Literacy Now

Mobile devices have permeated teaching and learning environments. Apps can improve preschool students’ math understanding, can positively impact science learning, and can be used to promote healthy behaviors. There are also a significant number of apps for literacy and language instruction. 

A challenge for literacy educators is finding good literacy apps, given that 2015 data show at least 1.6 million apps for Android devices and 1.5 million apps for iOS devices. A good app, in our definition, provides opportunities for pedagogically sound literacy instruction and provides adaptability to meet the needs of learners. It also, as Richard Beach and Jill Castek noted in "Use of apps and devices for fostering mobile learning of literacy practices,” is supported by research demonstrating its effectiveness and addresses “individual differences.”

Pedagogical stances

Given this need, we began to explore literacy apps, literacy app integration in the classroom, and the ways in which literacy educators are introduced to apps. In the winter of 2016, we observed a second-grade teacher from a local elementary school. We used an interval recording methodology to document (a) teacher instruction, (b) app use, and (c) student engagement. For this particular project, we were also interested in how students with disabilities engaged with apps.

One of the most interesting outcomes dealt with pedagogical stances. Educators have teaching beliefs and strategies. However, remembering that mobile apps come with their own set of pedagogical stances and strategies is also important. We found interesting differences in engagement when the teacher’s pedagogical stance matched or misaligned with the pedagogical stance of the app.

Our data suggested the following:

1. There is less student engagement when the teacher matched direct instruction (e.g., writing a scripted presentation) with an app aimed at content creation (e.g., Haiku Deck) or when she matched exploration (e.g., choice reading) with an app oriented around a task (e.g., Kids A-Z).  
2. We found higher levels of engagement when the teacher matched direction instruction (e.g., reviewing spelling words) with a task orientation app (e.g., Spelling City).
3. The most student engagement occurred when the teacher matched exploration goals (e.g., creating comics) with apps supporting content creation (e.g., Toontastic).

SpedApps and next steps for teachers

Educators can benefit from a deeper understanding of their pedagogy and the learning and the teaching strategies of apps.  Educators also profit from seeing lists of quality apps as well as models of app integration. However, apps are not always explicit in what they offer or how they can be used in the classroom. 

With these concerns in mind, we worked with an interdisciplinary team to create SpedApps. The website, a database of over 400 apps, provides a number of important features for teachers, parents, and learners. Searching for apps can include sorting by cost, name, content area, learning need, or physical development, or they can be searched directly by title. Once an app is selected, users see additional information about whether the app includes practice, feedback, progress monitoring, usability affordances, and customization. This website has an editor review, but more important, educators, teachers, and parents can create a login and provide their own review of apps (and suggest new apps). 

Our research on technology has suggested that it’s not a question of if a form of technology works—it’s more important to ask under what conditions  that form of technology works. In the example provided, a teacher found success matching her pedagogical strategies with the pedagogy of the app. SpedApps is one example; regardless of the tool used, we encourage researchers and educators to benefit from crowdsourcing when and how apps might be used for literacy instruction.

Kristine E. Pytash is an associate professor at Kent State University. Richard E. Ferdig is the Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor, IT, Research Center for Educational Technologies. Enrico Gandolfi is a research fellow at Kent State University. Rachel Mathews is a doctoral student at Kent State University. This work was funded, in part, by a corporate gift from AT&T.

Instructional goals should drive teachers’ approaches to technology integration and implementation. Not only is this important in meeting teaching and learning objectives, but we’ve also found that students are more engaged when a teacher’s pedagogical beliefs are aligned with the technology being used. 

Often educators are advised to first consider their instructional goals and then find a digital tool that will help them in satisfying their teaching needs. However, we’ve found that by exploring digital tools and apps, teachers can see new possibilities for writing instruction. Therefore, learning about digital tools can act as an impetus for considering alternative approaches for strengthening writing skills. 

At Kent State’s Research Center for Educational Technology, we have the privilege of collaborating with local teachers and students to integrate technology into their education and learning. Teacher and student cohorts visit our technologically advanced classroom for six weeks, five days a week, for two hours each day. This spring, we observed a second-grade teacher as she received situated professional development for integrating technology into her literacy instruction while her students had opportunities to explore digital tools for writing.  On the basis of that implementation, we offer suggestions for programs and mobile applications that might best help educators facilitate writing activities and assignments in their classrooms.

Preparing students for writing

• Why It’s Important: Although the writing process is not a lockstep, there is strong evidence to support that students are more successful as writers when they understand it. Therefore, engaging students in prewriting and organizing activities before they start the first draft improves the quality of their writing.
• Digital Tools: Digital notebooks, such as Penzu, can serve as writing journals for students to generate ideas. In addition, applications like Popplet and Padlet can provide a space where students may independently or collaboratively brainstorm about topics or genre elements. By using these digital tools, students can make their planning visible as they can easily organize and reorganize ideas. 

Multimodal compositions

• Why It’s Important: Technology is changing how people write. By composing with images, audio, and video, students learn to use multiple modes to convey meaning. For students who might be considered struggling writers, composing with a variety of modes can also help students be more strategic in their rhetorical decision making.
• Digital Tools: There are a number of apps and digital tools that allow students to produce multimodal compositions. Haiku Deck, Buncee, and Adobe Spark are a few tools we routinely use with teachers and students. However, we would also encourage teachers to think about how programming and coding with apps such as Daisy the Dinosaur and Scratch Junior might also help their students engage in digital storytelling. 

Publishing students’ writing

• Why It’s Important:  When students publish their writing for a wide audience, they have opportunities to receive authentic feedback. This process develops their writerly voice: They become more aware of who will be reading their composition and tailor their voice according to the purpose, the context, and the audience. 
• Digital Tools: Digital platforms, such as Edmodo and Seesaw, are spaces for students to share their writing and then receive feedback.

Conclusion

Apps should align with pedagogy; however, teachers can reimagine how they can implement engaging, research-based writing instruction by exploring digital tools. This reimagination can also be facilitated through conversations with others; teachers grow by seeing the best practices of others. In addition to providing some examples in this blog, we also developed and have now opened access to SpedApps, a database with over 400 apps. This resource is not only a collection of mobile apps for content instruction (e.g., literacy) but is also a community where teachers can share the promise and pitfalls of mobile-based instruction as well as add their own favorite apps. 

Kristine E. Pytash is an associate professor at Kent State University. Richard E. Ferdig is the Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor, IT, Research Center for Educational Technologies. Enrico Gandolfi is a research fellow at Kent State University. Rachel Mathews is a doctoral student at Kent State University. This work was funded, in part, by a corporate gift from AT&T.

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

Much of what we know about the powerful literacy experiences youths can have when participating in online fan communities comes from studies of exceptional cases—highly engaged youths with passion, access to technology, and specialized interests that lead them to “geek out” in digital spaces. From this work we know about Jack, a 13-year-old Australian boy, who developed technical and literacy design skills as he participated in Hunger Games fan sites, and about how Heather, a teenager in the United States, who rallied her global network of fan writers to defeat Warner Bros. studios as it threatened legal action against Harry Potter fans. My own research has relied on exceptional youths making recommendations for how teachers might support their students in writing for and with online audiences.  

But what about a more typical young writer? What else might we learn by digging into the experiences of a less exceptional case? Answering these questions motivated my analysis of one teenager’s participation in The Sims Writers’ Hangout, published in Research in the Teaching of English in February.

Though The Hangout has since shut down, for more than 18 months, Angela, who at the time was in 9th and 10th grades, was a regular participant on this site for fans who used The Sims videogames to write stories. In its online discussion forums, Hangout members shared their Sims fanfiction—multimodal, digital texts that pair images taken in the game with narratives that authors write (see an example of Sims fanfiction created with The Sims 4)—and readers posted feedback. I observed and interviewed Angela as she joined The Hangout, started sharing her Sims fanfiction, received critical responses, and then shaped her stories to meet the expectations of this online fan community.

Unlike past fanfiction research findings that illustrate how participating in an online community connects writers with a passionate audience or gives them access to identities as writers, one unique insight from my research was that Angela needed the other members of The Hangout to even be a Sims fanfiction writer. She leveraged her participation in this fan space to access people who helped her design Sims fanfiction in a variety of ways. Here, I share how Angela outsourced part of her Sims fanfiction design work as one illustrative example.   

Although she came to The Hangout with an affinity for The Sims and for writing, Angela ran into challenges meeting this community’s expectations for high-quality digital images because of her technology limitations. She did not have Adobe Photoshop and acknowledged that using freely available software made “image editing…really tedious.” Angela’s solution was to outsource this aspect of designing Sims fanfiction; she posted messages in the forum asking other Hangout members to provide her with pictures for her stories. In one such message, she shared a blurry image, saying “I'm going to need some help.” Two Hangout members volunteered, and Angela had a clearer, more stylized cover image when she finally shared the completed story.

What relevance do Angela’s experiences have for literacy teachers? As the standards governing many literacy classrooms now integrate digital literacies into curriculum expectations, it has become more important for teachers to consider how to support students’ writing for online audiences. I continue to advocate for educators to find ways to connect youth writers with online audiences who can shape their work. Although many already share students’ writing on a classroom website or blog, those audiences rarely extend beyond readers already connected to that class (i.e., other students, teachers, parents). Instead, I argue that teachers design digital writing tasks to ask students to share with existing, authentic online audiences, such as those in online writing communities. Doing so will connect young writers to collaborators who may shape their writing in meaningful ways.

Jayne C. Lammers is an assistant professor and director of the secondary English teacher preparation program at the University of Rochester. She can also be reached on Twitter.

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

During my 12 years as a classroom teacher, I received many gifts from my students. One of the greatest gifts came from a brother of a student I had. He gave me a silver bookmark that said, “Mrs. Glazer. You know more than Google.”

Because I am an instructional technology coach for the largest high school district in the state of California, I have the pleasure of working with many teachers and school personnel at over 25 different school sites and programs. While I espouse the virtue of using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) with their students or the next and greatest instructional technology tools, many of my colleagues often ask me how I see the future of technology in schools. I always answer, “Unless a machine can raise our children by giving better hugs and kisses, this society will always need teachers.”

It is true that many people learn new things from YouTube. For instance, I taught myself how to use Google for my class by—ironically—Googling and watching YouTube videos. I didn’t need to take a single course from Google Training Center. I also subscribe to BetterCloud Monitor, formerly “Dylan the Gooru,” to learn how to leverage the newest updates from Google.

However, what many who believe that machines can replace teachers forget is that learning has never really been about simple information acquisition. Learning is identity development that happens as we learn more facts. I firmly believe that understanding that fact and fully embracing it are critical in building the better schools. If anyone can learn how to use GAFE, why does my district employee me?

Because I do know more than Google. Yes, I said it. How, you ask? Because I can synthesize facts Google provides to tell a story that makes sense to my students. I can also interpret and respond to students’ questions to scaffold their learning beyond delivering facts quicker. Finally, I can point out what’s missing in their factual understanding to help them find patterns not so apparent in the sea of information so my students won’t get lost. For example, during my technology training, I first describe what a tool can do.

Let’s take my Google Drive training, for example. I typically begin my training with how to leverage Google Drive and all the functionalities native to it. I talk about the differences between extensions and add-ons. I explain why and how to share documents within our GAFE domain and outside. I help my staff understand how to look for things under Waffle (), Pancakes (), Wheel, also known as the gear (), Traffic Light (), and the Shark Tooth (). I also explain what the information icon () does. After my students understand where to find the necessary information, I quickly move to how it can be used for a subject a teacher teaches or a job task that school personnel does. For teachers using Google Classroom, I explain the reason to link a Google Drive folder using the “About” tab in Google Classroom to manage all documents efficiently. Whenever I can, I talk about how a combination of tools can improve productivity in a specific school ecosystem, which is as diverse as any ecosystem in existence! I have set up a Google Site dedicated to managing a school’s facilities process, which uses Google Calendar, Google Forms, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and Google Docs. I used Autocrat to streamline the process for a school because I took the time to listen to the staff members’ concerns about an inefficient facility request process.

You might ask, “Are you telling me to use Google apps for everything?” To that, I would answer, “Absolutely not!” What I am saying is that teachers can help our students learn the most important skill in the knowledge economy: Learning to use a right tool for the right job regardless of what that is. Because I know this, I let tools like Google take care of all the “whats” while I focus on how and why.

Before jumping into the Voice typing function in Google Doc, I often explain how to leverage Google Scholar to search for the content to include in the document that my students are creating. Before introducing Slides Carnival as a place for getting cool Google Slides templates or showing Prezi to create different types of presentation, I encouraged my students to create visual presentations that include more pictures and less text.

Yes. I do know more than Google when it comes to teaching my students. I’d better!

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.

Glazer will present “Games as the New Literacy Texts” at the Age of Literacy Lounge at ILA Central 1:30 PM–2:00 PM Saturday, July 9 at the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits in Boston. Visit ilaconference.org for more information or to register.

Although not a new phenomenon, 3-D printing is revolutionizing science, health, manufacturing, and education. These printers apply material (plastic, metal, titanium, etc.) in successive layers to make an object from a digital file. Currently, 3-D printing is at an exciting phase in its development, and as costs have dropped, the technologies have become more accessible to students and teachers who are working in an environment of innovation with increased focus on STEM and 21st-century skills.

This fall, I received a generous grant from the Petit Family Foundation to purchase two Robo R1 Plus 3-D printers for my classroom. My fifth- and sixth-grade students could not contain their excitement for this incredible opportunity. We used Tinkercad and Project Ignite to learn how to model and design using free online 3-D software, practiced tutorials together, and created works that ranged from iPod stands and keychains to abstract alien artwork and a scale model of our school.

Note that 3-D modeling, design, and printing do not occur in a vacuum. One of the goals of bringing this technology to my students was to create an awareness of how 3-D printing can impact and is impacting people all over the world. Compassion and problem solving go hand in hand, and we looked deeper at these essential questions:

How is 3-D printing changing the world?
How is 3-D printing making people's lives better?

Over time, each student researched a current event pertaining to 3-D printing and how it has an effect on the world and people's lives. Students then added a marker to the group Google Map and added a brief summary, an image, and a link to the article. Click on this final product to check out what is happening in the world!

Seeing the connection between students’ simple, local design and a larger, global 3-D printing presence was mind-blowing for some of them. The objects they modeled, designed, and were now holding in their hands had incredible potential. And they knew that one day they, too, could be a part of something larger and greater than themselves.

Tina Hurlbert is a grade 5 and 6 technology teacher in Regional School District 13 in Connecticut. Her work includes teaching students the digital and media literacy skills they need to navigate the ever-changing technologies they are faced with every day and providing them with opportunities to try a variety of technologies and software.

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