The screen in the room offered the expected prompt: \u201cWhat is your definition of critical literacy?\u201d<\/p>\n
The familiar scratching of pen to paper could be heard throughout the auditorium as ideas were being generated.<\/p>\n
There is a strange dissonance to sit in a full room and silently write (like with a pen and paper!) for five minutes. Yes, today\u2019s modern conference is one often obsessed with a backchannel. (Watching Obama\u2019s State of the Union two weeks ago, I spent nearly the entire speech staring at my twitter feed and engaging in dialogue; Obama\u2019s main-attraction content mainly feeding what should have been happening in the background). However, how often are keynote presentations participatory on the frontchannel?<\/p>\n
Such was I reminded last week, as fellow DMLCentral blogger Nicole Mirra and Danielle Filipiak kicked off the Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life speaker series<\/a> at Colorado State University. Sponsored by the CSU Writing Project, the series offers the CSU community and online viewers the opportunity to think through the critical issues of literacies and education for youth in the contexts of today\u2019s participatory culture.<\/p>\n In addition to ensuring that the audience of their presentation was fully engaged, Mirra and Filipiak helped unpack key questions that keep me up at night regarding the shifting nature of critical literacy in schools in 2015. Their presentation is one that prods toward dialogue with students and dialogue with a school community and I encourage you to spend an hour sometime soon watching their presentation.
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