LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY" ESSAY

Individual Assignment 1

Literacy Autobiography (10%)

· Due dates will be posted on Blackboard and in the course calendar for each of the assigned tasks.

Purpose of Assignment

In this assignment, you will be guided to reflect on your past and current literacy practices. The goal is to communicate your literacy autobiographies in such a way that illustrates who you are as literate beings in the digital era of the 21st century.

This assignment is also designed to help you start reflecting on your learning, which will later help you in writing your reflection essays or statements your Portfolio.

Assignment

This assignment has two requirements. Both products should be posted in Blackboard in the discussion board for grading.

1. an Essay (5%) – each student will write a 1 ½ page essay demonstrating how they became literate in English and in Arabic.

2. an Audio recording (5%) – each student will record their own narration of how they became literate in English and in Arabic. The recording must be at least 2 ½ -3 minutes in length. This recording is called podcasting. Your lab instructor will show you how to download the required software and how to record your audio.

Recording an audio is called Podcasting. Click on the related links to find out more information on podcasting.

What is PodCasting? ( http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/07/20/WhatIsPodcasting.html?page=1#heading1 )

How to create your podcasting file

Use Audacity to create your podcasting materials

Objectives you will:

· Reflect on what it means to be literate and reflect on the socio-cultural and historical factors that influence our literacy development and literacy practices across our lifespan.

· You will be able to speak about, discuss, record an audio file and write your literacy autobiographies.

· Review the list of literacy autobiographies of college students from different parts of the world. Such online literacy autobiographies will help you to think of yourselves as readers and writers within different situations: in your homes, in your schools, and etc.

Preparation

For this assignment, review this list of literacy autobiographies provided in the appendix and also a list of guiding questions on the assigned task.

Instructional media: Tools and Resources

· Word-Processing, Digital multimedia software

Description, Procedure & Activities

· Reflecting on your past pleasant and/or upsetting literacy experiences would help to expand an in-depth understanding of the factors, experiences and events that influence the literacy development within your micro-culture

· To help you retrieve and recall your previous and current memories of your literacy practices think about these questions. What experiences do you remember that might have influenced your literacy development across your lifespan? How did you manage to be fluent in Arabic and English? Have you been exposed to multimedia oriented literacies (movies, computer games, etc) during your childhood? What is the impact of such literacy experiences on the way you view yourself now as a literate being?

· Your written and audio products will be evaluated by the instructor according to rubrics (for the written and audio or video part see Blackboard).

Appendix A

Literacy Autobiography Internet Resources

Sample Literacy Autobiographies

· http://butipreferreading.blogspot.com/2012/01/example-student-literacy-autobiography.html

· http://katherineliteracyautobio.blogspot.com/

 Guiding Questions  

Literacy Questions / Discovery and exploration prompts for a Literacy Autobiography - Questions to get you started writing and reflecting on your past memories as a reader.  Use these online questions to help you write and explore your literacy autobiography

· https://falcon.tamucc.edu/wiki/SMurphy/LiteracyQuestions