Literacy Now

Do you love Bette Davis? Do Tia and Tamera Mowry bring back childhood memories? Perhaps Kevin Costner strikes your fancy? Would you like to see them all together at your own convenience? Check out storylineonline.net.

Storyline Online is one of two literacy education initiatives sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Foundation, whose vision includes belief “in a world where all artists can realize their dreams and all children are empowered to create their own.” SAG-AFTRA not only supports its professional members as they navigate life as performance artists, but also provides public outreach through BookPALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools) and Storyline Online. (BookPALS provides volunteer performers to read aloud in Title I classrooms throughout the United States.)

With the sponsorship of Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), Storyline Online provides opportunities for parents, children, and educators to listen to and view children’s classic storybooks read aloud by professional actors and actresses 24 hours a day. Each book is selected to appeal to the imagination and interest of children in grades pre-K to 5. The website features 30 read-aloud stories including memorable titles such as Knots on a Counting Rope, Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge and Thank You, Mr. Falker. Activity guides developed by a literacy specialist offer a summary of each story, activities to extend the read-aloud experience, and information about the author, illustrator, and the actor who performs the read-aloud.

Storyline Online read-aloud books can be viewed on YouTube, but in the event a school system blocks this website, the viewer can click on the Select Player button to access the video on SchoolTube or My VR Player. When viewed on YouTube, closed captioning is available. Each year, the Foundation works with publishers to add three or four new books to the collection. Future plans include offering bilingual stories, with an English–Spanish book coming soon.

With over 6 million views a month representing readers from over 228 countries and territories, Storyline Online offers a go-to resource for all those interested in promoting children’s literacy. And, if you love Storyline Online, be sure to check out additional digital resources in Dawn Poole and Whitney Donnelly’s blog post entitled “A Wealth of Digital Aids for Early Readers.”

Joan A. Rhodes is an associate professor and cochair of the Early/Elementary Education program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

There is no doubt that students who enter our classrooms are consumers of technology. They are most often using their phones to download apps to play games and communicate with other students (and sometimes their parents) through texting. If they need to know something, then that information is just a search away. The bottom line is that the idea of staying connected is such a central part of their lives that they cannot fathom what it would be like to not have that type of access. Our job as teachers is to help our students harness technology resources as a means of communicating what they are learning.

Over the past 20 years or so, educators have pushed for meaningful integration of technology into classrooms. A major challenge for us is to decide what that meaningful integration should look like. Is it simply reading information online? Is it taking notes about what we learned by word processing? Is it creating a slideshow or podcast that shares that information? Is it drawing pictures to represent key ideas (and the list goes on)? Our answer to all these questions is yes! What brings this answer to light in the classroom would be intentional planning and careful consideration of the required skills we want students to own by the end of the process, which then makes it possible to integrate technology in meaningful ways. By asking our students to read and evaluate information, write down key evidence, and respond and create as a means of sharing new knowledge, we are providing them with the opportunity to research, record, and report about what they have learned. In this column, we share with you a possibility in which technology can be integrated into science and English language arts (ELA) teaching and learning activities. Enjoy!

Studying the wetland biome

This example illustrates how technology can be integrated into a science unit on biomes. Student exploration of the wetland biome provides numerous opportunities for reinforcing ELA skills, especially Common Core State Standards Speaking and Listening Standards, Writing Standards, and Reading: Informational Text Standards.

Research!

Begin a study of the wetland biome by using the iBiome app. This app supports students as they gather information about the wetland habitat, research species that live in the wetland, investigate marshes, and create an environment where plants and animals flourish. As students explore iBiome, they can be specifically charged with defining what is meant by a wetland as well as describing key features and characteristics.

Students can also view a video about types of wetlands at UntamedScience. This video gives an overview of a wetland as well as a description of types of wetlands. Add in a review of wetland information at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), and students now have multiple sources to locate information about this particular biome.

Record!

As they explore the iBiome app, the Untamed Science video, and the NCEAS website, students could record their new knowledge by using Popplet. This Cloud-based software enables students to create a concept map that details what they are learning about the wetland biome. The concept of teamwork could be promoted by having students work in groups to explore various types of wetland biomes (e.g., marsh, swamp, bog, fen), types of animals, or types of plants.  Groups could also be tasked with recording more about what they learned by downloading pictures of their designated focus (i.e., types of wetlands, animals, or plants), inserting the pictures into a PowerPoint slide, then adding text box labels to identify key parts of each picture as it relates to their topic. Last, students could word process a script that describes what is included in their slide and use Audacity to create a podcast recording of what they learned.

Report!

Once the slide is completed, it could be saved as in .jpg format and imported into a class site on Glogster that shares each group’s work. Once students add their podcast to their Glogster slide, your class will have a Glogster site that shares what they have learned about the wetland biome. Wrap up this biome exploration by having each group orally present their findings to the rest of the class.

Although we have posed this idea using a science focus, this same triad of research, record, and report is effective within any content area. This three-part process enables students to be critical consumers of technology and of all that it offers. It can be used for both short-term and long-term research projects and allows students to use technology as a means to a robust end rather than simply the end being the entertainment of the technology itself. It requires students to engage in the process of rigorous reading and writing and gives them an authentic scholarly route with which to use their “native technology” skills.

Kimberly Kimbell-Lopez is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Leadership in the College of Education at Louisiana Tech University. She has been an educator for over 25 years, and her areas of expertise include literacy and technology. She can be contacted via e-mail at kkopez@latech.edu. 

Carrice Cummins is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Leadership in the College of Education at Louisiana Tech University. She has 40 years’ experience as an educator with primary areas of interest in comprehension, content area literacy, and teacher development. She served as the 2012–2013 president of the International Reading Association. She can be contacted via e-mail at carrice@latech.edu.

Elizabeth Manning is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Leadership in the College of Education at Louisiana Tech University. A veteran K–8 teacher of over 25 years, her areas of interest include content area literacy, writing workshop, and curriculum design and development. Dr. Manning can be contacted via e-mail at lmanning@latech.edu.

As a person in the technology field, I have seen adults missing incredible opportunities to connect with their children using technology. So I was thrilled to learn about the success of Pokémon Go. Aside from reading about the game, I knew it was a big deal when I heard a waitress complaining about it in Las Vegas recently during our family trip. She told me how ridiculous it was for her to see adults glued to their phones trying to catch the ridiculous-looking creatures. I shared with her that I play the game with my boys. By the end of our conversation, she expressed interest in getting the game to play with her children for its numerous benefits.

The success of Pokémon Go represents the inclusive nature of technology. The game blurs the boundaries between subjects such as literature, geography, history, and even physical education. The game informs players of the name of the landmarks, provides numerous opportunities for players to learn about the history of such landmarks, and encourages players to move about in the real world. Furthermore, players learn to negotiate group dynamics as they battle each other in teams. In essence, it truly augments the real-life experiences of players by adding literacy skills of being able to read the world around them. When our students can read the world, we know they are truly literate. Pokémon Go allows students to read the world they live in.

What’s fascinating to me is that the game is inclusive of all types of players! Clearly, adults and children alike play the game. Many of my colleagues and friends report playing the game with their children. Even as a school administrator in charge of discipline, I have used my experience with the game to create positive connections with my students. When my students know that not only do I play the game but also am willing to seek their advice as to how to play the game better, it creates an interesting power dynamic beneficial to both parties.

By being able to teach me how to play the game, students have shared more about who they are and what they know. I observed my own children using a more authoritative voice with me as they instruct me on how to improve my game. Even as they excoriated me for being an incompetent player, I could see their pleasure in their ability to coach me in the gameplay. As a high school teacher, I often capitalize on the desires of my students to help me become more technologically proficient or improve at playing digital games. By allowing the students to become the experts in a situation, teachers can help students to learn better. After all, when you teach something to others, you can learn more.

Most important, I think Pokémon Go illustrates what we know of teaching and learning. Teaching and learning have always been a form of augmented reality. Teachers have been able to help the students to augment their reality without technology. For decades, if not centuries, students get a sense of what it was like for Michelangelo to create the murals in the Sistine Chapel beyond the painting itself in an art history class. In an English class, students learn what Shakespeare meant when he said, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players” with proper assistance from their teachers. Now with digital tools, a teacher can augment such reality more efficiently. It is no surprise that Apple is doubling down on augmented reality.

At the end of our Vegas family trip, we visited Hoover Dam. My boys and I caught numerous Pokémon while learning about the historical landmarks around us. I like to think I improved my eye–hand coordination skills, which my younger boy might disagree with as he was the one tasked to assist me every time I missed a creature. I also learned more about the features of my smartphone as my older boy showed me. And how about the number of steps I took while attempting to catch as many creatures as possible with my boys? But, most important, I was able to talk to my two boys during the entire vacation, which was an augmentation of my reality as a mother. Wouldn’t you agree?

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.

As an assistant professor whose interests in literacy intersect with technology and mobile media, I get a lot of questions from aspiring teachers who wonder how to support students as they learn to write with technology. My experiences have helped me realize the importance of emphasizing process and experience over product.

Collaborative writing with wearable technologies

This summer, I cotaught a creative writing residency for rising third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students as part of a larger camp sponsored by a local National Writing Project site. The camp’s goals were (1) to cultivate the writerly life within our students, and (2) to flex our own muscles as English language arts educators by deeply reflecting on the process and experience students were having as writers rather than the finished product they composed. From haikus to transmodal graphic novels, we watched our students develop a fluency for writing that was fueled by engaging the “what if” question. This resulted in a collaborative piece the group composed to illustrate what happens when intermediate writers remediate a classic picture book with wearable technologies (a GoPro, in particular).

Apart from individual journals, pieces, and projects, fostering a collaborative spirit and culture among our budding writers was important. We also wanted to transform their thinking about revision away from something that involved “red marks and right spellings” and toward revision as the process of adapting and rethinking a message. To do this, we developed what Robert Yagelski calls a culture of writing as experience—as a way of being. Arguing that texts function as experiences, we highlighted how meaning could change significantly through the act of remediation, or the re-presentation of material in one medium through another. With my own interests in cultivating a disposition for sonic composition with writers and the liberty to play with composing under the guise of creative writing, I engaged the class with The Listening Walk Project (TLWP).

This project involved a collaborative piece of writing whose goal was to remediate Paul Showers’s famous picture book, The Listening Walk, by using audio and video to highlight the group’s collective experience of walking through the campus community.

Modal memoirs of remediating digital writing

In the earliest stages of TLWP, we introduced students to Showers’s book, discussed the process of remediation, and then voted on focal elements from The Listening Walk that we wanted to highlight as important in reimagining our own piece. Sound, video, and perspective were those most voted for by the group. Sound would provide coherence across Showers’s piece and ours, video enabled us to explore the features of wearable writing with the GoPro, and perspective became important to our young writers and the process of collaborative composing. The larger group disliked that Showers’s text presented us only with the young girl’s perspective. Some argued, “We never get to see what the dog sees!” whereas others asked, “What does the Dad hear, is it different?” These lines of questions continued to inspire our thinking and writing as we collectively embarked on our own listening walk.

TLWP process for remediation

Capturing over two hours of video, with each student as “lead author” and wearing the GoPro for 10 minutes, we came back to our classroom to debrief the experience of wearable writing. One of the first comments students made in watching the larger video was the need to fast-forward moments of whole-group walking: “That’s boring to watch.” Using FinalCut Pro, I acted as lead reviser to speed up travel between locations. Then, in groups of two, we cut the larger video down to a manageable 60 minutes. I worked with each group to have students note individual spots for revision. Some wanted text overlaid, adding figurative language to highlight the perspective their GoPro and wearable writing captured.

Others wanted to include some narration, using audio as an orienting device in between frames. These “notes to the director” were taken together to revise the larger video as a group. After we collectively revised, we watched the film in its entirety, now down to 11 minutes total. At this point, the collaborative revision was less about individual frames and monuments captured along the walk and more about coherence. Are transitions similar to one another? How do we account for shifts in perspective? Taken together, these small moments led to larger conversations, indicative of what I call a modal memoir. Alongside my coteacher, we used modal artifacts from the cutting room floor, the b-roll if you will, to highlight the rhetorical choices students made concerning audience, delivery, and purpose.

Later, when students reflected on the process, many shared how the GoPro felt on their body as part of the writing experience. As Goldie, a fifth-grade girl wrote, “TLWP wasn’t about the video, it was about the group walking together. The experience. We felt writing together.”

Listening to everyday implications

As their teacher, I realized that collaborative composing with wearable writing (in this case, translated through the GoPro technologies) fostered the ability to focus on process over product. It cultivated the experience that is inherent in all forms of composition. Whether through swiping, clicking, and tapping a tablet or physically shifting your body so as to capture new perspective, emerging digital technologies offer new opportunities not only for remediation, but also to cultivate a writerly identity.

As you seek to engage your students in their own writerly lives, consider how remediating forms, genres, and projects through a digital lens may offer new insight into who and how they are as writers. Encouraging students to draw, write, and compose their own modal memoirs throughout the year inspires them to consider revision not as a list of skill steps but as an experience well worth having.

Jon M. Wargo is an assistant professor of Teacher Education and core faculty in Reading, Literacy, and Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.

As a K–12 literacy supervisor who also serves as a literacy coach, I work closely with teachers in grades 2–6 who teach from Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study Series. In line with our district’s mission to give learners more voice and choice, teachers frequently incorporate technology into writing workshop, in order to differentiate approaches to writing, to add depth to informational and argumentative writing, and to support conferring with writers. As an administrator, I have found this to be a huge benefit to both our writing instruction and achieving the district mission.

Across district classrooms, writers enjoy choice, facilitated through technology. Helping to overcome some writers’ reluctance to physically write and rewrite, word processing has given writers the opportunity to efficiently make changes to their pieces and improve how our youngest writers approach the revision process. In the words of one second grader, “I like when I don’t have to erase. I can just backspace.” A fifth grader said, “It makes [writing] more efficient. Even if I don’t have the best handwriting, people can understand my writing when I type.”

Technology also enables writers to engage in learning about new topics through safe digital resources. Writers in grades K–3 access PebbleGo and, through their school libraries, conduct research for their writing. They also use Wonderopolis to explore topics and then write about their wonders.

At the primary level, writers have researched a range of topics, written scripts, and then published their work through ChatterPix, an iPad app that allows learners to record themselves reading their writing while making their artwork come to life. Here’s a great example of how a kindergarten class used ChatterPix to publish their research about sharks. In a similar way, fifth graders across our district used Blabberize to present their informational writing about explorers. Writers across the grade levels appreciate opportunities to use technology to present their writing in different formats. Administrators are grateful that students are learning about the research and writing process in an engaging manner.

Sixth-grade teachers in my district ask students to incorporate digital tools into their writing to publish more interactively using Discovery Education’s BoardBuilder. The results are two-fold: this technology allows writers to create pieces that look like the writing they see on the Internet (e.g., the real-world writing that Kelly Gallagher recommends in his book, Write Like This), and encourages writers to analyze photographs and videos to determine which elements best support their writing purposes.

Integrating technology also allows writers to see writing as a creative process. For their narrative writing projects, secondary writers participate in the National Novel Writing Month. Last year, writers in sixth grade published their books independently, and each writer took a published version of his or her novel home. Students were thrilled at having become published authors. 

Where I have seen technology support writing workshop the most is with the use of Google Docs. In as early as third grade, when writers draft in Google Docs, teachers can provide feedback electronically and more quickly. I have observed teachers with iPad in hand, roaming the room, reading writing students shared with them, and then sitting down at a writer’s conference to discuss what they read or what the writer flagged as a trouble spot. The ongoing digital feedback allows teachers to comment alongside writers' flash drafts.

Finally, these digital conferences can occur between peers. Conferring is a powerful means for supporting writers’ growth, and technology provides teachers and students more accessibility and formative feedback. One seventh grader shared that he likes highlighting part of the text and using the comment feature in Google Docs to pose a question for his writing partner to consider. He also reported that comments from his classmates about his own writing have helped him make useful revisions.

Writers who use digital tools to actively engage with the research and creation process value opportunities to enhance their messages with multimodal elements. They also appreciate extending their writing time and their opportunities to confer with and receive feedback from peers and teachers outside of actual writing workshop time. Overall, I have seen technology enhance the outstanding teaching and writing that is taking place within the writing workshop model.

Aileen P. Hower is the K–12 Literacy/ESL Supervisor for South Western School District. She also coordinates the Eduspire and Penn State York Summer Literacy Institutes and teaches graduate level reading courses for Cabrini University and Eduspire. In addition to teaching, she is the vice president for the Keystone State Reading Association and conference chair for the KSRA 50th Annual Conference in 2017. You can find her on Twitter or on her blog.