Transliteracy was a new to me vocabulary word as I entered the Innovative Learning program at Touro. The word is reminiscent of typical buzzwords that get thrown around when talking about education such as equity, 21st Century skills, standards-based learning and many others that came before them. This is not to say that transliteracy is a fad, but the exact opposite. To be literate in todays society, workforce and education system we must be transliterate, or able to take in, understand and synthesize information from a variety of mediums.
Within my current site, I noticed students having immense struggles with accessing technology, working through digital tools (or analog tools for that matter) and being able to use technology as a resource. To sum it up, the students that came into my class, for the most part were transilliterate. My entrance to Touro's program and this observation coincided in a very fortuitous manner. As we built curriculum this year, our staff really pushed on the ideas of being multi-faceted and embedding traditional content into yet another learning area, digital literacy. As we wrap up this school year, looking back students were able to self learn through apps such as Khan and teacher created screencasts and youtube videos. In addition to taking in information in various ways, every student became a creator by using technologies such as Flipgrid, the Google Suite and Padlet. The concept of tranliteracy has transformed my classroom structure and pedagogy in a way that will never go away. It is a habit now. Transliteracy helps foster choice for students as well as give individuals a better understanding of their own preferences, strengths and areas of growth. When asked to investigate Marshall McLuhan each member of our cohort had a different preference. Christina pulled the most information from a video, while I preferred to read a synopsis of the book. Others might of rather had the information constructed as a bulleted list or maybe a graphic. With transliteracy alive and well in the classroom (and hopefully the work place) students are able to shoulder more of the learning themselves which leads to more ownership, engagement and inclusion. Not everyone is going to think of -3 + 5 as - - - + + + + + with 3 zero pairs, so the more access points, the more success.
3 Comments
Alicia Martin
6/6/2018 11:02:26 pm
It's funny how you say that transliteracy is now a habit in your pedagogy. I thought I was incorporating a lot of different medium in my lessons but boy was I wrong. This last trimester with my students I really challenged myself to start looking at what kinds of mediums have I incorporated, and were they effective. You are so right in saying " the more access points, the more success." It's important to try multiple mediums because not all student learn the same way.
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Madeleine
6/8/2018 05:08:57 pm
I really like and agree with what you said about transliteracy being a way that we can provide our students with choices. I think that letting the students choose how they want to deliver information back to the teacher, or the class, helps them to feel like they are creating the assignment with you, rather than just receiving. It also allows them to express their personality in their work, which I believe everybody wants to do!
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Jane Gallagher
6/8/2018 05:31:43 pm
How forturnate you and your students were this school year to work on transliteracy so much. I imagine in your students' portfolios there are many examples of this skill. It would be really interesting to be able to see what their digital portfolios look like.
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AuthorHello, I'm Joe. Welcome to writings about my thought process throughout the journey of Touro's Innovative Learning Graduate Program. Archives
July 2018
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