ‘findings’ and ‘planning’, I thought it might make a nice change to adopt Masny’s (after Deleuze’s) approach of exploring the ‘entry points’ into my practice so far this semester…

ENTRY POINT: Attendance

At QUT we have a policy that attendance is not to be counted in any way toward assessment, and that students choosing to catch up on their study from home are to be supported in that choice. I have heard some lecturers complain about this – they think students would learn better if they turned up to all the classes, and wish the university would enforce this. Most of us, however, respect the purpose of this arrangement, which is to provide flexible study options for the grown-up human beings that are our ‘students’, and cater for a range of learning styles. Personally I find it very motivating, as it forces me to think about HOW I can make my lessons “worth coming to”!

I’m really happy with the attendance rate in my classes at the moment. Out of the 110 students I have studying on campus, almost 100% turned up in Week one, and the students that were away mostly emailed in their apologies. In Week 2, attendance in tutorials and the lecture was down to about 85%, which is to be expected. What I am eager to see is that 85% attendance rate maintained for the rest of the 9-week semester, rather than drop of over time to 20-50%, as other lecturers often report. I’m pleased to say that in the past few years here, I haven’t noticed the same kind of drop of, and I like to think this reflects the usefulness of my classes.

ENTRY POINT: Engagement

As always it has been a slow start on Twitter…but as always, there are several students ‘coming around’ to the tool already and engaging with informal peer tutoring as well. Once again, I am glad I chose to persevere with introducing students to an unfamiliar (and for many of them, unloved) social media tool.

I had a really great out-of-context engagement moment as well last week, on Pinterest. I use Pinterest among other things to collect useful resources for English teachers, and one day I saw a collage about English teaching and ‘re-pinned it’ to my board. I thought (and commented) ‘wow…this is just like an activity I do in class!’. Then I realised that I was following one of my students already, and that it was her! Funniest bit was though, she had been following me too without realising who I was, or making any connection to out uni lives. Good times!

There has been a growth in socia media profiles and ‘chats’ that I can now connect my students to, and the most important of these is the #ozengchat that takes place on Twitter on Tuesday nights. Feeling like they are engaging with ‘real teachers’ seems to be helping with motivation in the class, but at the moment that’s just my anecdotal take on the situation.

ENTRY POINT: Assessment

In my class students undertake THREE assessment tasks:

1. Personal essay on teaching philosophy and resource analysis (individual, 30%)
2. Lessons plans for a junior English class (in pairs, 40%)
3. Portfolio of completed learning ‘challenge tasks’ (individual, 30%)

What I like about what I have achieved with this set of assessments is that there is a balance of individual and group work, that there is a variety of tasks, and that no task is worth more that 40%.

At this point I’ll put myself out there to say I am disappointed to see how many uni coordinators choose to use just TWO assessment piece in their own classes. This is not good practice imo! Having less assignments does mean a smaller marking load for the lecturer, and less due dates for the student, but at what cost?

I really do believe that students in uni should not have assessments that are worth 50% or over, as this is too high-stakes to promote good learning. To do this, you must have more than two assessments for a unit in a semester.

FINAL WORDS: The CLB018 ‘assemblage’

In the theory of Deleuze and Guattari, the context of my CLB018 class provides an assemblage of bodies and things that can produce any number of effects. I hoe to keep reporting throughout the semester on the effects (and affects) of our assemblage!

In the meantime, any comments on these POINTS OF ENTRY are most welcome.

This semester, I will be focussing on the following areas of my English Curriculum Studies unit for development:

• Building in more support for student reflective writing. The design of my lesson planning assignment last year included a tutorial presentation of the key teaching strategies, but it didn’t really work that well. So I plan to change this element of the assessment to a written reflection, and add two targeted activities to tutorials in mid-semester to more constructively scaffold the task.
• Finding places to make connections between English curriculum studies content knowledge and other professional frameworks. In particular I want to ensure that students understand how the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers can be used to self-diagnose areas of strength and directions for further learning, and are knowledgable about the Productive Pedgagogies framework that is advocated by Education Queensland.
• Registration. After three years of running this unit it will be time to write up the final unit design, as well as a ‘scope and sequence’, so that the unit is ready to be passed on. At school we called this ‘registration’ – when the Head Teacher would check out your unit plans at the end of the semester and ensure you met your learning objectives. Here at uni there are other other mechanisms in place, but the Head Teacher check isn’t one of them. And official changes are made so sllllloooowwwlyyyy. So, for my own piece of mind, I’m going to put my own unit through a final tick-and-flick, then prepare my reflections and field notes for scholarly publication and sharing.

I’ve included below another classroom poster I’ve made, a visual resource to support my students’ engagement with the Productive Pedagogies – feel free to use and share (though note that the values/opinions expressed on it about alignment with ‘prac’ are only my own POV!).

Now…deep breath!

And once more into the breach!

Productive Pedagogies for Prac (image by Kelli, CC-BY-SA)

I say ‘other people’s classrooms’ because I haven’t had a lot of success with this kind of thing!

2008: One time, I thought I had made a pretty successful poster of quotes from King Lear for my Year 12s…but they never seemed to look at it:

2009: Far more successful displays have tended to come out of students’ own work being put up, such as this display of lines of poetry after a lesson with Year 10:

2011: And the ‘tree of knowledge’ inspired display I’ve had in my uni teaching for the past 18 months was wrongly positioned at the back of the room, and a little haphazard to boot:

Today: When I saw Bianca’s tweet today with a picture of her classroom wall painted with blackboard paint, I thought ‘how cool is that!?’

…which motivated me to start designing some posters to add to my classroom this semester.

I’m going for a digital look, rather than getting all crafty with the glitter and paint. I plan to print them out in colour A3 and get the students to decide where they think they should be put up in the room. Here is the first one – two of the key concepts I focus on in my English Curriculum Studies unit:

by me, Kelli McGraw (CC-BY-SA) free-to-use

Mind you, the room I teach in has been a blu-tak free zone for the past two years, because it got a new paint job. This has been severely limiting. While it’s lovely on one hand to teach in a clean and modern space, it’s hard to use a room when you can’t put things up where you want. Teachers who don’t have a ‘home room’ will know the feeling!

The display I have been using so far, however, has been taking up one of the big green write-on groupwork boards in the room (to avoid having to blu-tak the wall). I don’t think I can keep using that board – I need it in my class, and other teachers must too.

So walls, you’ve had two years…the blu-tak is now a-comin

If anyone else has electronic copies of pedagogy-inspired posters that they would be happy to share, I would love to see some more designs. And if you have any ideas for what else you think I should be flagging for 2nd year preservice English teachers, tell me all about that too!

New diaries, pens, highlighters, stickers, desk organisers, poster cardboard, and more.

For most school teachers around Australia the first day back was a week ago, but being a university lecturer, my classes don’t start until the last week in February. This gives me a few more weeks up my sleeve to get to the shops and buy some new items to refresh my wall displays and writing workshop materials.

(By the way, awhile ago I read an article that said teachers, on average, spend about $350 per year on classroom supplies that aren’t provided by the school. Isn’t that heaps!! Did anyone see that article? I can’t find it again now…)

$10 spend
One thing I have to top up every semester is my store of paper and card that students use to make visual poetry in English Curriculum tutorials:

These can be picked up cheaply at most Bargain stores, Reject Shops etc. I got mine on sale in Kmart, which I guess means they’d be in Big W etc as well.

I’m thankful that I have access to most basic supplies for teaching at uni – plain paper, lead pencils, glue sticks and scissors are there for the ordering and taking. I still have to buy my own special stuff – black textas, wall fastenings, posters and craft paper – but in my public school teaching days, we weren’t even allowed to take spare A4 paper out of the cupboard for class! You also got just 4 whiteboard markers at the start of the year, and you had to make em last…

Gonski that!

$5 spend

Because I teach older students, you would think that most could be relied on to bring their own books and pens to class. Not so!

The $5 spend on spare books and pens for students that turn up to class without these things in week one is a habit that most teachers of disadvantaged students pick up in their career. I am no exception, and I can attest that even at university, some students are doing it financially tough.

(I can just hear the TV ad voiceover: “For just 32 cents, one of these exercise books will get a disorganised student off to the right start for a whole year…”)

I picked these up at Woolies on an impulse buy – I know 48 page exercise books can be picked up elsewhere for as little as 9 cents a book though.

What do you regularly buy for your classroom?
I won’t be rude and ask people to confirm or deny whether they think they spend the average $350 a year on their class. Partly because I can’t even be sure that figure is right…but also because I’d rather know WHAT you choose to spend on.

How about it – are you a crafty practitioner? Or perhaps your annual spend went toward a personal data projector, or other tecchy toys for your class. Did you have to pay to subscribe to a website for them to use? Do you personally shell out to get their assignments printed in the library?

And if not…why not?

#ozengchat (weekly)

If you search for this hashtag on Tuesday nights, you’ll find Australian English teachers talking about their craft, ideas and resources.

The #ozengchat group also has a page on Edmodo, which is where voting for the weekly topic takes place (a group code for Edmodo can be obtained by tweeting @vivimat78). Vivian, who convenes the chat, also collects our chat tweets in a weekly online storyline using ‘Storify’.

#ozengchat officially takes place on Tuesday from 8.30pm – 9.30pm, Australian EDST (i.e. GMT +11)

australia-map-flag-olga – Flickr image by lednichenkoolga (CC-BY-2.0)

#engchat (weekly)

As well as a special hashtag for Australian folk, there is also a more general #engchat hashtag that is coordinated for a more global chat.

Currently the #engchat tag seems to be heavily used by teachers in the US – as a result you can see some interesting discussion taking place there now about the implementation of ‘Common Core Standards’ across their states. And of course also a lot of resources being shared that we otherwise might not stumble across through our own local networks!

#engchat takes place at 7pm in the States (EST) every Monday, which is 10am – 12pm on Tuesdays in Australia (Eastern time).

The Globe (78 / 365) – Flickr image by somegeekintn (CC-BY-2.0)

#literacies (bi-monthly)

You can follow the #literacies hashtag on the 1st and 3rd Thursday every month. The convenors are based in the US, so the chat happens on Thursday night for them, which is Friday lunch-time in Australia.

This chat is supported by a very up-to-date and informative blog, where a record is kept of the chats and upcoming topics.

The #literacies tag can be added to your tweets at any time, but Friday 12pm – 1pm (Eastern time) is when you’ll see it live in Australia (i.e. Thursday night 8-9pm in the US).

Literacy mountain – Flickr image by dougbelshaw (CC-BY-2.0)

A tip for non-tweeters:

If you want to check out these tags, but don’t really want to get involved in Twitter or create your own account, never fear!

You can search for these tags any time by going to the Twitter homepage and typing the hashtag (complete with its ‘#’ at the start) into the search bubble. You will need to make your own account to reply with your own tweets, but until then there’s no harm in lurking and learning from afar

Anyway, I shamefully FORGOT to vote in the Triple J radio poll. So awful – I mean, not really, it’s not like it really matters. But I confess, it does make me feel youthful and ‘withit’ when I usually place my votes in January. Ah well.

So, sorry I never replied Troy, but now you know … I was a slacker and didn’t vote!

For the record though, if I had’ve voted, here is what I would have nominated for my top ten. It’s in order (favourite song first) and I’ve included the actual place it came in on the Hottest 100 chart.

OK, here we go…!

:::

1. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Same Love {Ft. Mary Lambert} [15]

This is such a beautiful song, if you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favour and press play! The filmclip does an excellent job of building on the narrative of the song, which is about homophobia and marriage laws. I was proud to see people had voted this up to number 15 on the countdown, but for me it was number 1!

“no freedom til we’re equal, damn right I support it”

2. Django Django – Default [28]

This is a kick-ass pop song in the sense that it is really upbeat, but the lyrics are defiant. A scottish band, this was a staple driving-to-work song for me in 2012!

“we just lit the fire and now you want to put it out”

3. Tame Impala – Elephant [7]

Viva la psychedelic rock … Tame Impala’s 2010 album Innerspeaker was so, so, so good and I still play it all the time. They are an Australian band and their second album was just as good (I just don’t have it yet).  Elephant – such a funky song, enjoy!

4. Illy – Heard It All [76]

Ahhh, Aussie hip hop. I love it! There was more hip hop I could have voted for, but when it comes to genres, I like to spread the love around!

Although I am a grunge girl at heart, there is something about hip hop, and especially Aussie hip hop, that also speaks to me. Where grunge reflected the despair of our lives in the 90s, I feel like hip hop gives us a glimpse of hope at the end of all that. Where Nirvana screamed “here we are now entertain us”, hip hop flips the bird and says “f- you, I bought some spray paint, I’ll entertain myself”.

This song by Illy makes me smile, because it taps into that idea that nothing is really ‘original’, but that we are creative people who can share perspectives nonetheless.

“producers made beats before you could spell ‘drum kits’” LOL, indeed Illy, indeed.

5. Regina Spektor – All The Rowboats [72]

This song is pretty, and clever, and poetic and Regina’s voice gives the whole thing s perfectly haunted tone. It’s a song about museums and art galleries…and about how the artefacts are all trapped in there. Spooky!

“masterpieces serving maximum sentences, it’s their own fault for being timeless, there’s a price to pay and a consequence…”

6. Skrillex – Bangarang {Ft. Sirah} [25]

Not everyone loves dubstep, I realise. But you can’t deny that this year has seen a surge in popularity for this genre in Australia, and whether you think Skrillex represents that genre well or not, for many radio listeners he has been the face of the scene. I have no idea why, but I like it!

YouTube link (watch)

7. Grimes – Genesis [65]

OK, for the life of me I could not pick up the lyrics to this song, and had to look them up in the end. But it’s not the lyrics I love about this song, it’s the cute, ethereal sound of the track and Grimes’ gentle, siren-like vocals. The filmclip is pretty cool too, with lots of flaming swords and wild costuming. Lots to think about there!

YouTube link (watch)

8. The Presets – Ghosts [52]

Maybe it’s because I live near a river now, but I’m noticing a sea-faring theme with my music taste this year. This song has that ‘heave-ho’ sailor tune to it. A shanty? Someone help me out here…

“lost my mind in streets of neon, now coming on home…”

9. Of Monsters And Men – Little Talks [2]

Everyone loves a good duet, and this one is lots of fun This is the other big sone with ship/sea references in it this year that I liked.

“cause while the truth may vary this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore”

10. Flight Facilities – Clair De Lune {Ft. Christine Hoberg} [17]

It’s always tricky picking number ten in a list, because you know how many other songs are being bumped off the list in the process! I was a sucker for this song because I am a sucker for the classical piece Clair De Lune, so that was that At 7 mins 44 secs it’s a nice indulgent listen, too.