Literacy Now

This fall, I discovered my New York Times delivery newspaper package was bulkier than normal. Attached to the newspaper was the New York Times’ version of Google Cardboard—a foldout cardboard viewer in which you can mount your smartphone and experience virtual reality (VR). More than 1.2 million home subscribers of the newspaper received a cardboard viewer to coincide with the launch of the VR film that accompanied The New York Times Magazine article, “The Displaced.” 

After a quick download of the NYTimes VR apponto my smartphone, I went into the viewer and experienced a heart-wrenching story of three children who have been displaced from their homes by war. I was immersed in a 360-degree environment of their war-torn towns and listened to children narrate their own stories in their native languages while I read the translation in the viewer. One can’t help but feel for what the children are going through as you watch them walk through destroyed buildings that were once their homes or their school or wait on a field as relief efforts drop food from planes in the sky. The VR film not only complemented the text article but also transformed it for the reader. The combination of using 360-degree footage with sound and text provided a unique experience, and this format may provide us with new ways to tell stories.

While VR applications have been around since the 1990s, recent improvements in technology have made it accessible through a handheld device. The VR format has been revitalized thanks to affordable viewers including the Oculus, Samsung Gear, and Google Cardboard along with a number of apps you can download for free. Many of these apps provide us with examples of nonfiction and fiction examples of how this format can be used to tell stories. The Vrse app highlights their collaboration with the The New York Times along with other stories and concerts they’ve developed. You can view other journalistic stories through the VRStories app produced by Gannett and available for iOS and Android. The Discovery VRapphas a number of stories where you can walk alongside wildlife or even walk in space. For lovers of fiction, there are a number of immersive stories that can be found through the Google Spotlight Storiesapp for iOS and Android. These are a few examples of the growing number of authors, media makers, and software developers who are teaming up to develop creative ways to tell stories in this format.

The potential for VR as a learning tool in K–12 schools has yet to be discovered. Google is bringing VR to schools through their Expeditions Pioneer Program. The educational division will come to your school with a set of devices and Cardboard viewers to engage students with content area studies in geography and social studies. Students can begin to experiment with creating their own environments using apps such as Sphere and incorporating them into their online writing. Although the technology for students to author their own VR stories is not yet accessible easily for schools, students can study the unique features of this format and the ways VR is being used to tell a story.

By studying new formats such as VR, learning to author with media, and engaging with the process of writing, students can develop their creative capacity to innovate and create a compelling story not just in a VR format but also in multiple and new formats. As the technology continues to improve and more virtual reality stories emerge, we are reminded that the way we tell stories is also evolving.

William Yang is an assistant principal at the Roaring Brook School in Chappaqua, NY. He is also on Twitter.

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

Bloggers from around the world can connect and communicate in real time. Blogging as a digital platform to share ideas, opinions, and information in multimodal formats such as text, image, audio, and video allows young students to generate content for an authentic audience beyond the teacher.

For instance, year two students at Point England School in Auckland, New Zealand, created blogs to communicate with education students at Furman University in South Carolina. This partnership was established prior to the university’s study abroad program to explore international perspectives of education and visit schools in New Zealand. The use of technology to connect prior to their travel allowed these two groups from opposite sides of the globe to learn about each other, their communities, and the role of digital citizenship when communicating in online spaces.

Both sets of students created their own blogs using Blogger and were then paired up to share. They began with a multimodal “All About Me” post including image, video, and text to get to know each other and become familiar with the technology. In Ozzy’s blog, he shared about where he lives, some of his favorite things, and mentioned the use of iPads in his classroom.

The second blog post focused on information about their communities. Ozzy posted about the traditional Maori waka, or canoe, that was at his school as part of a cultural celebration.

He later posted about Anzac Day, a holiday celebrated in New Zealand to honor fallen soldiers during war. Ozzy’s posts helped Ashley, his buddy from the United States, learn more about the culture in New Zealand.

His blog is public, so anyone from around the world can view it and learn about Ozzy and life in New Zealand. In fact, his blog was visited by users in 165 countries. As he says, “Anyone can see my blog… because it is on the Internet.” Ozzy understands the significant role blogs can play to connect with the larger online community, making our global world much more accessible.

Using a blog as a shared space to bring together two communities halfway around the world  fostered a sense of a digital community. When the university students arrived in New Zealand and met their buddies face-to-face, a clear connection was already established. When the college students arrived, Ms. Nalder’s year two students, in matching red uniforms, were gathered on the carpet reading with their teacher. In unison, they all whipped their little heads around to see the long-awaited American visitors.

Rangi, a year two student, jumped up, ran over to Abigail, her American blogging buddy, and wrapped her arms around her. She then eagerly grabbed her iPad and promptly displayed Abigail’s blog. Rangi instantly recognized Abigail and explained that her favorite part of blogging was “meeting our buddies on the computer.” Abigail agreed, “I am so thankful for the way this blogging project allowed me to connect with this beautiful girl who lives on the other side of the world. Meeting her face to face is one of those memories that I will hold on to for a lifetime.”  

Blogging mediates literacy practices for today’s global citizens while connecting us despite the miles between us. Some suggested websites for blogging in the classroom include Kidblog, Edublogs, and Quadblogging.

Katie Stover is an assistant professor of Literacy Education at Furman University in Greenville, SC. She can also be found on Twitter.

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

Teachers, by nature, are social networkers, connectors, and collaborators of ideas, knowledge, and best practices. Periscope is the latest in teacher professional development in the form of a hot, free app. Teachers using Periscope to share their ideas with the world are the same types of teachers who are also blogging; however, Periscope is an easier, faster, and more efficient platform for sharing ideas because you speak and express your ideas through a camera instead of writing and composing your ideas through a blog. Followership is growing rapidly because teachers would rather listen to someone speak their ideas, watch his or her facial expressions, and interact by commenting and asking questions right alongside that person. “This new form of professional development is personal, intentional, and informational” says Sarah Cooper, fifth-grade teacher in Tennessee (@rockytopteacher).

Periscope is a live streaming video platform similar to YouTube in that the user, who I will refer to as the scoper, as we call ourselves, is creating a video, but different from YouTube because the scoper is live, meaning the video is being created and uploaded to the Internet simultaneously—there are no second takes. However, once the scope is done, the scoper has the option to keep or delete the Periscope (Scope). When your scope is over, it is saved for 24 hours in the app, unless you make it available for replays using another app called Katch, which you need prior to making a scope. The video is also saved to your camera roll if you opt for it. As viewers listen and watch a video, they can write comments in a text box, ask questions, or tap the screen. Whenever a viewer adds a comment, everyone else watching the scope can see the comment. Viewers can also tap each other’s comment box and reply directly to one another.

There are two ways to add content to Periscope: by being a scoper or a viewer. When you are the scoper, anyone can watch you live and people can find you in several ways, most commonly by following you, similar to Facebook and Instagram. Followers usually enable notifications so they know when you are live. People can also find you through the map icon if you have enabled your location setting. I do not recommend enabling the location setting if you are scoping from home, but I do recommend turning it on if you are scoping from somewhere interesting like a museum, Central Park, an active volcano or, say, the Eiffel Tower.

Teachers have turned to Periscope to share and connect with a broader geographic community, delivering content in a real-time, raw, unpolished, and unscripted format. Because of the interaction between scoper and viewer, the scoper is able to tailor the content to the needs and questions of the live viewers.

“As a second-grade teacher, I enjoy using Periscope to watch other educators share perks of the classrooms and best practices for kids. There are so many fantastic educators on Periscope, and I can get quality professional development in my PJs on any given day,” said Kayla Delzer, Periscoper in North Dakota (@mrsdelz). Some districts are turning to Periscope as a PD requirement—not requiring that teachers make videos, but watch them. Sheila Jane, educator and founder of the iTeachTVNetwork, has gathered the best educator experts in the United States to do weekly scopes in their respective areas of expertise. On using Periscope for PD credit, Jane says “Periscope is really moving in the right direction as a powerhouse platform to get teachers connected with other teachers who are doing amazing things in the classroom.”
There are many possibilities for Periscope in education. Teachers at a conference can Periscope during a presentation (with permission, of course) for teachers who were unable to attend. Teachers are sharing classroom arrangement and design from inside their classroom walls after the students go home. Periscope also could be used for peer coaching of classroom lessons. Because I do staff development around the United States, I often turn on Periscope while I’m delivering a workshop or presentation to give my followers a peek at my ELA staff development. For the most part, teacher scopers try to keep their scopes between 15–30 minutes, as teacher minutes are precious.

Teachers such as Kami Butterfield, a third-grade teacher in Baxter Springs, KS, who teaches in a 1:1 iPad classroom, stops instruction when I start scoping because the students like learning from me, too. She shows my scopes to her students during class, when I scoped about and encouraged students to make a Winter Break Reading Plan. Students loved my “18 Ways to Keep Kids Reading Over Winter Break,” accepted the challenge, and shared their winter break reading on social media using the hashtag #merryreader. 

Periscope is available in the both the App Store and the Google Play store, for both iPhone and iPad, and both front-facing and back-facing cameras can be used to film. Periscope is an offshoot of Twitter, so you must have a Twitter account in order to create a Periscope account.

So how are you going to use Periscope to get your teacher voice heard? Do you have ideas worth sharing in videos? Share them now!

Jen Jones is a K–12 reading specialist, Common Core Trainer, blogger, teacher-author, Periscoper and cofounder of a monthly teaching Blab called #chalktalkedu. She travels the United States to speak, present, and facilitate workshops to schools and districts about 21st-century literacy. Read her blog, Hello Literacy. Follow her on Periscope, Twitter, and Instagram at @hellojenjones.

“Awesome! (The T. rex) exploded the crate!”

“It’s like you’re holding it!”

“Can you make it roar? Press the button.”

“Try to make it run or jump.”

“Can T. rexes jump?”

This snippet of dialogue between three 8-year-old boys exploring an augmented reality (AR) informational book vividly captures the excitement and engagement of young readers discovering a new reading technology. In this case it’s an AR pop-up book about dinosaurs of the kind described by Joan Rhodes. The boys’ excitement is contagious.

At the same time, the snippet also illustrates some legitimate concerns we may have:

• Highly engaging AR features may lead to misconceptions (e.g., Children inferring that dinosaurs are alive today and can be captured in crates)  
• Technology learning may eclipse content learning (e.g., Children may learn more about controlling the movements of a digital T. rex on a tablet than about T. rex anatomy, evolution, and so on.)
• AR texts may create expectations about what reading should look like and feel like that then actually make it harder for readers to engage in sustained, effortful reading and thinking with non–AR texts (e.g., “This book is boring—it doesn’t have any pop-ups”)

To be fair, the snippet of dialogue also contains a comeback to these concerns. The last boy asks, “Can T. rexes jump?” AR enthusiasts believe that’s what an AR reading experience can do—ignite curiosity and thoughtful inquiry. Without an AR text, some kids might never become interested enough to ask questions. You need the AR to lure readers in. Once they’re engaged, you can try to deepen the thinking and the conversation.

This comeback may be especially persuasive to parents and teachers who fret that their children will not otherwise pick up a book at all. Still, whatever the current reading habits and motivation level of the children we’re working with, it makes sense to ask, “What exactly are we hoping to augment with AR texts?”

Aspects of learning we care about and want to monitor for growth include the following:

• Minutes our students spend “on task” with books
• Underlying motivation to read
• Level of curiosity about a particular topic or about the world in general
• Vocabulary growth
• Quantity of classroom talk (with peers and with us) generated by books
• Quality of the talk generated by books
• Depth of their understanding of key concepts
• Comprehension and recall of essential information

Which of these would you prioritize with the students you work with? What other indicators of learning would you want to track?

It’s not the tech that’s good or bad—it’s the ways tech is used

There is an urgent need for more research on the impact of e-books, AR books, and other digital media on the reading behaviors and outcomes of diverse learners of all ages. Recent studies with young children by researchers at Wake Forest University and Northern Arizona University suggest mixed effects, with traditional print texts outperforming digital texts and toys with regard to the quality of verbal interactions among readers and comprehension and recall of information. However, drawing big conclusions from a small number of small studies would be a mistake.

It can also not be repeated often enough: Technology by itself doesn’t cause anyone to learn better or worse. It’s how technology is used, in context and with purpose, with or without particular forms of guidance, that may improve—or impede—learning.

Further, often, a difference in a single factor may make a big difference. For example, if students have little or no background knowledge about a given topic (e.g., dinosaurs), an AR book may lead to misconceptions. However, with students who have just a bit more background knowledge, the same AR book may stimulate all sorts of powerful learning—with students learning basic facts but also noticing inaccuracies, fact checking details, constructing arguments, and so on. Indeed, you might purposefully choose a poorly made AR book to teach a memorable lesson about fact checking!

Every teacher needs to be a researcher

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a study that comes close to testing exactly what you want to know about—the impact of a particular AR book and intervention very similar to the one you’re considering on learners very similar in age and background to your students. More likely, though, you’re going to have to rely on studies that aren’t exactly “spot on” to inform and guide your decisions.

And it’ll be up to you to decide which factor(s) or indicator(s) you want to track, informally or systematically, to decide whether that new AR book you’ve decided to use with learners is actually having the impact you want. In an age of such rapid innovation and change, we all need to be researchers.

Paul Morsink is an instructor in the MAET program at Michigan State University.

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

Like many of you, I am always looking for a new tool to place in my teacher toolbox, something that will help me reach each of my students more effectively. However, we see trends come and go as educators, and often we see strategies repackaged and given a new name. So when I began hearing things like “gamification” and “gaming in the classroom,” I was skeptical at first. My mind was filled with images of students spending hours in front of screens with little reaction to those living in our three-dimensional world.

I would not call myself a gamer. Sure, I enjoy playing games—digital and otherwise—but I have learned how easily one can get sucked into them. I asked myself, does this “new” idea have merit? Will it support my students’ learning goals, give them a voice, and help them make the world a better place?

With that skepticism in mind, I began attending gaming sessions at conferences, reading articles and blogs, and engaging with other educators through social media to learn more. I heard about complex systems of badges and rewards in addition to detailed directions for student-designed video games. Although hearing about how this was working for other teachers was impressive, I, like many of my colleagues, was failing to see the connection between these ideas and the practicality of my middle school classroom. I wondered how bringing gaming into my classroom would support student learning.

Then, in an Edcamp session facilitated by Laren Hammonds, I learned that by taking the principles that make a game exciting for players and translating them into classroom practice, a teacher can foster an environment where students are engaged. Does this include a teacher or student using games to support learning? Yes, sometimes. Does this include students creating games to prove mastery of standards? It absolutely can.

Here are a few practices that game makers use that translate well into classroom practices. My bet is that you are already using most of these with your students.

Competition

Many of our students thrive on competition. In our sixth-grade classroom, my male students tend to work much harder when there is a competition in place, even for something as small as bragging rights. For some of our students, competition is the way to reach them and get them to connect with our content. It can help to build relationships among team members, and it teaches them a valuable life lesson: how to win or lose gracefully.

Challenge

Like with any task, if you make it too easy, the audience will lose interest. We want our students, the next generation, to have the opportunity to fail, learn from their failures, make new plans, grow, and work toward success. Yes, our students need our support and their peers’ support along the way. This not only engages them in a growth mind-set, but also helps to build a strong work ethic. They become stronger, self-motivated, and more independent.

Communication

Our students are no longer dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. Today’s games include connecting with others in real time. Our learners need that opportunity. Today’s learners expect to be able to get timely feedback. They crave the opportunity to have real-time sessions to discuss, analyze, plan, and strategize their next move. They write, speak, listen, and learn about putting all of their literacy lessons into practice in a meaningful manner with an authentic audience.

Camaraderie

Our students want to belong. In today’s games, they have the opportunity to build teams, chat with others, and learn from one another. In our classrooms, we have the opportunity to provide our learners with opportunities to collaborate, both face-to-face and through digital tools. Our students want to feel that they belong to something bigger than themselves. And isn’t that what we want our classrooms to be—a safe environment that includes and supports everyone?

Do all of these strategies work with all students? Not more than any other strategy. However, games have been around for centuries. To dismiss them would be to deprive our students of rich learning opportunities.

With this in mind, I may be a gamer after all. How about you?

Julie D. Ramsay is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?”: Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3–8.She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog, eduflections.