Adolescence Education: 506

Computers & the Study of English

__________________________________
SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, SUNY CORTLAND

Thursdays, Old Main, Room G-17, 4:20 6:50 pm

Professor Sarah R. Hobson
sarah.hobson@cortland.edu
Office Phone: 607-753-2230
Office Hours: Old Main: 115C
Mondays
10:30 1:00 pm, 4:20-5:30pm
Tuesdays, 2-4pm
Wednesdays, 4:20-5pm
by appointment, or other days, by appointment

Course Description and Rationale:

In todays economy, fueled by on-line social networks and an open exchange of
information, more than ever before, reading and writing practices have become more
complicated, cultural, and artistic. Texts are no longer only print based or mono-modal.
They are multi-dimensional and multimodal. Writers are positioned as producers and
have access to expanded audiences. Everyday citizens function as reporters, editorialists,
graphic designers, moviemakers, social activists, fundraisers, and mass marketers.
Everyday citizens face the challenges of deciphering the agendas of producers, the
validity of their claims, and the cultural significance of web-based and other media
designs. Everyday citizens need design-based understandings about how to frame their
perspectives to affect their specific agendas.
Given the wide array of literacy practices required to succeed in this web-based, media,
and global economy, it is incumbent upon teachers of adolescents to steep themselves in
digital literacies and to re-examine their conceptions of reading and writing drawing upon
their knowledge of digital, informational, visual, and media literacies. Teachers of
adolescents need to be able to design instruction centered in the reading and production
of complex print-based and multimodal texts. In order to accomplish these goals,
teachers need to network successfully through social media with other colleagues. They
need to be able to develop critical literacies with adolescents that protect adolescents
from harmful messages, from flawed research, and from predators.

In order to form a practitioner inquiry experience, this course functions as a collaborative

inquiry. We will learn and share different technologies and literacies each week, and we
will help one another process and envision dynamic, adolescent-centered instructional
designs.

Course Goals:
In this course, we will
1. Conceptualize digital literacies, informational literacies, visual (design-based)
literacies, and media literacies and the relationships among texts and cultural
contexts.
2. Research digital networks available to teachers.
3. Develop an on-line professional network and presence through social media tools,
including LinkedIn, Twitter, a blog, and Aggregate RSS FeedsFeedbly and
Hootsuite.
4. Develop a unit plan overview and lesson plans showing how you teach
informational, media, digital, and visual literacies.
5. Create a personal and professional website documenting who you are as a teacher:
your SUNY Cortland coursework, your theories of practice, your instructional
designs in each course, videos of your teaching, your professional networks, a
link to your blog and social media sites, and your personal goals.
6. Conceptualize and learn some of the digital literacies that correspond with
different technologies, such as website design, blog design, iMovie, Prezis, and
Powerpoints.
7. Research the range of instructional designs teachers are employing to engage
adolescents in dynamic, multitextual, multimodal, visually literate, and authentic
reading and writing.
8. Develop practices to help adolescents effectively and authentically assess their
print based and multimodally produced texts.
9. Design pedagogical goals and curricula for one unit plan that positions
adolescents as critical and visual readers of digital technologies and of media.
10. Develop flipped classroom demos to support students in discovering systematic
search strategies, in annotating texts, and in organizing and outlining content from
texts.

Course Standards:
II. Candidates demonstrate knowledge of English language arts subject matter content that
specifically includes language and writing as well as knowledge of adolescents as language
users.
Element 1: Candidates can compose a range of formal and informal texts taking into
consideration the interrelationships among form, audience, context, and purpose;
candidates understand that writing is a recursive process; candidates can use
contemporary technologies and/or digital media to compose multimodal discourse.

 Element 3: Candidates are knowledgeable about how adolescents compose texts and
make meaning through interaction with media environments.
III. Candidates plan instruction and design assessments for reading and the study of
literature to promote learning for all students.
Element 1: Candidates use their knowledge of theory, research, and practice in English
Language Arts to plan standards-based, coherent, and relevant learning experiences
utilizing a range of different texts across genres, periods, forms, authors, cultures, and
various forms of media and instructional strategies that are motivating and accessible to
all students, including English language learners, students with special needs, students
from diverse language and learning backgrounds, those designated as high achieving, and
those at risk for failure.
IV. Candidates plan instruction and design assessments for composing texts (i.e. oral,
written, and visual) to promote learning for all students.
Element 1: Candidates use their knowledge of theory, research, and practice in English
Language Arts to plan standards-based, coherent, and relevant composing experiences
that utilize individual and collaborative approaches and contemporary technologies and
reflect an understanding of writing processes and strategies in different genres for a
variety of purposes and audiences.
VI. Candidates demonstrate knowledge of how theories and research about social justice,
diversity, equity, student identities, and schools as institutions can enhance students
opportunities to learn in English Language Arts.
Element 1: Candidates plan and implement English language arts and literacy instruction
that promotes social justice and critical engagement with complex issues related to
maintaining a diverse, inclusive, equitable society.
Element 2: Candidates use knowledge of theories and research to plan instruction
responsive to students local, national, and international histories, individual identities
(e.g. race, ethnicity, gender expression, age, appearance, ability, spiritual belief, sexual
orientation, socioeconomic status, and community environment), and languages/dialects
as they affect students opportunities to learn in ELA.
VII. Candidates are prepared to interact knowledgably with students, families, and
colleagues based on social needs and institutional roles, engage in leadership and/or
collaborative roles in English Language Arts professional learning communities, and
actively develop as professional educators.
Element 2: Candidates engage in and reflect on a variety of experiences related to ELA
that demonstrate understanding of and readiness for leadership, collaboration, ongoing
professional development, and community engagement.

Course Texts:
McClure, Randall & James Purdy (2014). The next digital scholar. Chapter 1: Ever Mindful of
the Changes: What More We know about student use of emerging technologies as they
move closer to college and career, pp. 21-34.
Hicks, T. (2013). Crafting digital writing: Composing texts across media and genres.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Course Assignments & Assessment

1. Your personal blog: Complete assigned blogs following directions and
responding to focus questions. By the end of the semester, you will have included
your description of your unit plan, and you will have demonstrated aspects of
your unit plan such as writing assignments and assessments. You can also opt to
include your lesson plans, flipped demos, and iMovie. In your assigned written
posts, you will be assessed on your ability to identify the learning needs of
adolescents, to interpret and critically examine the array of teaching options
provided, and to apply them to your own ideas for your unit plan and for your
theories of practice. You will also be assessed on your ability to write with nonjargony, clear, coherent explanations of the influence of the research perspectives
and practices of others on your own theories of practice and practical designs.
(10%)
2. Your Website Portfolio: You will apply your design-based understandings of
visual texts to your design of your own personal website. You will create a place
where you can explain your educational background, coursework, and learning
while at college as it connects to your future employment. You will create a place
to demonstrate who you are as an artist, thinker, reader, writer, and researcher.
With this website, you will find a way to market the unit plan and lesson plans
you have created, as well as the other work you have completed throughout your
Masters degree. You will create room to include your work from your student
teaching portfolio. You will be assessed on your ability to include and feature
each of the components of this course, including commentary on how these
projects have informed your knowledge of teaching and your instructional
approaches and goals for students. During student teaching, you will complete
this portfolio by adding examples of your teaching and commentary on your
theories of practice. You will be assessed on your ability to effectively position
your design such that it is symmetrical, thematically orchestrated, accessible,
dynamic, artistic, and rhetorically aligned with educators. (25%)
3. Flipped Classroom Demos: You will need to show based on your lesson plan,
how you will integrate flipped classroom demonstrations to demonstrate search
strategies for locating credible resources, to organize and annotate web texts, and
to show how you will support students in 1: creating search strategies pertinent to
their research projects and in establishing the credibility of sites 2: Organize their
documents 3. Annotate these documents 4. Create an outline from annotated
webpages. These 5 minute demos should make your teaching life much easier,

saving you and students time, as they permit students to study the demos for
homework and then begin to use the technologies in class with ongoing help from
both the demos and you. (25%)
4. Concept Maps: You will be required to create sample concept maps for your
students in regard to imagined units of study and to articulate how you would
integrate concept mapping into your teaching. You will also be required to create
a concept map that helps you and students visualize your unit plan goals and
assignments. (10%)
5. Power Points: Drawing upon principals of design-based literacies, you will be
required to create a power point that features your unit plan and lesson plans and
flipped demos and iMovie. You will practice presenting this power point to our
class as though we were future employers. (20%)
6. iMovie: You will be required to create an iMovie in which you explain your
teaching philosophy, your unit plan design, and the technical supports you are
providing students. Much of this iMovie will draw from your Power Point and
your web page. (10%)

Cell phones and Computers

As a courtesy to our class community, please turn off and put away all cell phones before
class starts. Because there are multiple opportunities for online engagement within the
structure of this course, I welcome your laptop computers; however, use of computers is
restricted to class work only.

Attendance & Policies for Late Work

Attendance is expected at all class meetings. Please let me know IN ADVANCE if you
need to be absent for any class sessions for reasons of illness or family emergency or if
there is a mandatory school event that requires your presence. If you are ill, I will need a
doctors note. Unless you are having an extreme emergency, I need this information
ahead of time in order for you not to be penalized.
Because everything is carefully scaffolded so that you turn in parts of an assignment over
time and/or you have opportunities to revise, late work is not acceptable. If at any time,
you are struggling to keep up with the work, please talk to me individually or as a class
immediately, and we will work out a plan. Otherwise, for every day that an assignment
(all assignmentsdrafts and final drafts) is late, you will lose a quarter of a letter grade.

Other Important Information

A Note about Professional Dispositions: Our program takes the professional
dispositions teacher candidates acquire and routinely display very seriously. At the end
of this syllabus is a useful document, the Professional Dispositions Policy, to guide your
work in the AEN program. Please read. If you have questions about anything in this
policy statement, please raise them with your instructors.

Taskstream: This is an NCATE accredited program. In order to provide you with a

continuing accredited program that schools will recognize, we need you to enroll in
Taskstream. If you are not already enrolled in Taskstream you will enroll for the first
time. Those of you already enrolled will re-enroll in the 2014 portfolio.
At the end of the semester, you will need to upload to Taskstream, several examples of
assignments that fulfill each program standard. I will provide instructions for how to do
this before then. It is important that you do this at the end of the semester, and you will
not receive a grade for this course until this has been completed. See attached for
NCATE/NCTE and SUNY standards this course this course meets.
Office of Student Disability Services: Any student requesting academic
accommodations based on a disability is required to register with the Office of Student
Disability Services (OSDS). A letter of verification for approved accommodations can
be obtained from the OSDS. Please be sure that the letter is delivered to me as early in
the semester as possible. OSDS is located in Van Hoesen Hall, Room B-1 and is open
8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., M-F. Their phone number is (607) 753-2066.
Student Writing Support: At any time, please know that SUNY offers an Academic
Support and Achievement Program. You can find out more information about this peer
tutor on-line or in person support at http://www2.cortland.edu/offices/asap/.
Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty: The College is an academic community whose
mission is to promote scholarship through the acquisition, preservation and transmission
of knowledge. Fundamental to this goal is the institution's dedication to academic
integrity. This academic community takes seriously its responsibilities regarding
academic honesty. In this setting all members of the institution have an obligation to
uphold high intellectual and ethical standards. Plagiarism, a form of academic dishonesty,
involves incorporating the words or thoughts of another into ones original writing
without proper documentation. Common examples include submitting a paper by another
student; failing to document properly paraphrased, summarized or directly quoted
material: or subtly altering the diction and content of a source author without
documentation. The minimal consequences for plagiarism will be a 0 grade for the
assignment and most likely for the course. Students should consult the College Handbook
(see Chapter 340 beginning on page 50) for full details of SUNY Cortlands policy on
academic dishonesty.
English Department Adolescence English Education Programs
Professional Dispositions Policy
(1) Students in the AEN program will be introduced to and held accountable for the
Dispositions in all courses with an AED prefix.
(2) Syllabi for AED courses should have a dispositions statement which exists as a
contract for that class. Statement to follow the Academic Integrity statement:
Professional Dispositions Statement

One goal of this course is to provide opportunities for continuous positive

growth toward strong teaching skills and dispositions as reflected in the
Assessment of Candidates Professional Dispositions. Positive teaching
dispositions are a basic requirement for all successful completion of the AEN
program. In the event of problematic demonstration of teaching disposition,
incidents will be documented and the departmental and Teacher Education
Council Fair Practice Policy and Procedures for action will be followed.
(3) Concerned faculty member(s) must meet with student, record the first annotation
on Candidate Consultation Report form and gain signature during the meeting. In the
event that a student refuses to sign the form, faculty should note that fact on the form
before the form is forwarded to the Program Coordinator.
(4) The Program Coordinator will periodically review students files to note multiple
cases reported for one student and/or non-resolution of requested correction. Near the
end of the semester, the faculty member(s) should provide a second annotation on the
Candidate Consultation Report indicating whether the problem has been resolved or
whether there has been failure to resolve the problem.
(5) Three weeks before the end of the semester, the AEN faculty will review the
status of all students with actions. As indicated, the committee will determine whether
to advance the student (with a contract) or to follow procedure for dismissal from the
program.
(6) Egregious breach of deportment/dispositions may result in dismissal from the
program at any time, as determined by AEN faculty and/or Program Coordinator.
(8) Student teacher supervisors will be notified of contracts concerning students
placed for student teaching in order to address and support dispositional aspects of
professional performance. When necessary, supervisors will be asked to participate in
final review of particular students.
AEN Program Assessment of Candidates Professional Dispositions
At SUNY Cortland teacher education is framed by a central commitment to liberal learning that
comprises the themes of personal responsibility, social justice and global understanding. Teacher
candidates are expected to develop and demonstrate the dispositions identified in professional,
state, and institutional standards.
Note: the default assessment is S = Satisfactory. Only those dispositions found to be lacking will
be noted with a U = Unsatisfactory.
Teaching Dispositions

Rating

Date

Faculty
Initial

Demonstrates content knowledge (masterful, innovative)

Is competent in arts/sciences (literate, articulate, well-read)
Sees children are capable learners (encouraging, supportive)
Maintains high standards (challenging, investigative,
curious)

Is fair (responsible, socially just)

Creates safe and nurturing classroom (supportive, aware)
Uses technology effectively (creative, innovative)
Meets varied learning styles (flexible, inclusive)
Respects diversity (accepting, inclusive, equitable)
Is reflective (thoughtful, resourceful, self-aware)
Uses assessment effectively (thorough, objective)
Communicates effectively (articulate, persuasive, respectful)
Integrates curriculum
Professional Dispositions
Conveys appropriate attitude to learning (participates, is
enthusiastic, analytical)
Is punctual
Demonstrates commitment (dedicated, persevering,
tenacious)
Collaborates (sensitive, open minded, gracious)
Is respectful (shows due regard, is polite, considerate)
Is receptive to feedback (proactive)
Is focused and organized
Pays attention to appearance (clean, groomed, appropriate)
Is honest (moral, ethical, honorable)
Demonstrates integrity (trustworthy, resolute, selfadvocating)
Is caring (empathetic, supportive)
Demonstrates strong work ethic (accepts challenges)
Is responsible (reliable, deliberative)
Is accountable (takes ownership, dependable)