Category Archives: Digital Storytelling

Empowering Learners with Metaliteracy in AI Education

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Prof. Thomas Mackey from Empire State University presented the keynote “Developing Metaliteracy to Empower Learners for the Generative AI Revolution” at the XI INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON CURRICULUM AND EDUCATIONAL POLICIES in Santa Marta, Colombia. The Universidad del Magdalena hosts this annual international conference and this year’s event explored the central theme “Challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in education.” The symposium is sponsored by the Vice-Rectorate for Research and supported through the Faculty of Education Sciences at The Universidad del Magdalena. Thanks to Matilde Bolaño-García for the invitation to keynote at this global event!

Here’s the slideshow of the Metaliteracy and AI Keynote:

Tom’s keynote offered several takeaways:

  • The development of AI is both a revolution and evolution
  • Several international organizations have defined ethical frameworks for engaging with AI
  • Generative AI contributes to the proliferation of mis- and disinformation
  • Metaliteracy supports the design of effective learning activities with generative AI
  • Metacognitive reflection is key to the learning process when working with AI
  • Reflecting on their learner roles, especially the producer role, reinforces active engagement with AI
  • The analysis of AI ethics is reinforced through metaliteracy’s civic-minded characteristic
  • Digital storytelling and the inventive production of AI-generated content support learners in discovering their authentic voice

This international conference offered a chance to engage with educators and learners from around the world. It emphasized the value of exploring generative AI through the lens of metaliteracy. The keynote emphasized the core components of metaliteracy including the learning domains, roles, and characteristics. It focused on how these elements work together to support learners in developing a metaliteracy mindset. This mindset prepares them for wide ranging information environments that are increasingly mediated by AI.

If you are interested in learning more about metaliteracy, please explore the many open resources via this blog as a starting point. Additionally, we want to know how you engage with metaliteracy in your teaching and learning with AI. If you have an idea for a guest blog post, feel free to reach out to Tom Mackey or Trudi Jacobson directly.

-Tom

Digital Storytelling and Metaliteracy Explored in New Book!

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The new book edited by Dr. Sheila Marie Aird and Dr. Thomas P. Mackey Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices Through Online Narratives has been published by Rowman & Littlefield. The editors worked with an exceptional team of authors from SUNY schools, Temple University, and universities in South Africa to share their narratives about teaching with digital storytelling through the lens of information literacy and metaliteracy. The new book features a Foreword written by futurist and digital storytelling pioneer Dr. Bryan Alexander. This is the newest book to be included in Trudi Jacobson’s Innovations in Information Literacy Series at Rowman & Littlefield.

This book project emerged from the collaborative teaching by the Drs. Aird and Mackey to design a fully online course in Digital Storytelling to unite Empire State University students studying in Prague, Czech Republic and the United States. This course fully integrates the metaliteracy framework and features learning objects available at the metaliteracy.org blog. The editors wrote the framing chapter about this case study Metaliteracy and Global Digital Storytelling: Building Shared Learning Communities.

As noted in the book overview and description:

This book presents the stories of educators who through digital storytelling inspire students from diverse communities to construct their empowering digital narratives. Educators from a wide range of disciplines present innovative case studies of teaching digital storytelling through the lens of personal narratives, metaliteracy, and information literacy. They describe how teaching students to tell their personal digital stories prepares them as learners who are reflective while playing active learner roles such as producer, publisher, and collaborator. 

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538172919/Teaching-Digital-Storytelling-Inspiring-Voices-through-Online-Narratives

We invite you to explore this new book and tell us about your own digital storytelling adventures!

-Sheila and Tom

Designing Interactive Pedagogies of Play Through Metaliteracy

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Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey co-authored the chapter Designing Interactive Pedagogies of Play Through Metaliteracy for a new book edited by Marietjie Havenga, Jako Olivier, and Byron J Bunt. The open access volume entitled Problem-based Learning and Pedagogies of Play: Active Approaches Towards Self-Directed Learning is published by AOSIS Scholarly Books. As noted in the synopsis: “The focus of this book is original research regarding the implementation of problem-based learning and pedagogies of play as active approaches to foster self-directed learning” (https://books.aosis.co.za/index.php/ob/catalog/book/409).

According to the abstract for Trudi and Tom’s chapter:

This chapter explores interactive pedagogies of play (PoPs) through the theory and practice of metaliteracy. As a holistic pedagogical framework for developing reflective and self-directed learners in collaborative social environments, metaliteracy supports individuals to become active knowledge producers. The structure of the metaliteracy model includes interrelated roles, domains and characteristics that reinforce the scaffolding of play- and problem-based learning in multimodal contexts. The core components of metaliteracy are applied in practice through a set of flexible and adaptable goals and learning objectives. Through this analysis of metaliteracy concerning PoPs, we will describe interactive meaning-making in pedagogical situations involving collaborative problem-based learning (PBL) in four courses at both foundational and advanced levels of the college experience.

https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2023.BK409.

We are thrilled to be a part of this exciting new open access book with such excellent editors and authors. It was a great experience to apply metaliteracy to this new context of pedagogies of play. The examples we provide from our own teaching in the Writing and Critical Inquiry course at The University at Albany and in the Digital Media Arts courses at Empire State University demonstrate how applicable these ideas are to a wide range of pedagogical contexts. Let us know what you think about this new application of the metaliteracy model and feel free to try it out in your own teaching!

-Trudi and Tom

Jacobson, TE & Mackey, TP 2023, ‘Designing interactive pedagogies of play through
metaliteracy’, in M Havenga, J Olivier & BJ Bunt (eds.), Problem-based learning and pedagogies of play: Active approaches towards Self-Directed Learning, NWU Self-Directed Learning Series, vol. 11, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 43–70. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2023.BK409.03

Metaliteracy Featured in Virtual Prestige Lecture at North-West University in South Africa

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As part of their honorary appointments as Extraordinary Professors at North-West University in South Africa, Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson delivered a new Prestige Lecture about Metaliteracy and Multimodality. The slides, audio file, and video recording for this lecture entitled Combining Metaliteracy and Multimodality to Develop Metaliterate Producers are now available. This newest Prestige Lecture is based on the second chapter from Tom and Trudi’s book Metaliteracy in a Connected World: Developing Learners as Producers that was published by ALA Neal-Schuman in 2022.

Look for Trudi and Tom’s follow-up workshop entitled Adapting Metaliteracy OER to Multimodal Teaching and Learning Practices on September 5 at 9am EDT.

Metaliteracy Presentation at OLC Accelerate Explores Online Courses in the Digital Media Arts

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How does metaliteracy support creative and collaborative learning in fully online courses? This year’s Online Learning Consortium’s Accelerate 2022 conference featured a presentation by Tom Mackey about applying metaliteracy in Digital Media Arts courses at SUNY Empire State College. The presentation, entitled Effective Strategies in the Digital Media Arts to Inspire Creativity and Collaboration examines how metaliteracy influenced the development of several online courses that envision learners as knowledge producers. According to the abstract for this presentation:

Online courses in the Digital Media Arts offer effective models for designing innovative learning activities in a wide range of disciplinary settings. Several courses in the Digital Media Arts at SUNY Empire State College, such as Digital Storytelling, Ethics of Digital Art and Design, and Information Design have been developed to include open educational resources (OER) to replace textbooks. In addition, openly-available digital resources have been curated in these courses to support individual and collaborative learning activities for producing original and remixed information. 

As part of this presentation, the learning outcomes for each course are shared along with specific pedagogical strategies that have proven to be effective in each class. These techniques are transferrable to a wide range of modalities and disciplinary settings beyond those described. The presentation includes several digital media projects produced by students as well as feedback from learners about the experience.

If you have questions about these fully online courses taught by Tom Mackey at SUNY Empire State College, feel free to reach out any time.

Metaliteracy Explored in New Open Praxis Article about Digital Storytelling

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Circular diagram of the metaliteracy model.

What is the connection between the metaliteracy model and digital storytelling? Read the new article entitled Integrating Metaliteracy into the Design of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Course in Digital Storytelling (Mackey & Aird, 2022) just published in Open Praxis.

According to the new article co-authored by Dr. Thomas Mackey and Dr. Sheila Aird:

This paper describes the redesign of Digital Storytelling as a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course that was taught in fall 2020 and spring 2021 at SUNY Empire State College. Metaliteracy is integrated into the learning design of this fully online course to enhance the virtual international experience. This pedagogical model encourages metacognitive reflection and the production of digital narratives as individuals and in collaboration with peers.

(Mackey & Aird, 2022)

An earlier version of this paper was presented by Mackey & Aird at the ICDE Virtual Global Conference Week 2021: Upskilling and upscaling for quality Open, Flexible and Distance Learning (OFDL) in October 2021. The paper was then preselected for publication in Open Praxis, the peer-reviewed journal published by the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). To learn more about this digital storytelling collaboration, explore the Global Digital Stories blog managed by the two authors.

Mackey, T. P., & Aird, S. M. (2022). Integrating Metaliteracy into the Design of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Course in Digital Storytelling. Open Praxis, 13(4), 397–403. DOI: http://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.13.4.442

Metaliteracy Presentations at SUNY Virtual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT)

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This year’s SUNY Virtual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT) 2021 featured two metaliteracy presentations. Prof. Trudi Jacobson presented Scaffolding Student Learning: The Role of Metaliteracy in Open Pedagogy. Trudi’s presentation examines the relationship between the core concepts of open pedagogy and metaliteracy with a focus on student creations that resulted from this approach.

In a second metaliteracy presentation, Prof. Tom Mackey collaborated with Prof. Sheila Marie Aird on Collaborating to Teach Global Digital Storytelling Online. Tom and Sheila’s presentation explores how they applied metaliteracy to the design of a Digital Storytelling course they co-teach at SUNY Empire State College as a fully online international experience. Their slideshow is available via their Global Digital Stories blog.

Virtual Conference Features Metaliteracy Keynote

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A new metaliteracy keynote entitled The Role of Metaliteracy in Designing Open Learning Initiatives was presented by Profs. Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson at the virtual conference Intercultural Perspectives on Information Literacy on January 30, 2021. This international event is an outcome of the “Intercultural perspectives on Information Literacy” project led by Prof. Dr. Joachim Griesbaum from Hildesheim University, Germany. This international collaboration connects the Department for Information Science and Natural Language Processing, Hildesheim University Germany and Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce, Pune, India. The conference YouTube Channel features recorded sessions, including the keynote.

This new presentation addresses today’s fractured information environment and how metaliteracy can be applied in these challenging times. Trudi and Tom talk about ways to rebuild trust in these environments through metaliteracy and to share ideas about how to design open learning initiatives with this model.

Metaliteracy Interview on RSG International Radio Program

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Jako Olivier, UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and OER invited Trudi Jacobson, Distinguished Librarian and Head of the Information Literacy Department at the University at Albany, SUNY and Tom Mackey, Professor of Arts and Media at SUNY Empire State College to participate in a discussion about metaliteracy on the RSG radio show, Ons en die onderwys (‘We and Education’) on Sunday August 2, 2020 at 9:30am EST (15:30 South African time). Johannes Van Lill, Director of Wordwise Media & VJC, RSG Presenter, journalist and communication specialist will lead the discussion and interview Jako, Trudi, and Tom as part of the program. While Tom and Trudi’s portions will be in English, the rest of the discussion will be in Afrikaans.

Listen live to the interview with Tom, Jako, and Trudi (pictured to the left at last year’s ICIL conference in South Africa) at http://www.rsg.co.za/ (click on the red button marked ‘LUISTER NOU’) or download the podcast afterwards at https://lnkd.in/d-hCeDN.

RSG has over 1.3 million listeners who might tune into their radios, and the Sunday afternoon programs in particular are the most widely listened and together with the online listeners and podcast downloads the total listener number might be closer to 2 million people. RSG is broadcast all over South Africa and because it is the most popular and main national Afrikaans-speaking radio station it covers a very wide demographic. RSG also has many listeners from the country of Namibia (where Afrikaans is also spoken widely) as well as online with local and Afrikaans-speaking expatriates. 

Here’s an audio preview of two of the responses from Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson as part of the interview:

What is Metaliteracy?

“Metaliteracy is an approach to teaching and learning that places individuals at the center of a reflective and active process for producing new knowledge.” – Tom Mackey

Why is metaliteracy relevant for education today?

“Metaliteracy is ultimately about a multi-faceted discovery process that leads to learning and self-knowledge.” – Trudi Jacobson

Listen in on Sunday, August 2 at 9:30am EST for the full interview with Jako Olivier and Johannes Van Lill!

After the broadcast, the full recording will be available as a downloadable podcast here:
http://www.rsg.co.za/Program-Vorige/60/Ons-en-die-onderwys. The program is available via the link ‘Laai die mp3 af’ or check the Google Translate English version of the same page.

Metaliteracy Recording from LIT Virtual Conference Now Online

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Image of Webex recording of metaliteracy presentation.

The Webex recording of the metaliteracy presentation at the Learning with Innovative Technology (LIT) Conference Virtual Conference is now available online. The session recording entitled Preparing Metaliterate Learners for the College Environment with SUNY’s iSucceed College Success Course by Trudi Jacobson, Kelsey O’Brien and Tom Mackey examines the metaliteracy module designed for the Lumen Learning iSucceed College Success course.

This fully open and flexible resource was developed for SUNY OER Services and is adaptable to both K-12 and higher education settings.The presentation explores the current learning environment, including the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, provides an overview of the iSucceed College Success Course, and takes a deep dive into the metaliteracy module based on the metaliteracy framework. Several suggestions for adapting the metaliteracy module to your setting are discussed. This talk also refers to openly available resources for teaching with metaliteracy, including videos, interactive learning objects, and specific segments from the iSucceed module.

All of the slides from the presentation Preparing Metaliterate Learners for the College Environment with SUNY’s iSucceed College Success Course are available as well. The LIT conference web site at SUNY Empire State College includes this presentation, along with all of the recorded presentations from this event.