Literacy Now

At Ruth Fox Elementary School in North Branch, MI, my colleagues and I are entering year three of our online professional learning with Matt Copeland, author of Socratic Circles. Not only have we continued our long distance learning via video, but we have also started exploring the benefits of using video to reflect on our instructional practices in the classroom. The results have been overwhelmingly positive!

Just last month, Edutopia published this piece by Mary Davenport, outlining the importance of yearlong, embedded planning for successful implementation of Socratic Circles, a protocol for facilitating student-led discussions that focus on close reading, higher order thinking, question formation, and speaking and listening. Davenport’s last step, “Let’s get reflective,” is crucial for building our capacity as educators to facilitate this type of classroom dialogue to spur learning and a deep sense of community and collaboration in the classroom. How might classroom video be leveraged to provide rich opportunities for such reflection?

Lights, camera, action!

Last spring, we used smartphones and tablets to record Socratic Circle lessons in our classrooms. Next, we used a simplified version of discourse analysis to gather and analyze data about the dialogue we were facilitating among students. To begin, we selected a short segment of video, approximately five minutes, and took the time to transcribe all of the conversation that took place therein. Then, with videos and transcripts in hand, we poured over our data, tabulating and commenting on what we saw.

For example, one teacher was able to document that in her five-minute snippet of classroom dialogue:

• 89% of the verbal contributions to the conversation were made by students
• Of the 14 students in the inner circle, 10 contributed to the discussion
• Of the 18 verbal contributions, five were questions and three of those questions came from the teacher whereas only two came from students
• In 12 of the 16 student contributions, the student speaking was responding directly to another student
• There were no instances of students inviting/drawing others into the conversation

Benefits of looking through the lens

Through these video analyses, we reflected on our own practice, just as Davenport suggests we should. Exploring a range of video annotation tools (MoocNote, Video Ant, Edthena), we identified, individually, where we believed our facilitation was working well and also where there were opportunities for personal growth. Because these annotations were all documented in the technologies we were using, we were able to share our videos and analyses with one another, collaborate, and offer our own coaching tips to build one another’s capacity to facilitate better classroom dialogue in the future.

As an example, from the previous data,the teacher was able to quickly identify the strength of the verbal interactions among her students’ dialogue but then also begin to brainstorm with her colleagues strategies she might use to facilitate students generating and posing more questions to the group. The professional conversation that grew organically from this activity was every bit as rich and productive as the student-led dialogue in the classroom.

Using video and discourse analysis afforded our teachers the opportunity to step back from the details of each classroom conversation itself and weigh the breadth and depth of the dialogue against our goals for the discussion. This practice and reflection has taken our implementation of the protocol to a whole new level. Our planning for future Socratic Circles with students has been greatly strengthened by this job-embedded professional learning facilitated by video.

This fall, we intend to share these same tools and procedures with our students, to engage them in studying their own conversations through discourse analysis and video, and facilitating their own growth in learning.

Amber White is a reading specialist, a teacher consultant for the Saginaw Bay Writing Project, and the Director of Curriculum & Instruction for North Branch Area Schools. You can reach her on Twitter. Matt Copeland is an author, presenter, and instructional coach who works with educators to build capacity in using Socratic Circles in K–12 classrooms and beyond. You can learn more about implementing Socratic Circles by joining our professional community.

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG). 

Computer coding is a trending topic these days. One reason why is a key feature of the current focus in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education—President Barack Obama’s Computer Science for All initiative. According to folks in the White House, coding has become a new “necessary skill” for our students’ economic opportunity and social mobility.

Computational thinking, math, design, engineering, and data analysis are considered essential skills to prepare students for the high-paying technology jobs that are open and currently unfilled. That is all well and good, but literacy-focused educators may be wondering how literacy fits it in with coding movement.

As a school librarian invested in literacy education, I have seen school and public librarians embrace the computer coding movement. Some people argue that libraries have no place in computer science and should stay with their traditional programs and services. In contrast, proponents see that computer coding helps develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and these are at the core of our professional mission: to help people understand how to solve problems using information effectively, which are skills that support people as lifelong learners.

Not until a group of librarians and I visited the South End Technology Center (SETC) in Boston, MA, last June that I realized computer coding has a big place in literacy education. Dr. Susan Klimczak, L2T Director of Special Programs at SETC, spoke to us about how computer coding is essentially writing a story. The five-stage story structure is all there. When you code, you set the scene, build tension, create climax, include falling action, and come to a resolution—think Minecraft game design. The possibilities for librarians to collaborate with English and reading teachers using code are wide open and exciting.

At a sold-out Coding With Scratch workshop for school librarians in August, facilitator and school librarian Jennifer Robinson and I were impressed by librarians’ eagerness to learn and bring coding into their schools. After Jen explained the basics about Scratch, we let the librarians loose, tasked with developing a short computer program with a sprite (character), setting, costumes, and actions. They quickly learned the start, loop, repeat, and sequence commands. Excitement grew as the participants interacted and learned through trial and error. These educators experienced the design process emotions of frustration, pride, dismay, and exhilaration and were hooked on the value of bringing coding into the literacy fold.

To show librarians what a collaborative English language arts and coding project could look like, Jen described her project with fifth-grade students. Working as an instructional partner with the classroom teacher, Jen had the students create a computer program using Scratch to show evidence of competency in a Common Core narrative writing standard. First, students read a biography and then created a narrative script highlighting important parts in this person’s life. After a brief tutorial on Scratch, students attempted to master the broadcast and receive commands to code a dialogue sequence from their script.

Librarians who are on the coding bandwagon have the dispositions to be comfortable with the discomfort of taking risks and letting go of control. They are trained collaborators who support traditional literacies of reading and writing but are also technology leaders willing to try new things and create student-centered learning activities. Check with your school librarian for ways to bring coding into your literacy instruction.

Mary Moen is a visiting research professor and the coordinator of the School Library Media Program at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. A former school librarian, her research interests include teacher professional learning of technology, digital literacy, and makerspaces in libraries.

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG). 

Recently, a computer engineer working for a local technology company contacted me. He told me his  freshman son was interested in starting a coding club at his high school. He remembered coming to one of my after-school club meetings to speak to my students about his choice of career as a computer engineer. He asked what my strategy was to have a club that had nearly 30–40 members, some of whom won the Congressional App Challenge, representing the 23rd California Congressional District. Because I consider coding as one of the major components of digital literacy skills, I’d like to share the answer I gave my friend.

Access matters

I began teaching computer coding by accident. I had to learn to code to pass a doctoral course that required me to create an item using an Arduino board. I quickly realized my limitations and hired a former student as a tutor. While I was struggling to learn to program and create a project to pass my course, I realized how much better my classmates were doing because they had some prior experience with coding.

Focus on exposure

I decided to start a coding club at my school. Clearly, I was in no position to be an expert coder in the room, so I asked for help. In addition to asking my tutor for help, I asked my classmates. That’s when I found out how many free resources are available. Although there are many outstanding resources now, I used CodeHS and Codecademy. I also wrote a grant to purchase more Arduino boards and e-textile materials. Finally, I asked my own students who have done coding to help. We began meeting twice a week, once during the week and on Saturdays.

I thought of my coding club like the thousands of little league baseball teams or youth soccer leagues. Not everyone who plays baseball as a little kid will become a professional, but having some experience will help one to appreciate the sport. Not having the opportunity to play certainly hurts the chances of having quality players in the future. Likewise, we need thousands of coding clubs to create future computer coders and engineers.

Interest over skills development

In addition to introducing free tools to my students to learn to program, I encouraged my students to chase their own interests. Not surprisingly, many of my computer coding club members were also avid video gamers. They were interested in learning about game development. So when they chose to create games using different tools, I encouraged them to do so while looking at the codes behind the tools. Other students wanted to learn HTML to create a simple website or learn to use Photoshop.

All hands on deck approach to developing digital literacy

In a recent Quartz article, Idit Harel, CEO of Globaloria, criticized the way U.S. schools are treating coding. She called this new wave of desire to teach coding by using free online applications “pop computing.” She argued that just as a person playing Guitar Hero shouldn’t be considered a musician, someone playing with coding applications or programs shouldn’t be considered a coder. I agree that we shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations. I do not expect that my students who came to a few club meetings will all become expert computer programmers.

However, as a former English teacher, I must say that I would rather my students read popular books like the Twilight or Harry Potter series than no books at all. I spent over a decade working hard to encourage my students to read more books, even writing a dissertation on a new pedagogy to help my students to read more classics such as Beowulf, Fahrenheit 451, and The Importance of Being Earnest. But when my students asked to read a biography of a baseball player or a book on how to assemble a race bike as their choice of independent reading materials, I always said yes because reading something was better than reading nothing. I believe that providing access to resources, creating structures to provide exposure, and supplying encouragement for interest-driven learning are ways to developing digital literacy for all our students.

Kip Glazer is a native of Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States in 1993 as a college student. She holds California Single Subject Teaching Credentials in Social Studies, English, Health, Foundational Mathematics, and School Administration. In 2014, she was named the Kern County Teacher of the Year. She earned her doctorate of education in learning technologies at Pepperdine University in October 2015. She has presented and keynoted at many state and national conferences on game-based learning and educational technologies. She has also consulted for Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning and the Kennedy Center ArtsEdge Program.

In the spring, Ian O’Byrne, Heather Woods, and I launched the Teaching Literacies With Technology survey with the support of the ILA committee on Literacy, eLearning, Communication, and Culture. We created a website to support the project and circulated invitations through social media to the survey link. We announced the survey on Literacy Daily and at several conferences and have sincerely appreciated shares and retweets by fellow ILA members to their networks.

One hard thing about a research project like this is recognizing when a revision is required. After working to generate responses, only 37 participants had completed the study as of back-to-school in September—too few to draw any real conclusions about the questions driving our inquiry. As a response, we shortened the survey and the new, shorter version is available at digitallyliterate.net and via this link. We invite you to respond and to share the links! More data means a more informed ILA!

Preliminary data

Even with so few responses, we thought you might find some of our preliminary data interesting. We hope this will encourage you to contribute your own insights to the survey so that we can construct a more nuanced understanding of (a) the ways that teachers all over the world are integrating diverse technologies to support student learning, (b) the barriers they encounter, and (c) the types of professional learning that they would most appreciate.

Demographics of participants

Nearly half of our survey participants (16) reported being between 35 and 44 years of age. Seven reported being between 25 and 34, and eight reported falling in the 45–54 age category. Twenty-five participants live and work in the United States, five in China, two in Canada, two in Afghanistan, one in Greece, one in Zimbabwe, and one in Hong Kong. Eighteen respondents have PhDs or an EdD, and 10 have Master’s degrees. Most participants (26) work in higher education  contexts. Just 11 participants reported working in K–12 schools. None of our respondents self-identified as African American; 29 self-identified as white/Caucasian or of European descent. On balance, then, our survey respondents to date are mostly middle-aged white women with advanced graduate degrees teaching in universities or colleges in the United States. Given that our interest is in surveying teachers globally, we need to invite much broader participation by culturally diverse K–12 teachers of all genders living and teaching literacies around the world.

Barriers and challenges

Participants told us that access to technologies continues to be a serious barrier to their integration practices for literacies teaching and learning both in school and in their communities.

As one participant wrote:

“Equal access. We have districts in our state with almost no Internet access, and I have students who do not have access once they leave the school campus. Wi-Fi must be a basic civil service like electricity itself, sewage, and water.”

Another participant summarized more general concerns about restrictive acceptable use policies, firewalls, and lack of access to social media channels such as YouTube that several participants noted prevent technology integration in literacies instruction.

“The barriers are lack of access for the students in class, not outside of class.”

Another wrote:

“Lack of infrastructure and lack of computer access is an issue. Our district also has a conservative view on allowing students to publish content on the Internet and connect with others outside of the classroom. “

Generally, teachers reported concerns about their students’ ability to use technologies when they are integrated in instruction.

One respondent wrote: “Students do not come from a level playing field. It's challenging to scaffold digital literacy skills/behaviors when some students do not have rudimentary skills.”

Others noted that the digital use divide is very pronounced in their classrooms and are very concerned with issues of access to digital literacies skills and instruction for traditionally marginalized students.

In terms of professional development, teachers noted top-down initiatives as a major barrier to their own learning and sense of agency. One teacher wrote: “Lack of teacher-led initiatives. Too often, teachers are making choices about tech integration based on what their school/district/etc. tells them to do—not what they think will best support student learning.”

Have your say! Contribute to this global conversation about how teachers are presently integrating—and not integrating—technologies into their literacies classrooms at digitallyliterate.net.

Michelle Schira Hagerman is assistant professor of educational technologies at The University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada. She is also on Twitter.
Heather Woods is a doctoral student at the University of Ottawa and coauthor of the Teaching Literacies With Technology survey. You can follow her on Twitter.

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG). 

Literacy researchers such as Dick Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen have spent their professional careers proving through research that children who do not have access to books simply won’t read much outside the school setting and better readers typically read more and continue to improve, while their lesser accomplished peers lag further and further behind. No one understands this problem more than classroom teachers such as Justin Minkel, who is continually in search of viable options for getting books into the hands of readers who need them the most.

In a massive ConnectED Initiative to address the pervasive problem of text access in low-income households, U.S. President Barack Obama launched a comprehensive Open eBooks (also known as electronic books) effort in spring 2016, delivering more than 250 million dollars’ worth of digital reading material to elementary, middle school, and high school readers for free. More than 1.5 million student/family access codes for the Open eBooks app were requested during the two-week launch of Open eBooks, which is just a fraction of the number of students this initiative is meant to reach.

Providing access to electronic books is of paramount importance within a national landscape where Internet availability and access to smart devices has exploded in recent years. A 2016 study published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that in U.S. households surveyed with children ages 6–13, 85% of families below the poverty line owned a smart device (tablet or phone). In addition to personal smart device ownership, ConnectED’s focus on digital device access via schools or public libraries has resulted in Open eBook access opportunities for most U.S. students.

Accessing Open eBook’s high-quality books and educational resources is a multistep process initiated through the Open eBooks Get Started page. After clicking Create an Account to Shop via the First Book Marketplace site, adult participants request Open eBook free codes for as many children as they serve. The Digital Learning tab across the top of the First Book Marketplace site provides a drop-down menu for collections grouped by age. Participants select each collection for which they wish to have code access and add it to their shopping cart, which upon checkout costs them nothing.

An organizational preview of Open eBook collections could help consumers to wade through popular elementary grades book series, new and award-winning novels, nonfiction, and young adult titles spanning a wide range of interests and topics. Selections from multiple publishers are culturally diverse, and some are available in multiple languages. There are also accessibility provisions for special needs readers. Few picture books or pre-K–K titles are currently offered. Users can select 10 titles at a time.
With so many still unaware of the program, First Lady Michelle Obama is spearheading the Open eBooks initiative to inform and enlist all eligible Open eBook participants, including adults who work with in-need students in schools, libraries, clinics, shelters, out-of school programs, early childhood programs, and military family services. With this outreach, hopefully it won’t be long before all children have access to books.

Terry S. Atkinson is an associate professor for the Department of Literacy Studies, English Education, and History Education at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).