Literacy report 2008 [2008 futureSACE School to Work Innovation Program]

This project was designed to support high school teachers in participating schools to work with students whose literacy proficiency in key elements of the literacy component of the Year 9 LaN tests were in the low bands. -- p. 5.

Afterschool MediaClub: Critical literacy in a high diversity, high poverty urban setting

In this chapter we present analyses of data produced with young people in an afterschool digital literacy program for 9 – 12 year olds. The young people were students at a high diversity, high poverty outer suburban elementary school in Queensland, Australia. The club was part of the URLearning research project (2010-14). In the classroom-based component of the project we worked with teachers to develop intellectually substantive and critical digital literacy practice. MediaClub was in some ways complementary to the classroom component; it was designed to skill up interested kids as digital media experts not only for their families and communities, but also for the classroom. Given the critical literacy traditions established in Australian schools, we approached MediaClub with certain critical expectations. In this chapter we look at what ensued, highlighting unanticipated critical outcomes at a time of heightened struggle over English curriculum. Critical literacy has been part of official English curriculum in Queensland since the early 1990s. The approach has been primarily text analytic, concerned with giving students access to genres of power and tools for understanding the ideological work of language through text. Many ideas for translating this normative critical project into classroom practice have been developed for use from the earliest elementary grades onwards. However, curricular space for critical literacy is under pressure. Amongst other things, this reflects both the development of Australia’s first national curriculum and the construction of a regimen of national literacy testing. At MediaClub we found a certain resistance to learning activities which were “too much like school”. However, in a context of increased control of teachers’ and students’ work in the classroom, MediaClub evolved as a learning space that can be understood in critical terms. Our experience in this regard might be of interest to teachers and researchers in high diversity high poverty settings that are strongly controlled through increasingly prescriptive – even scripted – pedagogies.

Tornado Damage Assessment in the aftermath of the May 20th 2013 Moore Oklahoma Tornado

This report presents observations, findings, and recommendations from an engineering reconnaissance trip following the May 20th, 2013 tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma. A team of faculty, research scientists, professional engineers, and civil engineering students were tasked with investigating and documenting the performance of critical facility buildings and residences, (IBC Occupancy Category II, III, and IV), in Moore, OK. The Enhanced Fujita (EF) 5 tornado created a 17-mile long damage swath destroying over 12,000 buildings and killing 24 people. The total economic loss from this single event was estimated at $3 billion. The May 20th tornado was the third major tornado to hit Moore in the previous 15 years.