The Upcoming Transliteracy Institute

Margaret wrote this post.

We're busy planning the Transliteracy Institute at Bucks County Community College. This new professional development activity will happen during our Spring Break, March 12 through 15. Twelve participants will join Jackie and me for four days of intense exploration and inspiration, not only in the worlds of information literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy, but more importantly the spaces where these worlds intersect in learning.


We'll be blogging about our adventures with this institute, but to start out, here's an explanation of these institutes at Bucks. They are very effective vehicles for providing professional development, usually lasting four days and including one day of working independently. Generally, they are offered during breaks from classes. Participants are required to create an assignment that they can use in their course, and on the last day we share these masterpieces with everyone. Participants learn about the institute topic and useful tools for encouraging student learning in that area. (Glogster, Voicethread, Windows Moviemaker and Timetoast are on the agenda for this year's Transliteracy Institute.)

Our Learning Studio: Site of the Transliteracy Institute

 Previous institutes include Online Learning, Integration of Knowledge (a team-taught capstone course required for graduation), Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and Universal Design. Jackie has led the Media Literacy Institute three times, and I've led Information Literacy four times. We co-lead these institutes with "classroom" faculty not only to give us credibility, but show the importance of the collaboration between the two worlds. What better way to bridge the gap between two intelligences (or silos) than to stand in-between the two?

Our experience with the Information and Media Literacy Institutes has provided us with a toolbox of effective techniques to use in the Transliteracy Institute. I won't reveal all of our secrets yet, but we will be featuring a panel of faculty currently using transliterate assignments in class, a great ice-breaker, and some group exercises that help participants get some hands-on experience before creating their ultimate assignment. We won't share this with our participants right away, but we're looking forward to learning a lot from them, too.

For now, watch the silly Transliteracy Institute trailer we made to entice participants: