"Weaving the Literacy Web" (Sutherland-Smith)

Sutherland-Smith's look at Web literacy’s role in the classroom is, IMO, lovely, balanced, and pragmatic, if somewhat underdeveloped.  She takes an entire section to quell our (read: Arianna’s) biggest concerns about technology in the classroom, writing: “As a teacher operating in both print-based and technology-mediated classrooms, I consider it crucial to institute that critical evaluation of the manner in which technology is used in the classroom.  This means not only evaluating reading and writing products or technology programs, but also investigating whether technology is being used simply because it is technology.  It is, however, implausible that the impact that the Internet is having on society and education can be ignored” (663-4).  We have been arguing whether technological literacy is intrinsically valuable, and if so, whether the English classroom is the place to teach it.  The case she makes for explicit instruction in this skill is compelling.  In her study of Australian schools, she notes that “literacy appears to be industry focussed, as schools prepare the literate being for the workplace by teaching literacy skills deemed necessary for employment” and, of course, it is increasingly the case that technological literacy is just that (663).  So, we could file “can operate a computer/navigate the World Wide Web” away under “Life Skills”  and provide some exposure to technology in the classroom for that purpose.  [Side-bar: I think SEO would be a really good skill to teach in high school!  It’s an advantage in so many different fields now, but a less specialized one than say, coding.]  However, in her discussion of reading strategies, I think Sutherland-Smith gets to something we’ve been dancing around but have not yet had a satisfying discussion about.  Does web literacy require different skills than print literacy (aside from being critical of sources and able to interpret visual texts which, hopefully, we would have been teaching along with print literacy anyway)?  According to Sutherland-Smith, it does.  

It seems like common sense that a reader approaches the web differently than a book, and yet it seems to me that somehow, we both 1.) take the reading strategies needed for approaching either type of text for granted (we don’t realize that we use headings in a textbook, or will stop reading an irrelevant article online and return to our search) and 2.) present digital texts the same way we would a print one in class (we’ll show them an article or graphic or video and have them analyze it, but we don’t focus on how we got there.)  Sutherland-Smith first describes the affordances of web-based text, noting that it is more conducive to non-linear thinking (“‘the seamless shifting from text to text is only possible online’”), requires more sophisticated visual literacy skills (“it was clear that many students could not discern the value of Web graphics” whereas, presumably, in a textbook, novel, or purely visual text, graphics would serve a clearer purpose), and enables “a blurring of the relationship between reader and writer, as readers can add, move, and comment on text and seek clarification from the author” (665).  These three facets of web-texts are actually really rad advantages that I had never considered, and Sutherland-Smith goes on to list the Web-reading strategies necessary for these should-be-obvious but-are-in-fact-overlooked differences.  

Here are the things I take for granted, but should be explicitly taught and modeled for students to develop their Web literacy:

            1. Skimming is your friend.  Figure out if what you’re looking at is relevant, bookmark it, and once you have a “compilation of texts,” read them for detail and “cull” (ew!) what you need.

            2.  “Students need to be explicitly taught how to narrow the scope of their key-word search to find information more efficiently.”  (And to be found more efficiently?  Insert SEO training here!)

            3.-6.  Be aware that students will most likely get frustrated and distracted by sheer information overload.  Use the techniques in the article to help them keep track of their line of inquiry.

            7.  “Students need explicit instruction in how to decode the image and not regard it merely as an ‘illustration...’”  They need “‘to be made aware of the possible ways visual information can be manipulated.  Charts and graphs are not just neutral presentations of facts.’”  That last part we should be teaching anyway, but in evaluating Web-based texts it is of even greater import.

In conclusion, I was quite pleased with this article.  In the future, I would recommend reading it for Week 2, immediately following the articles that define new literacy.  It effectively deals with specific literacy strategies, and does an excellent job of explaining the differences between and import of Web- and print-based literacy, rather than sparking debates about how to fit technology into a curriculum, which could be saved for later in this course.

"What Immigrant Students Can Teach Us About New Media Literacy" (Lam)

"In educational research, the notion of cultural capital has been used to refer to the skills and dispositions of children of middle- and upper-class families, which helps them gain advantages in schools and other institutions that privilege particular verbal skills and social dispositions (Lareau, 2003). However, immigrant youth have digital cultural capital that schools often overlook but could be well-suited for a global society and information age. The linguistic skills, social ties, informational sources, and perspectives that the youth develop through their digital networks with diverse geographical communities are forms of cultural capital that could help them navigate an interdependent and fast-changing world."

I could, once again, take issue with the methodology of this study; the focus is on immigrant students from China who are, arguably, a particularly affluent minority.  I would presume they have much more access to technologies than do other immigrant populations, and I would also speculate that the people in their countries of origin with whom they're using technology to communicate have more access as well.  Furthermore, Lam marvels at the mix of languages and dialects these students are fluent in, citing Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, but as far as I know, Mandarin and Cantonese share a written language, and Lam makes no mention of linguistic minorities.  She does, however, cite similar findings among migrant youth of "Colombian, Indian, Korean, Mexican, and Trinidadian heritage;" perhaps issues of access considered, such groups are still using technology to their advantage.

At its core, this article makes an important point.  Many of our immigrant students are fluent in a vast array of digital technologies and media, which they use bi-lingually, and this fluency is overlooked as a resource by educators.  This wealth of untapped resources maps perfectly over LM Rosenblatt's 1988 work.  Once again, we are failing to consider, value, or utilize our students' experiential linguistic reservoirs, and I think Lam's point about cultural capital is especially salient.  We assume that our more privileged, dominant-group students come into the classroom with greater capital without considering what our other students bring.  Meanwhile, the students who Lam follows are not only using "multiple languages in their online activities as they accessed information and managed diverse sets of interpersonal relationships across geographical boundaries" but also obtaining "news from both U.S. web sites and web sites based in their native countries or other parts of the world. Such exposure to a plurality of news and information sources seemed to have broadened and diversified the youths’ perspectives on current events and issues."  This, I think, is incredibly relevant to the classroom--not only is following current events interest-driven for these students (score!) but their grasp of multiple languages is a huge and immediately visible asset in helping them develop their critical thinking skills.  The project described at the end of the article is perhaps the best classroom use of digital technologies that I've ever heard of.  It's FINALLY an example of something that you couldn't do just as successfully without technology, largely because it's not trying to map digital practices onto existing curricula (see, literature circles) but rather, an inquiry-based unit made possible BY technology.  I'm sure you all read it but I'm just going to stick it here so I don't forget about it. Fin.

Note to self: civically-oriented media production curriculum focused on immigrant communities.

The goal of the curriculum is to teach immigrant students and their high school classmates multimedia storytelling for effective civic participation. The 10-week social studies curriculum focuses on how immigration policy affects young people, particularly as the project occurs during the presidential election campaign. A major assignment that students undertake is to create a video documentary that analyzes immigration policy and how it affects the experiences of people in their community. The students share their policy analyses, interviews with community members, in-progress narratives, and the final documentary online with peers to disseminate their ideas and gather feedback on the effectiveness of their presentation. The curriculum is aligned to state and national standards on social studies research and writing, civics, language arts, and new media and technological literacy. It also aims to leverage students’ language skills, digital networks, and information resources in the process of learning.

For example, since most students in the class are children of immigrants who speak another language in their homes, we encourage students to use their native or heritage language to interview people in their community who are recent immigrants. We communicate to them that multilingual skills are an important asset to reporters, researchers, and media producers. Students also use their online networks to recruit people for interviews. If they have peers or relatives who live in or have moved back to an immigrant-sending country, students can do online interviews to gather their ideas and experiences about the story they’re working on. In conducting research for the policy issue they’re investigating, students gather and analyze documents from policy think tanks, government bureaus, and diverse media sources. Students are expected to analyze policy arguments from various mainstream and non-mainstream sources, including broadcast and online media that serve immigrant and ethnic communities. By using blogs and social networking sites, students gather feedback and critiques from peers on stories that they develop. This curriculum is just one way to envision how we could draw from the digital assets of immigrant students in teaching and learning.

"Take it out of Class: Exploring Virtual Literature Circles" (Bowers-Campbell)

To open her study, Campbell compares the touted, research-based benefits and the realities of literature circles in the classroom.  She cites many researchers who have "identified significant advantages for using literature circles in the classroom," but seems to be of the opinion that literature circles in the classroom face "stilted conversations, resulting in students' reading responses from their role sheets.  In these instances, students do not react to each other or question each other; instead, they simply give each other their answers" (Wolsey 2004).  Wolsey, I think, really hits the nail on the head in regard to the contrived nature of book talks for class--on and offline.  As Campbell's daughter realized, there will always be those students who take it seriously and those who don't.  I think productive small-group literature circles are rare; it takes an anomalously well-established classroom community, the teacher to be hands-off (so that students don't feel they are merely given the responses the teacher expects, and so that student-driven inquiry actually takes place), but also enough scaffolding from the teacher that the students move forward with their discussion.  And this, in my opinion, is both true of on and offline discussions.

Campbell, it seems, finds the same discrepancy between research findings that "threaded discussions fostered energetic interactions between students and their teachers..." (Kirk and Orr 2003) and the actual quality of student contributions.  One study that tried to measure "level of cognition" in student responses to "teacher-generated, prompt-driven [online] discussion boards" found that "while students' cognition did not necessarily become more 'complex' over time, it did differ depending on teachers' prompts" (Thomas and Hofmeister 2002).  This points to students doing exactly what's required of them and no more.  If the teacher creates a complex prompt, the students will respond in kind.  If not, I imagine they wouldn't go out of their way to.  Another examined "students' discussion posts for negotiating affective, ethical, or critical stances in reading.  The author concluded that students' online discussion did not demonstrate a sophisticated critical stance for reading" (Love 2006).  Most of our cohort, I think, would have predicted such findings.

Campbell, though, concluded by agreeing with Kirk and Orr.  IMHO, the biggest flaw with her study is that she follows graduate students--students who not only are highly experienced in literary discussion (and, presumably, at interacting politely), but also have opted in to this class.  The professor in Campbell's study "did not dictate how many texts groups must read or lengths of texts."  The only stipulation was that each group member must post once per day.  Try implementing that in a high school classroom.  Certainly, there will be some students who will write thoughtful posts and make an effort to respond to their peers; but I would imagine that many students would do the bare minimum, just like the boys in Campbell's daughter's in-class literature circle.

Campbell found that "All told, participants did not provide argumentative, analytic, essay-type posts; rather, their discussions were conversational and understanding was ongoing.  Participants offered tentative ideas where they asked group members for feedback; their feedback then led to a tweaking of original ideas, with teach member adding original bits and pieces to a shared meaning."  This, I think, is interesting.  All of my experience in using threaded discussions for class has been at the college level, and all of it has involved essay-type posts, with very little organic interaction.  When my English discussion sections would require a supplemental online discussion, it was usually for the purpose of creating a catalyst for the next face-to-face meeting.  Sometimes the professor would create a prompt, but oftentimes we were just instructed to write our own reaction or questions, and then require us to comment on at least two of our peers'.  (Much like the instructions for this class, although since all of our entries were visible in the same threaded discussion, we didn't feel compelled to make them so long.  This was on UCLA's equivalent of Canvas, one of my existing examples.  Does that count?  I was a bit confused about the instructions on the syllabus.)  We would tend to go through the motions of Campbell's "group harmony" ("I would have to agree with Lucy that...", etc. ) but it always seemed to be more for the purpose of coming up with a response with the least effort, and (usually shallow) politesse.  However, I can see a discussion board sans-prompts as being useful to high school students in the way Campbell delineates--as a forum for them to be open about their confusions and present tentative ideas, eventually arriving at shared understanding; for them to make the shift from "this is my idea" to "here's what we think, but we're still working on it."  Nevertheless, I think this could be equally likely to come of in-class literature circles.  The stars would have to align for either to achieve that kind of vibe, but I don't think there's anything about an online forum that would be more likely to foster it.

Campbell does, though, bring up further benefits to the asynchronous format.  Coffey had mentioned that it provides a space for marginalized (shy) students to have their voices heard, which Campbell agrees with.  In fact, she reminded me that full-class, "face-to-face discussions are often dominated by small numbers of students."  In my observations of full-class discussion last semester, I found that of all the participants, there were around 8 students who spoke twice each, 5 who spoke ten times, and 2 students who took around sixty turns each.  This isn't simply a matter of students being shy; for a number of reasons, the first contributors to a discussion tend to dominate it; they are most likely to interrupt their peers, and treat the discussion like a dialogue between themselves and the teacher.  The mindful teacher will try to compensate for this, but is typically unsuccessful in balancing the discussion; she will elicit those two contributions from several students, but rarely evens out turn-taking.  An online discussion, though, is much more likely to have a balance of voices.  Furthermore, while Coffey had mentioned the benefits of transcripts which online discussion allows for grading or metacognition, Campbell points out that they also provide a means for absentee students to "reengage with the conversation."

Finally--and possible most meaningfully, were students to really use threaded discussions to their fullest potential--"students could continue to revisit their ideas in a recursive thought process."  Overall, Campbell's findings of what's going on with these grad students is promising, but  I look forward to an equally qualitative study of a high school classroom.

Inventory of Technology

There are three computer labs at Oakland High School.  Each lab has 25 computers/workstations, but it's common knowledge that on any given day only about 19 of them will be working, so teachers usually reserve two labs.  You can see available dates and submit a request to reserve a lab online.  I have observed many students with personal smartphones; however, I think less have access to computers at home.

My cooperating teacher is ambivalent about technology in the classroom.  She likes the idea of it, but feels that she's not trained enough in it to do anything particularly groundbreaking, and also knows that technology at the school is very unreliable.  I have seen her use her projector to show powerpoints in class every day.  The content of these powerpoints is for the most part restricted to instructions for the class and teaching grammar and vocabulary.  When she has her students use technology, it's always in the labs at school--she doesn't assign something that requires technology for homework.  She uses the labs primarily for internet research and typing essays, which they save on google docs.  They also do the occasional Prezie, and last year she tried a webquest, which she wouldn't repeat.

"Integrating Technology with Small, Peer-led Discussions of Literature" (Coffey)

            This article, another review of research, was much less thoughtful than the last.  The entire review seemed to be throwing around buzzwords—and the names of types of classroom uses of technology—without arriving at any substance.  My biggest complaint is that as Coffey catalogued the costs and benefits of synchronous, asynchronous, and combined online discussion threads, I forgot that the article was supposed to be about small groups, and about discussions that were student-led and interest driven.   There was no explanation of how that was the case in any of these contexts.  An instant chat or discussion thread doesn’t seem like it would add as much to a small-group discussion as it would to a whole-class discussion.  And is the teacher just observing in all of these studies, without assigning any prompts?

              Most of the article is devoted to describing the ways of using technology, after which we are presented with a long list of benefits.  “Ability to connect with readers outside of the classroom”—I doubt many students are particularly interested in this, or that they would go out of their way to do so without prompting.  “Provides written transcripts of analysis”—fair enough. (Although in my experience with use of discussion threads for class, there’s not usually much that’s worth going back and rereading.  The fact that you are obliged to both respond to literature and to your peers regardless of whether you have anything to say  does not often prompt the most enlightening posts, much like in classroom discussion when you are being graded on participation but you really just want to listen to what’s going on while you work out things for yourself.) “Engagement/Motivation”—according to four cited studies, “students’ excitement and motivation to participate in online book clubs was sustained throughout the entire school year”! I would love to see that.  I’ll try it in my classroom and let you know if it’s the case.  “Fosters classroom community”—see my above point.  I am dubious that anyone is engaged enough in an online discussion to “get to know each other” there more than in the classroom.  “Develops new literacy skills”—yes, more often than not, that seems to be the only thing that going out of your way to inorganically bring technology into the classroom adds which, depending on your goal, may be the point.

            However, the author did cite one noteworthy finding.  Coffey writes,  “Asynchronous communications are interactive, like discussions, but thoughtful, like written discourse” (Wolsey 2006).  This, I think, is perhaps the greatest benefit that an online discussion forum offers.  It comes into play in the last two benefits delineated: “Giving voice to marginalized students” and “Giving students time to think before responding.”  Yes, the marginalized students Coffey refers to are the shy students.  But nevertheless, I think the hybrid between being exposed to your peers’ interpretations and thoughts, and having time to think through those thoughts as well as your own, is perhaps the best reason to use a threaded discussion.  The “Challenges” subset, though, is shockingly underdeveloped.  Two of the points are long because they include solutions that supposedly eliminate the challenge.  The other two (more salient) challenges, “Issues of Speed” and “Issues of Access,” are barely addressed.  Issues of access, in my opinion, go beyond “considering scheduling issues and time management.”

            The suggestions for future research (the most-oft skimmed section of scholarly articles!) was actually the most substantial.  Coffey calls for a look at the quality of online discussion and a comparative study of online and traditional discussion.  This, I feel, is very important.  Camilla, last week, was challenging us to consider what adding technology to the classroom added to the classroom.  If we are hoping to find more benefits of using technology than convenience and developing students’ technological literacy, then we can’t just be adding it for technology’s sake.  It should be doing something more, which, based to the un-substantiated claims of “enhancing learning” above, it may not be.  Coffey also says we must consider the needs of individual students, specifically asking how such a collaborative space can benefit students who learn best independently.  I agree that as teachers, we must consider how “the experience of discussing literature online different for learners with different learning styles” (Coffey).