"Critical Language Awareness (CLA) Meets ‘Digital Story-Mapping’" presented by Mary Lourdes Silva   

The first session in the 2023-2024 GSOLE Webinar Series

Overview

There have been various university digital story-mapping projects that have mapped untold stories about racism, literacy, and language use. Story-mapping predates computers and the Internet through the use of cartography and oral story-telling or travel narratives. In digital story-mapping, instructors can also apply a Critical Language Awareness (CLA) model to story-mapping to raise attention to the official and unofficial naming of regions, cities, streets, neighborhoods, buildings, etc. CLA is a commitment to linguistic diversity and the close examination of language, identity, and power (Shapiro & Leonard, 2023). 

In this 90-minute webinar, Dr. Silva will take participants on a journey from analogue story-mapping to digital story-mapping that applies a CLA approach. Participants will have a chance to create their own analogue and digital maps and share stories pinned to specific locations on the map and in their memories. They will learn to use applications like Google street view, Google My Maps, and Knight Lab. Last, based on an educator’s area of interest or discipline, they could apply a CLA approach to narrate geological maps, historical maps, political maps, demographic maps, linguistic maps, economic maps, literary maps, and social or cultural capital maps. The webinar could benefit educators of all grade levels across all disciplines.

The Presenter

Mary Lourdes Silva (she/her) is Associate Professor of Writing and Director of First-Year Writing at Ithaca College. She received a PhD in Language, Literacy, and Composition Studies from UC, Santa Barbara, as well as her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Fresno State. Her past and current research examines the citation practices of first-year college writing students; pedagogical use of multimodal and multimedia technologies and practices; implementation of institutional ePortfolio assessment; gender/race bias in education; movement-touch literacy as a modality to teach reflective thinking in first-year writing; and the psychological and financial implications of faculty compelled to review biased student evaluations of teaching. She is also a community organizer and teacher in the upstate New York Argentine tango community.

Registration Information:

• This Webinar is free to GSOLE members. 
• Non-Members can register for $15.
• Learn more about GSOLE webinar participation