Author Archives: c4tuna

Presentations at Conferences: The Year in Review at IDigItMedia

National Council of Teachers of English, Washington, D.C. Roundtable: The Intersection of Literacy, Sport, Culture, and Society. November, 2014. 

What does it mean to ground literacy instruction in a favorite topic?  Dr. Carolyn described what that intersection could look like in a talk called, “Not the Same Old Story: Student Discourse in a Sports and Popular Culture Course.” Reviewing a media literacy intervention as a method to enhance critical distance, she demonstrated how language skills can be imparted through critical discourse, visual, and digital media analysis. Students drew upon NAMLE core concepts of audience and authorship, messages and meanings, and representations and reality to become ready to delve into their own original multimodal compositions.

Northeast Popular Culture Association, Providence, RI. New England Studies Section. October, 2014.

Film draws upon many factors–genetic, social, and cultural influences as well as the built environment—to shape viewer perception and identification. Rhode Island has been the site for many film sets, and the ways that Rhode Island has been represented in film have ranged from portrayed spaces of great aesthetic and natural beauty to that of people with malicious motivations and predatory lifestyles.  Drawing upon social constructivist orientation to understand how the meanings people associate with physical landscapes carry differing ontological and epistemological perspectives, Dr. Carolyn presented a white paper titled, “Not for Nuthin’: Rhode Island Films and the Sense of Place,” to describe how a sense of place in film is congruent with or reinforces Rhode Island identity.

Rhode Island Writing Project, Providence, RI. March, 2014 

Dr. Carolyn led a workshop in which participants followed students’ multimodal writing progress and wrote themselves in a session called, “Modeling the Digital Writing Workshop.”  They tracked progress from frontloading learning events, to online persona advertising analysis, to a digital composition with hyperlinks, audio/ video, and visual analysis. Participants learned how digital writing is more than just a skill; it is a means of interfacing with ideas and with the world, a mode of thinking and expressing in all grades and disciplines.

National Council of Teachers of English, Boston, MA. November, 2013. 

What happens when high school students meet theory? Do they rebel, regurgitate the teacher’s ideas, or relish a new opportunity?  How can teachers create meaningful literacy structures through teaching about theory as a way to interpret texts? Dr. Carolyn helped an audience to conceptualize answers to those questions by modeling “Online Personas: Advertising Analysis.”  She argued that theoretical analysis through online personas offers students low stakes practice in critical writing.

National Council of Teachers of English, Boston, MA. November, 2013.

How can critical literacy praxis create meaningful composing opportunities for students?  In “(Re)Creating Ibsen’s A Doll’s House through Critical Literacy,” Dr. Carolyn traced how, through multimodal research presentations, online discussion boards, acting company performances, inside/outside circle collaborations, and poetry slams, students can grapple with social, historic, and cultural contexts and reconcile issues of gender, socioeconomic class, and identity.

Northeast Popular Culture Association, Burlington, VT. October, 2013. 

Sociocultural processes shape and anchor individuals within specific moments of social reality.  Dr. Carolyn offered a white paper titled, “’Electrifyingly Cool and Sexy:’” The Cultural Politics of Speed in Ron Howard’s Rush” and posed several questions about the film’s depiction of masculinity.  Did producer Howard target the fearless mindset of the title contenders, their single-minded determination to win, and their teams’ elite technical engineering? Or did he reproduce Hollywood’s ritualistic pulses of insatiable sex and violence against a backdrop of speed and spectacle? The presentation offered a practical application of sports and theory as embedded in contemporary film.

Blended Learning Conference

Carolyn delivered a presentation at the Blended Learning Conference called “The Art of Digital Challenge and Choice: Curated Collections of Texts for Student Inquiry.”  Participants in this workshop experienced a hands-on, action-based digital curriculum that emphasizes choice and inquiry. After moving through a series of quick tutorials on how students access and utilize materials, participants surveyed thematically-based curated collections and explored how students convert their play-lists into original digital compositions and creations. Highlander Institute, Providence, in conjunction with URI’s Media Education Lab. May, 2014.

Rhode Island Writing Project

Carolyn delivered a presentation titled, “Modeling the Digital Writing Workshop” at the Rhode Island Writing Project annual spring conference.  She demonstrated how teachers can move from pre-assessments into scaffolded learning events and onto student proficiency in digital analysis and composing. March, 2013. Providence, RI.

National Council of Teachers of English

Carolyn shared two curriculum units at NCTE.  The first was “(Re)Imagining Ibsen’s A Doll’s House with Critical Literacy.” The second was “Online Persona Role Plays: Advertisement Analysis.”  Each offered participants the opportunity to see how students can depersonalize their literacy experiences to more keenly relate to individuals, settings, and cultural practices outside what’s considered “normal.”  Digital media literacy analysis and composition helped students create critical distance from media messages. November, 2013. Boston, MA.

Northeast Popular Culture Conference

Fortuna Delivers Paper on Ron Howard’s Film, Rush

Carolyn joined a Sports and Popular Culture panel with her paper, “‘Electifyingly Cool and Sexy’: The Cultural Politics of Speed in Ron Howard’s Rush.”  She argued how Howard, relying on a Classic Hollywood structure of memorable characters performing recognizable actions that celebrate familiar values, reaffirms a popular film narrative in which privileged males hold all the power, have all the fun, and possess the only real opportunities for self-actualization.  Burlington, VT. October, 2013.

Give Me 5 Media Teachers Lab

Carolyn contributed her background knowledge of digital and media literacy at the Give Me 5 Media Teachers Lab as a facilitator for “Curriculum Integration.”  Topics of conversation included equipment problems, technology training, curricula design on digital platforms, navigating piecemeal school systems, navigating layers of administration, limited time, invisibility of media environment, risk-taking in online environments, and various degrees of teacher preparedness for digital and media literacy learning.  Media Education Lab in conjunction with the Rhode Island Council on the Arts.  October, 2013.

A Digital and Media Literacy Idea for the Week

View a film with your child.  Afterward, discuss the various ways that the film did and did not depict real human lives. Then talk about why film makers create films for people that extend or modify our actual existences. 

A Digital and Media Literacy Idea for the Week

Grades 5-8 Visual Arts Idea:

Have students chat about their favorite television shows.  Then break students into pairs, based on the series that they agreed were their favorites.  Have the students take turns interviewing each other as if they were a character in the show.  Help students to identify positive and negative character traits and why producers create such characters.

Summer Institute in Digital Literacy

Fortuna Leads Digital Assessments Workshop at University of Rhode Island

Carolyn offered a Hot Topic workshop at the 2013 Summer Institute in Digital Literacy called, “Is It Digital Art or Digital Learning?” Topics of conversations included what criteria should be considered when assessing digital compositions, the responsibility of subject area instructors to teach generic conventions, and how to help students create authentic compositions while demonstrating scaffolded learning. Providence, July, 2013.

Digital Course Composition and Teaching

Fortuna  Receives Certificate in Hybrid Online Teaching

Carolyn accepted an invitation from the  Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at Rhode Island College to learn how to teach in the digital environment.  She is now qualified to provide combined face-to-face and hybrid online instruction to college students.