Real+Reasons+to+Read+and+Write+Working+with+Authentic+Tools,+Tasks,+and+Audiences

Session Description:
It is an exhilarating (and daunting) time to work with student writers as the toolset is ever changing and continually creating new opportunities and audiences for students. This hands-on workshop is meant to provide us with a space to examine new tools, but to also think about how best to navigate all of the continual “newness.” We will explore student work in learning to write by writing (through blogs), exploring writing as a process (through wikis, jing, etc.), using writing to think (multimodal compositions), engaging with authentic audiences and purposes (through podcasts), connecting writing and reading (through issuu, google docs. and lulu) and writing to see themselves (digital narrative).

Presenter Bio: Dr. Sara Kajder, Virginia Tech
Sara Kajder, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech whose teaching has been anchored in assisting middle and high school students to connect out of school literacies with in school literacies – including helping students create multimodal texts (like blogs and digital stories), communicate their meaning-making through podcasts, and engage in web 2.0 learning spaces like wikis, twitter, and other tools. Regardless of the tool(s) we use, Kajder focuses on the uses of new literacies to affirm the literacies students bring into our classrooms, to produce knowledge, and to put students’ knowledge to work. Recipient of the National Technology Leadership Fellowship, she is the author of //Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students// (NCTE, 2010), //Bringing the Outside In// (Stenhouse, 2006) and //The Tech Savvy English Classroom// (Stenhouse, 2004).