Technolandy

Day 88 (of 2025/26) next week is literacy week – and first Tuesday #comicclub

I do chuckle a bit that we spend a week looking at literacy, but not always at the new emerging literacies… so let me share my own plans for our Provincial Online Learning School to have available to log in and check out:

Daily at 1pm:

Monday Jan 26: ReaDahlLoud

-Landy reading The Enormous Crocodile!

WHY: I have ongoing mixed sentiments about read alouds… as a librarian, they are key anchor events that became important ways for me to share how my brain read and processed what I was reading… frequently linking to Adrienne Gear’s work on Reading Power and showing how I as the reader make: connections; visualizing; questioning; inferences; and synthesis/transformations.   But read aloud without the learners seeing the pages of the book? Had to at the start, but pivoted as soon as I got a digital camera that could transmit to a projector. Being able to follow along with what you heard was essential for learners like my daughter. A good story is good… but engagement takes a little more – especially as I admit my own weakness of audiobooks… I love radio and podcasts, but listening to an audiobook is not as satisfying as reading the words on the screen… page – I mean on the page… 

Tuesday Jan 27: Cartoonist Club

-Landy sharing some comic books that have recently been published (appropriate for ALL ages) and some ideas for students to create their own comics for this years Comic Con to wind up the 25/26 school year! If there is interest, this will become a weekly club

WHY:  I believe comics (graphic novels for those who need a different term) are the missing piece of too many readers journeys. We emphasize decoding text in isolation too soon and too fast without helping scaffold some ideas of images connecting with words (realize that not everybody synthesizes ‘reading’ the same – some brains create images and movies… others do not… and I’m confident there are yet other ways the brain works that we do not have fully articulated to the majority of educators. Comic books are a way to connect readers with a powerful (and growing) literary form that needs to get more attention and focus as a unit in Language Arts – easy example: explore the graphic novel of Lord of the Flies rather than the obnoxious language (dated – great for its time, but did not age well) of this book with amazing themes and tensions and conflicts!

Wednesday Jan 28: D&D Live! If you’ve wondered what a hybrid Teams based Dungeons & Dragons session can be like – check out this hour long intro – 10 minutes on characters and classes and a 45-ish minute one-shot campaign led by Dungeon Master Landy

WHY: Another ‘unit of study’ for English language arts: disposable literature. Settings, characters, conflict, critical and creative thinking… and unless you’re Dimension 20 on Dropout… not that much of a running record to reflect on. But a great example of a lab or exploration activity where ‘you had to be there’. It still surprises me that this RPG (role playing game) that once had so many critics that it almost had to be played in secret has gone mainstream… no longer something to be hidden away, but proudly distributed as a way to engage learners as a literacy – oral and written skills needed to receive and transmit ideas and actions. A fabulous ‘new media’. 

Thursday Jan 29: writing short fiction quickly and together! Some examples of formats… some reads of short comics, poetry, and prose to inspire some original creations that you can submit to your teachers!

WHY: this becomes an opportunity to explore some writing options to show your knowledge beyond that 17th century high mark “the essay”… the more we read, the more we expose ourselves to alternative literacies – and it is always good to mix some creation with consumption of literacies (and then acknowledge that for 99% of people, this skill/approach does not continue beyond the educational systemic structure)

Friday Jan 30: Shares from YOU – add your literacy must-explores to this chat (which will be archived as a list of lists) 

WHY: I am not a fan of creating my own ‘best of’ lists – my tastes are a bit… acquired. And this way we can explore a variety of lists of types of media:

Fiction book:

Nonfiction book:

Picture book:

Graphic novel:

Comic book: spoiler – Uncle $crooge & The Infinity Dime

Movie:

TV series:

YouTube series:

Podcast:

D&D Campaign:

Social Media Influencer:

TikToker

YouTuber Short

Instagram

Other

AI Collaborator: 

Video Game: 

OTHERS: