The Salty Chip Blog

A social space to learn more about the Canadian Multiliteracies Collaborative

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March Update

Thank you to all who have stopped by to visit the Salty Chip, or decidedly committed to getting in and exchanging some ideas. We have been averaging about 50 new participants joining per week. My preservice students have contributed their activities as they embark on their final practicum. Because they had the opportunity to view presentations of the units that have been shared in the Salty Chip from their colleagues, they are quite excited about the opportunity to get in and rework them and continue to adapt them via a Multiliteracies’ approach.

In the upcoming months, I will be working in schools in Southwestern Ontario to develop and capture multiliteracies-in-use in preparation for a chapter I am preparing for inclusion in the next edition of Bainbridge & Heydon’s Constructing Meaning: Balancing Elementary Language Arts. I will be sharing those materials in the Salty Chip as well. If you have rich examples of materials from your classroom that you would like me to consider, please contact me (khibbert@uwo.ca).

In addition, I have been corresponding with a number of interested faculty at other Faculties of Education across Canada and elsewhere in the world about doing some work together with our students in ways that help us learn to reconceptualize our practices to foster a multiliteracies approach in our classroom. If this is something you are interested in considering as you plan for 2010-11, please let me know.

Thanks to all for your patience as we worked through our beta period. I have applied for further funding to enable the community to continue to adapt to our users’ needs as we work it out together. I really appreciate all of the notes of enthusiastic support I have received from our ‘early adopters’, and am excited to see this grow and develop over time.

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Advanced ‘Search’ features added

There are many ways for participants to ‘search’ the Salty Chip:

  1. You can use the type of file, subject and grade level list in the right hand column to ‘filter’ your ability to look at samples that have been submitted to date. (Remember to go to ‘view all’ when you want to cease filtering the content).
    <.i>You can see what is new, popular or trending since your last visit by clicking on the headings across the top of your screen.

  2. If you see materials contributed by a user that you are particularly interested in, you can click on their name to view all that that user has submitted.
  3. Using the ‘search’ window, you can type in key words to narrow your search. An advanced search window will allow you to further refine your keyword search by appropriate grade level or topic.

Our ability to find relevant activities that we may want to modify and redesign for our own purposes will, to a large extent, depend upon the ways in which we ‘tag’ our contributions. When submitting to the Salty Chip, think about adding tags that define the text you are using, the strategy, the media, the purpose, the genre etc.
Participants may be inspired by what you did with a particular text, and may want to try something similar with a different text.

Most importantly, when you try something out and adapt it, please share your modifications by uploading your redesigned components back to the chip. Attribute your work appropriately by naming the original author and lesson that was shared.

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Status update

After beta testing with early adopters and then a full class of students, we have been busy sharing the Salty Chip with students and teachers locally in face to face presentations, and virtually -well everywhere! Well over 150 people have logged in and have been ‘checking out’ the network. I have been really excited to hear from students I have taught in previous years who are gathering their favourite lessons to share, and updating me about where they are teaching or what they are doing.

We have continued to have a few issues for some in the sign up period. The vast majority have fallen into the category of good old fashioned human error; that is, forgetting to ‘check’ the box that indicates your acceptance of the terms of use agreement or a simple typo in the address. We follow up with all individuals sitting in a ‘pending’ status in an effort to communicate the process people can follow to delete their initial attempt and sign up successfully. We are continuing to work with the provider to make the process as seamless as possible.

Keep in mind that what you are viewing at the early stage are the contributors’ first submissions of work that they have decided to share. As more and more people become involved, we hope that they build on these early ideas, and integrate them with their own unique skills for their own context and reshare them back into the community.

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