Literacy Now

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).

For two years, I’ve had the privilege of researching a K–12 school system thoughtfully integrating one-to-one technology for a decade. The most intriguing aspect of this work has been listening to more than 200 administrators, teachers, students, and parents speak about their experiences, hopes, concerns, and advice. A resonating theme emerging from the voices of veteran educators is the reality that we must do more to prepare students (and educators themselves) to critically examine how technology shapes human behavior and embrace practices that promote responsible and healthy technology use, a goal commonly aligned with digital citizenship standards (e.g., Common Sense Media and ISTE Student Standards).

These veteran educators echo insights about technology from a field known as media ecology, founded in work by scholars such as Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. The field advanced the idea that technology is not neutral. As we use technology, it is in turn shaping our practices and ultimately our cultures. This understanding moves us beyond thinking about technology as just a tool; rather, technology transforms us whether we are conscious of it, an idea explored in a thoughtful post by George Couros. To prepare students to participate responsibly in a digital world, we must also prepare them to consider how technology shapes human experience and encourage responsive action.

Critical examination and action promoting digital citizenship will look different in every school and classroom because it requires members of the community to reflect on the unique contexts of their own collective and individual values and practices. As the veteran teachers reminded us often, there are no right answers but, rather, intentional questions and paths of action and practice that flow from reflection. It was in this process that these teachers felt they were truly preparing students for participation in a digital world. Here are three examples from these veteran teachers in hopes of stirring your imagination.

Media fast

One teacher wanted students to reflect on personal technology use by assigning a media fast. He encouraged students to cut out self-selected media (with the exception of that needed for school work) for three days. During this time, students maintained a journal reflecting on their experiences. He also encouraged critical thinking about practices and in class fueled conversations about the ways digital technologies shape human behaviors. He challenged students to embrace new or revised technology practices for the entire semester.  

Community change

A group of teachers wanted their students to research online the unique challenges within their own community and establish relationships that led to student action. Teachers required students to extensively research community challenges and identify community agencies that were working with community members toward solutions. Next, they facilitated students’ transition from developing awareness and knowledge to participation. Students committed to volunteering with one of the community agencies for one semester. The assignment reminded students that the Internet was a bridge to the local community, an idea sometimes overshadowed by attention to the Internet connecting them to the global world. In turn, this opened up opportunities to become active citizens in their own communities.

Questioning cell phone practices

Another teacher wanted to promote discussions with her students about the use of cell phones within and beyond school. This was relevant given the widespread use of phones within some classrooms and the confusing mixed messages about appropriate cell phone use. In her classes, she encouraged students to keep their cell phones visible, inviting the class to collectively and continuously discuss the use of cell phones. She wanted students to develop “a sense of integrity,” determining when it may or may not be appropriate to use cell phones. She believed if students were hiding cell phones in laps, under desks, and in sweatshirt pockets, then she was “reinforcing students’ lying.” She wanted students to make informed decisions. She reminded all teachers, “The cell phone is not just a school tool…[we must] help students learn to manage [it] in all their spaces.”

Each veteran teacher recognized that educators and students are just beginning to ask the most crucial questions about living in a digital world, an endeavor they all believe should have been a focus earlier in their experiences of teaching with technology. So their advice to all educators and students is to move beyond viewing technology as just a tool. Recognize the ways in which technology shapes human experience, and be explicit about the pursuit of digitally responsible citizenship grounded in critical questioning and intentional action. For further ideas, see resources like Common Sense Media and The Media Education Lab. 

Kara Sevensma is an assistant professor of education at Calvin College. She is currently a co-investigator on a research project examining educational technology and human flourishing in a Christian school. The research is supported by the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning.

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

In higher education, textual materials are the most used forms for meaning making. However, as pointed out by Gunther Kress, being literate involves understanding not only words and texts but also multiple modes of representation. Meaning making happens through various modes, such as texts, images, graphs and moving images, and the interplay between the different modes. Multimodality already has an integral role in the Finnish National Core Curriculum and should also be given more emphasis in programs designed to educate future teachers and educational professionals at universities.

Some of us have had positive experiences using digital video composition, but are open to broadening our repertoire of multimodal practices to use infographics more effectively.

At the beginning  are a lot of unanswered questions: What are infographics? What kinds of tools might be helpful to create or interpret them?  What kinds of skills might be involved? How should I model processes of creating infographics?

As a social being, I (Carita Kiili) was not all that confident in thinking through these questions alone, so I partnered with Eliza Brinkman who is from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and is doing a three-month internship at the University of Jyväskylä in Finalnd.

We started our inquiry project by searching for a definition. Mark Smiciklas defines infographics “as a visualization of data or ideas that tries to convey complex information to an audience in a manner that can be quickly consumed and easily understood.” To understand what this would mean in practice, we explored the website Information is beautiful by David McCandless. In one of his infographics, he describes the components of a good visualization as that which consists of a useful goal, integrity of information, a meaningful story, and a beautiful visual form.

At this point, we were pretty convinced that in order to reach a deeper understanding of the art of visualization, we needed to design an infographic by ourselves, using the aforementioned components.

• Our goal was to create something that could be used in a digital literacy course. To that end, we came up with an idea to help us visualize literacy concepts in an infographic using Google Scholar as our data source.
• We constructed a search for particular terms that would align with aspects of the digital literacy course (so, the graph is far from representing all literacy concepts).
• To create an interesting story, we looked at some trends in time related to the frequency with which different literacy concepts appeared in the research literature. In addition, we were interested in how different research communities use a singular and plural form of literacy.
• To create a visual form for our infographic, we used a digital tool easel.ly.  Along the way, many skills were needed including ICT skills, designing skills, and even mathematical literacy skills.

Here is our first infographic—showing that anybody can be a designer. During this journey with Eliza, I have built the needed self-confidence to design a course using infographics.

Because visuals are increasingly important in many areas of life, ranging from business to teaching, we are convinced that learning more about these types of practices will put us both on the right track for developing multimodal literacy practices that can be applied in higher education. We encourage you to join us in exploring how infographics can be useful in your own classrooms. 

Carita Kiili is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Eliza Brinkman is a master’s student at Radboud University, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

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

Cowinners of the 2015 ILA Technology and Literacy Award, Libby Curran and Carolyn Fortuna, are exemplary digital role models. Their work informs how to create, innovate, and use technologies for students to become successful, lifelong readers.

Libby Curran, a first-grade teacher at Richards School in Newport, New Hampshire, was recognized for her project,The Reading Train: Learn to Read Books, Songs, & Games, an award-winning app, for use on Android devices and iPads. She created the app to offer motivating books to engage and support emergent readers, special needs students, and English learners. Drawing from 20 years of teaching experience, she designed the app with over 200 nonfiction and fiction books children listen to, read, and record. Books include simple language, pictures to support concept words, and topics of interest to children. The books also address Common Core State Standards and align to Guided Reading Levels A, B, and C.

The Reading Train gives emergent readers opportunities to practice independent reading with the support of interactive audio, visual scaffolding, a picture/audio dictionary, and a tap/hold option to hear spoken words. It includes quiz games, songbook rewards, and books that build background knowledge, decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension skills. With unlimited user accounts, teachers can listen to children’s recordings, track number of books read, and monitor quiz scores. Libby designed the app specifically so children learn about the world while learning to read.

The Reading Train is a must-have app for teachers, tutors, families, and community-based agencies.

Carolyn Fortuna, an English teacher at Franklin High School in Franklin, Massachusetts, was recognized for her project, “Reading Meets a 1:1 Digital Environment” in Senior High School English. Her work changes how students engage with texts like Deconstructing Disney. It uses digital tools to help students interpret how media messages influence perceptions and to create a voice to compose, produce, and read the 21st-century worlds. 

Using digital media literacy, a mix of topics, primary source documents, Google websites, Chromebooks, Prezis, Quizlets, YouTube videos, film trailers, and more, Carolyn cross-links assignments to build students’ background knowledge and visual deconstruction of media messages. Reading activities include reading intertextually, researching across cultures, analyzing critically, and composing digitally, using multiple modes of print, audio, digital, visual, and video. Questioning prompts to deconstruct media messages include How might different people understand this message differently than me? or Why is this message being sent?

Deconstruction of media messages starts with Google Chromebooks, populated with heuristics, to scaffold students’ encoding of textural messages. Units focus on advertisement analysis, digital workshop argumentation, survey of nonfiction essays with collaborative teaching, study of curated museums of texts through e-learning modules, and production of genre-based compositions with embedded images, podcasts, narrations, YouTube videos, poems, fiction and nonfiction. All experiences move learning from “recall to critical analysis, digital composition, transformation, and publication.”

Through inquire opportunities, students learn to read 21st-century worlds focused on how to interpret texts differently. “Intellectual conversations that critically examine the production, distribution, and meaning of messages” strengthen lifelong learning, critical literacy skills, and 21st-century reading.

Also founder of IDigIt Media, Carolyn supports educators to incorporate critical analysis and digital composition in courses and workshops. Her work certainly “creates spaces where people from divergent viewpoints can work together to better understand the power and place of digital and media learning and literacy in today’s society.”

The ILA Technology and Literacy Award, honors educators in grades K–12 who are making an outstanding and innovative contribution to the use of technology in reading education. All entrants must be educators who work directly with students ages 5–18 for all or part of the working day. Application deadline is January 15.

Tammy Ryan is an associate professor of reading education at Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL.

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

On the Advanced Placement (AP) English literature test, one question allows the test taker to choose a novel or play of literary merit and respond to the prompt, using the selected text as the support material. When helping my students, I told them they should never use texts such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Why not? Because such books use magic to solve human problems, and magic is not available to mere mortals.

For teachers who are unfamiliar, learning science sometimes seems like magic beyond the resources of mere mortal teachers. Just as the characters in the classics have to deal with real-life problems, mere mortal teachers struggle to deal with human problems that real students have such as poverty, lack of technology, and zero Wi-Fi access. Learning scientists seem to be outside of the struggle and are like wizards practicing magic with brand potions like advanced computing technologies and spells using academic jargon in enchanted faraway places with uninterrupted Wi-Fi connection known as colleges and universities.

I remember learning about the educational theories of B.F. Skinner, John Dewey, and even Lev Vygotsky as a first-year teacher candidate. I remember discussing with my future colleagues, who often thought it was a waste of time for all of us to read the theories. Now, after having taught high school English for more than a decade in a school district where the majority of students receive Title I federal funding, I believe a little bit of a true and practical magical ingredient known as “learning science” might just be what teachers truly need to understand the pedagogy behind our practices. When I say magic, I don’t mean the hocus-pocus variety that will fix all problems for teachers—I mean the magic that all of us can bring to the classroom to make learning impactful and powerful, by understanding what makes our practical strategies effective.

For example, Harry Potter learned to use the power of magic and became a hero through his unwavering grit, a concept which Angela Lee Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael D. Matthews, and Dennis R. Kelly described in “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals.” In addition to his deep friendship with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry received help from more knowledgeable others including his professors as he worked to overcome obstacles, and his countless hours of magic training was created by his professors’ understanding of zone of proximal development, not unlike what Vygotsky wrote in Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.

In my own classroom, I began requiring my students to write daily reflections after learning about the importance of metacognition and its impact on academic writing skills development that Arthur N. Applebee wrote about with Judith A. Langer and on his own, as did John H. Flavell.

Of course, Harry encountered false or pseudo magic, as teachers are sometimes led astray. Take learning styles, for example. Many educators have been told learners have different learning styles, and our job is to differentiate our instruction to target these learning styles when teaching. Despite numerous and strenuous repudiation by respected learning scientists (as seen in this video created by Smithsonian Science Education Center and in this article by Olivia Goldhill for Quartz), teachers are still being told that we must adapt our lessons on the basis of false information.

Where is Professor Snape when we need him to set everyone straight?

I am sure that in a learning science course for teachers, he would tell teachers to learn about the Universal Design for Learning framework and ditch learning styles forever!

If you are a teacher, you might wish for that one book of spells that would teach us to become true wizards of teaching. The truth is that we simply don’t have it. As a matter of fact, we have too many resources that promise a quick solution to all educational ills.  And many such books do not provide the necessary information based on strong learning sciences principles. So how will we know the truth? Remember Harry? Despite being born a wizard, Harry needed to attend a school to hone his magical abilities. Teachers need similar support from reputable learning scientists. There are also a few books that teachers should read. One such book is How People Learn (downloadable for free here) that provides basic learning science information to anyone interested in learning, which should be the focus of good teaching.

Learning is a complex endeavor. All of us in learning and education need to be mindful of real human issues that teachers face, so that all teachers have the right type of support. By working together, we can create magic more powerful than Harry could ever achieve!

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.