Literacy Now

Will the digital tool I’m thinking of using with my students tomorrow widen or narrow the achievement gaps between students in this class?

What instructional choices could I make to increase the chances of this digital tool narrowing these gaps rather than widening them—or creating new ones?

I confess these are not the sorts of questions that are usually on my mind the day before I introduce a new digital reading or writing tool to my students. I’m usually thinking about what I’ll do if the Internet connection is glitchy or how much time it will take us to create new accounts and get down to work. When I ask my colleagues, their response is similar: there are so many things we’re already juggling, the impact digital tools may have on achievement gaps is not really something we have time to think about.

But maybe it should be.

p: World Bank via photopin

Something I’ve started noticing is that, while a strong majority of my students enjoy using new digital tools, there are significant differences between students in terms of what they actually do with a new tool as well as what they take away from a technology-infused lesson or unit to apply in their future learning.

Some students come to class with rich prior experience not just with social media apps, but with content creation tools. They readily “get” a new tool such as Citelighter
(for online annotation and curation of sources) or Voicethread (for multimodal presentation and discussion of texts)—they play with it fearlessly, figure out its affordances and constraints, and by the end of class they are showing me something I had no idea the tool could do.

Other students are initially less knowledgeable and more tentative. They follow the directions. When they get stuck, they rely on others for help. At the end of the day they may have accomplished the assigned tasks, but if I later ask them what they thought of the new tool, their response is likely to focus on a frustrating or fun moment (e.g., “It was frustrating when I couldn’t get the highlighter to change color”; “It was fun to record our voices”), not on the tool’s key affordances.

And these observations have got me thinking about Matthew effects.

Matthew Effects—the “Old” Kind

In 1986, Stanovich drew everyone’s attention to the phenomenon of dramatically diverging learning trajectories experienced by students with different initial levels of reading-relevant knowledge. Students who start with strong phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge get off to a strong start and generally keep doing well. From early on, reading for them is about learning new words, acquiring interesting background knowledge, and engaging with meaning and ideas. And because early success in these areas increases their motivation to read, their performance goes up not just incrementally but by leaps and bounds: “early achievement spawns faster rates of subsequent achievement” (my emphasis, p. 381).

By contrast, students who struggle early on are much more likely not just to remain behind their peers but to gradually lag farther and farther behind. When they read, most or all of their cognitive resources are devoted to laborious decoding of words. Indeed, this decoding work is so onerous that they don’t often get to engage with meaning and ideas or learn new words and background knowledge. Their progress is slow and incremental at best.

Matthew Effects—the New Digital Kind

Now let’s add to the mix Google Search and a sampling of web tools featured in past TILE-SIG blog posts including online annotation tools (e.g., Citelighter), multimodal composing tools (e.g., Voicethread), resource curation tools (e.g., Symbaloo), and some free educational iPad Apps.

For some educators, the hope has been that these tools would somehow help to level the playing field and close achievement gaps—at least under conditions of equal access to screens and Internet connectivity. As one colleague put it a couple of years back: “Now my kids with less background knowledge will be able to Google the words and the information they don’t know. When they read a difficult text, they’ll be in much better shape than before.”

This colleague and I now shake our heads at our past naiveté.

The reality we’re seeing is that, with new digital tools in the mix, we may have opened the door to a new class of digital Matthew Effects.

Take something as basic as search engine use. Some 6-year-olds now start school with considerable experience and expertise with “Googling” information (Dodge, Husain, Duke, 2011; Rideout, 2013). And by the upper-elementary grades this initial difference between students can turn into a significant skill and knowledge gap that’s hard to close—because of a dynamic that’s similar to what Stanovich described for early reading development. Students who get an early start “Googling” keep getting better.  For them, searching reliably leads to new knowledge and vocabulary, and searching for information consequently feels fun and rewarding. Here again, “early achievement spawns faster rates of subsequent achievement.”

Other students don’t get the early start and are much less adept. Their searches are imprecise and often don’t lead to useable results. Consequently, over time, they don’t get the same boost to their background knowledge and vocabulary growth that their more skillful classmates enjoy. They tend to be less motivated to Google for information, and when they do, they are less persistent.

And the obvious remedy here—devoting class time to getting all students up to speed—may not be the quick fix we hope it will be. It takes time and, done well, really needs to involve the full gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983): explanation, teacher modeling, guided practice, and independent practice.

It also risks creating a version of the situation that Allington (1983) warned about in his article “The reading instruction provided readers of differing reading abilities”: well-intentioned teachers (yes, I include myself here) giving their striving readers additional time with phonics practice and other forms of remedial instruction that in effect deprives these students of richer literacy experiences—meaning-focused discussion about story characters, interesting information, etc. Today the danger is that, if we pull some students aside to work with them on the basics of using a new digital tool, they may miss out on the fun and engaging work of creating content or discussing new information and ideas.

None of this makes me or my colleagues think we should pull back on our integration of digital tools. Still, it has given us pause and made us think harder—or at least make a commitment to think harder in the future—about what we can do to mitigate new types of Matthew effects in our classrooms.

From conversations with colleagues, I have distilled the following four preliminary ideas:

1) Seize every opportunity to help students distinguish between a new digital tool’s “bells and whistles” features and its more important cognitive affordances—for supporting some aspect(s) of the mental work involved in reading or writing. Being explicit about these affordances may help less tech-savvy students stay focused on what’s most important for their learning—and why they may want to remember today’s digital tool for possible later use.

2) Over the course of a semester, put students in mixed-ability “tech mentor” groups. Each group is responsible for helping the teacher give the class a basic orientation tour and answer questions about one digital tool. (The idea is that, if everyone develops above-average expertise with at least one digital tool, this will generate confidence and seed future development of expertise with other tools.)

3) Seize every opportunity to communicate with parents and guardians about the tools you’re using and their educational value—and point out possible parental uses of new digital tools (e.g., Google Docs)! Especially with our younger students, home support and encouragement may play an important role in sustaining interest and growth over time.

4) Whenever possible, try to coordinate your efforts with those of colleagues teaching in grades above and below yours. It will require coordinated efforts across grades to avoid and/or reverse digital Matthew effects.

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.

Paul Morsink is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University, morsinkp@msu.edu.

References

Allington, R. L. (1983). The reading instruction provided readers of differing reading abilities. The Elementary School Journal, 83(5), 548-559.
Dodge, A. M., Husain, N., & Duke, N. K. (2011). Connected kids? K-2 children’s use and understanding of the Internet. Language Arts, 89(2), 86-98.
Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, G. (1983). The gradual release of responsibility model of instruction. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 112-123.
Rideout, V. (2013). Zero to eight: Children’s media use in America 2013. San Francisco: Common Sense Media.
Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360-407.

Do you want to know the secret to successful multimodal composition instruction? Here are five tips I use when teaching students how words, images, and sounds work together to enhance the author’s message.

Tip 1: Create a common language about multimodal composition

Creating a common language, or meta-language, empowers students by giving them the words they need to analyze and discuss their multimodal composition process. Begin by building a class multimodal glossary. First, select one mode to discuss as a whole class: linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, or spatial. Next, write the term on an anchor chart and analyze several examples.

Throughout the day, point out how the mode is used differently in math, science, and social studies. Challenge students to identify ways the mode is used outside of school. When students are ready, work together to create a class definition. By the end of the year, discussions about multimodal composition will be rich with common definitions and concrete examples. Check out MODE’s 2012 multimodal glossary for more terms and definitions.

Tip 2: Develop a critical lens

Research suggests multimodal composition may result in combining modes that distract from the author’s intended meaning. Heighten students’ awareness of effective and ineffective multimodal combinations by analyzing a mode’s affordances and constraints.

Instead of starting with complex media that includes multiple modes, like a commercial, limit the analysis to a single mode.  Hassett & Curwood (2009) suggest starting with a picture book to discuss how images and words convey different meanings. For example, an image may support a reader’s ability to make meaning from the words on the page. At the same time, an image may add more information than the words provide. Additionally, an image may contradict or distract from the written message.

Begin by identifying a page for analysis and then lead a discussion by asking:

• How do the images and words work together?
• How do they work against creating meaning?
• Which mode creates the best meaning for this message?
• Are there other modes that might convey a clearer message?

Expand the critical lens by analyzing how images are used in other genres and media such as informational texts, poetry, magazines, blogs, and websites. By talking about how modes can enhance or inhibit meaning, students develop a critical lens. Also, students begin to collect exemplar structures to guide their own composition decisions.

Tip 3: Shift responsibility to students

The gradual release of responsibility model provides an opportunity for honoring a wide-range of semiotic resources. For example, provide direct instruction on how to select and analyze websites, book trailers, or blogs that combine multiple modes. Next, facilitate a discussion while students work in pairs or small groups to select and analyze multimodal resources. Finally, ask students to bring in their favorite multimodal examples to analyze independently. This type of scaffolding strengthens students’ interest in multimodal composition and develops recursive design skills.

Tip 4: Set up a station for exploration

Establishing one computer as a station for exploration allows students to discover their preferred composition pathway. Rish (2013) found his students’ multimodal composition process consisted of three different pathways. Some students utilized modes linearly from linguistic to audio to visual. Other students began browsing digital images and audio files first and then wrote the essay. Still others wrote using a recursive process by moving back and forth between the drafts in digital, audio, and linguistic forms. Providing space for exploration creates ownership and values innovation.

Tip 5: Show and tell

Devote a few minutes each week for students to show the effects of different multimodal combinations or tell about their multimodal composition process. Similar to an author’s chair in writing workshop, students learn how to explain their design decisions and receive constructive feedback from their peers. These student led discussions generate concrete examples of the various processes that can be used for multimodal composition.

Don’t end the school year with the same old writing routine. Use these five tips to remix your instruction and inspire students to be multimodal authors.

Julie B. Wise is currently a doctoral student at the University of Delaware. She can be reached via email at jbwise@udel.edu.

When students work in groups oriented toward a particular task, their teachers often encourage them to pay attention to their group collaboration skills. A checklist can be helpful as students reflect on how well they worked together and whether they were able to get the job done well. This Goal 18 checklist is an example. Students discuss each of the elements on the chart, award themselves up to 3 points for each area of the chart, and then add the points as a means of reflecting on their collective skills working with each other.

It is important that students think about the capacity of their group, and their own individual dispositions, to perform a job well while maintaining a cohesive group. Post-action checklists such as the one linked above can be a helpful means of guiding students to think about their collaboration skills.

However, planning a project is also an essential collaboration skill. Expectations in the Common Core State Standards (see CCSS.ELA Literacy.CCRA.SL.1 and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.6) highlight the importance of collaboration. In school, in the world of work, and at the university, being able to plan a multifaceted project while working with others collegially is increasingly important. 

Students work together in problem-based learning groups, on service learning projects, while doing research, and while creating products that guide their learning and show what they know. As posts throughout the TILE-SIG feature point out, digital technologies bring people together. Nowhere is that more important than when projects are part of the curriculum.

In this post, we will explore two tools that students can use to plan projects that carry over right into the world of work. Two keys to successful planning with technology include the visual nature of the tool and the ability others have to see and edit the tool. An interactive chart that shows what the plan for getting the work done will be and what the status of that work is as it proceeds is just what’s needed.

The first tool is one that is familiar to most teachers. Good old spreadsheet software, such as Excel, can provide a clear way to show who is going to do the work, when they will do it, and what the status of the work is as students complete the task. The Excel spreadsheet can be stored in a file sharing site for all to access (e.g., Box.com, Dropbox, or Google Drive), the file sharing area of a course management system (e.g., Canvas, eCollege), or on the class website. If the teacher chooses, parents can be allowed to view the chart as they assist their children with different aspects of the task.

In figure 1, you will see a Project Management Organizer that I adapted from a generic template Microsoft offers for download. This adapted version also includes a quick status check area where students can indicate whether they are making good progress (green), may have encountered some snags (yellow), or are really stuck (red). If you would like a copy of this template, visit LiteracyBeat.

For those who have worked on large projects, the format of the organizer may seem familiar. This is a Gantt chart used in industry, the military, and even sports for organizing large, multi-faceted projects. It visually displays what the plan is, who is responsible, and what progress has been made. The literacy value is in the discussions that are required to plan the project, collaborate on status updates, and troubleshoot any challenges that arise.

An important part of using any technology for project planning is making it transparent—all team members need to be able to see and update the tool. Though there are others, one online app that really makes transparency easy is Smartsheet.

Screenshot via smartsheet

There are several things to like about Smartsheet. First, it is intuitive, so time spent training students to use the technology is minimal. Second, it is easily shareable among team members, parents, and anyone else who is participating in the project simply by sharing the link. Third, Smartsheet allows pictures, Word documents, or links to be easily attached to any phase of the project. Fourth, just a toggle away is a calendar view. Finally, and most importantly, Smartsheet has a free student version available. If your students don’t have email accounts, the teacher can create a Smartsheet and share it with the students as a link.

The visual components of Project Management Organizers combine well with written and spoken collaboration tasks. Imagine students with a tablet computer discussing how to break down a large research project so that everyone can learn and participate as they create and update their organizers. Consider the digital skills students will learn that they can carry over right into college or career. And, most importantly, picture students who have learned to work together, learn well, and create high-quality results.
Read more on LiteracyBeat and on Jodi Sorensen’s blog.

Dr. Thomas DeVere Wolsey is a professor of literacy and author of books and articles on literacy intersections with technology, TDWolsey@msn.com.

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

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning. 

One to two days a week, I am free from lunch duty. At the beginning of the school year, I had several students who asked if they could stay in the classroom with me so that they could read. That very quickly led to all of them being engaged in a discussion of the books that they were reading, and sharing additional book recommendations. Within a matter of weeks the students formed a book club that they named The Literary Association of Bibliophiles. That’s LAB, for short (I promise that title really did come from 6^th graders).

The students meet once a week, depending on my lunch duty schedule to discuss a book that they selected to read and discuss together. Yes, I’m involved in the conversations, but they each take turns leading the discussion. Needless to say, the popularity has grown to include more students anxious to participate in the conversations.

This month, I have read much about book clubs. It has caused me to reflect on the popularity of book clubs. What is it about book clubs that draw people to them? Why did my students begin this club that draws in students who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves “readers”?

It is because reading is a solitary endeavor that envelops a reader into another world; it spurs thinking, questioning, and connecting with the text. As humans, we want to share these thoughts. We want to take this solitary pursuit and make it social. We want to share our perspectives, ask our questions, and push our thinking.

p: mrsdkrebs via photopin

So in a world of pacing guides and prescriptive programs with pressure to push students to perform on standardized testing, how can we include book clubs as an integral part of our learning environment?  With such a demand on our time, where can we find opportunities to connect our readers not only with one another, but also with their global peers? I thought I would share a few opportunities that you could bring to your students to get the book sharing started.

1. International Dot Day is a day centered on Peter H. Reynolds’ book, “The Dot.” The official day is September 15th. Based on the book, the entire day is spent focusing on the importance of creativity, imagination, and individual talents and how each individual can harness their own uniqueness to make a mark on the world.
   
   Students can connect through Twitter (and Instagram) using the hashtag #DotDay and #MakeYourMark. This is an opportunity for your students to not only discuss the overarching theme of “The Dot,” but also internalize the text by making applications to their own lives. Classes can also connect through Skype in the Classroom to have a “face-to-face” book chat about “The Dot” and share all of their conclusions about the meaning and its application to their lives in the world.
   
   This is a one-day event that could very easily become an overarching theme for a week or month-long study. As a teacher, you can connect with other teachers through Twitter (#DotDay), Facebook, and Pinterest to share ideas for implementing it into your schedule. This network of very creative and imaginative teachers is more than willing to give you all the ideas you need to bring this international book discussion to your students.
   
   
2. The Global Read Aloud is a phenomenal project founded by Pernille Ripp, a 5th grade teacher in Wisconsin. It is elegant in its simplicity. One book is selected (per grade range) and students from all over the world connect to discuss the book with one another. Teachers sign up through the Global Read Aloud website and then connect through Twitter (#GRA14), Facebook, and Edmodo to plan ways of implementing it with their students.
   
   One of the great aspects of this project is that you can do as much or as little connecting as you feel comfortable with. If you want your students to connect with many classes to discuss and analyze a book, then you can do that. If you want to form one connection that lasts the entire six-week long project, then you can do that too. If you want to have your students connect only with other students in your class or school that is also perfectly acceptable. You can customize it to your students’ needs.
   
   The wonderful part of this project is that you have a network that can support you as you try out new practices with your students. The point is for this to be simple for students to read, enjoy, and share a book together.
   
   My students have participated for three years and it is always a major highlight for them. We connect through Skype, Twitter, blogging, TodaysMeet real-time book chats, and collaborative publishing. No two years are alike because the book is always different, as are the students and the connections. By connecting globally, students have an authentic audience and gain a perspective of their place in their world. Everyone shares his/her voice.  It is exhilarating to see students accurately analyze, draw conclusions, synthesize ideas, and create new content all focused on a great piece of literature.
   
   Want to see what’s possible in a classroom with the Global Read Aloud? Check out my session on The Global Read Aloud at IRA’s 59^th Annual Conference in New Orleans. I’ll be sharing my students’ work, their stories, as well as management and connection strategies on Saturday, May 10^th from 1:00-2:00 pm.
   
   
3. I have written before about the power of having my students blog on KidBlog. This is also one of the easiest ways to give students a portal to openly discussing and analyzing a text with an authentic audience. My learners set the expectations for their blogging each year. Typically, one of those expectations is that they will write a blog post about something that they have been reading each week.
   
   A couple of years ago, one of my students wrote a post about a book you may have heard about called “The Hunger Games.” As I always try to write comments on students’ blogs and model the expectations that they have set, I realized I couldn’t accurately comment without reading some of this book. I went by the bookstore and bought a copy of “The Hunger Games,” initially thinking I would read through the first few chapters so that I could comment on the post (Fast forward a week later…I had finished all three books.).
   
   After I commented on her blog, and we began talking about it together in class, other students joined in the conversation. Within three school days, two-thirds of my class, plus students in other classes, were commenting on her blog and sharing their thoughts on the book. What came next? We began having book chats at the lunch table where other teachers joined us. How did all of this come about? One blog post brought together a community of readers, which broke down boundaries to unite many voices all in pursuit of reading and sharing an exciting piece of literature.
   
   With KidBlog, it is simple to connect to other classes who are also on KidBlog. We have found other classes through the connection we have made with Dot Day and the Global Read Aloud. We also have found other classes through our class connection (@RamsaysClass) on Twitter. Another option is to connect with three other classes through Quadblogging where four classes connect and comment upon one another’s blogs. Each week, you rotate to comment on a different class’ blogs from a different location around the world. This helps students to gain a global perspective while finding commonality among one another in sharing and discussing great books.

So whether you choose to start small within your class or go global, there is no doubt about the impact that book clubs have upon our learners. It empowers them to truly internalize, analyze and share their perspectives in a real and meaningful way. They are no longer reading because they have to fulfill some requirement, but because they want to dive into other worlds, learn about themselves, and share their ideas with others. So jump into the digital book club pool. The water is great and your students will thank you!

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com. 

On the surface, the Maker Movement  with its focus on 3-D printing, hands-on craftsmanship, and industrial design may not seem an especially good “fit” for the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. The ELA teachers I meet generally acknowledge Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) as important, but wonder how they can integrate STEM principles into writers’ workshop or literature circles.

As our colleagues in science and the technical subjects learn to teach literacies to meet Common Core State Standards expectations, I see the integration of electric circuits in ELA, inspired by the Maker Movement, as interdisciplinary reciprocity. In my view, this activity can support the integration of ideas across content areas and build problem solving skills. I also learned that it can be a lot of fun. In what follows, I explain.

Last week, I co-hosted a Mini Maker Faire at the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference with my MSU Colleagues. The response from teachers was so positive that I wanted to share what we learned with the TILE-SIG Community.

We invited conference attendees to make a wearable electrical circuit using inexpensive and easily available materials. Inspired by the work of Jie Qi, the high-low tech team at the MIT Media Lab, and the work of Exploratorium, we wanted to push teachers’ notions of “technology integration” and highlight the potential of maker activities for interdisciplinary learning.

Activity #1 invited people to add an LED light to their conference name badge using copper tape, a coin battery, and scotch tape. Activity #2 invited people to sew an LED light into a felt badge using conductive thread, and a coin battery. Step-by-step instructions and lists of materials with links can be found at our program blog. I think TILE-SIG members can leverage two important insights from our Maker Faire experiment.

Firstly, light can be used to communicate meaning. To me, this opens infinite possibilities for connections to the ELA classroom. Teachers could ask students to draw a picture that integrates an electric circuit with light, strategically placed, to emphasize an especially poignant action, character trait, or feature of the landscape in a novel. Students could write (digitally?) about the meaning they have conveyed in their art, why they made this choice, and how it was inspired by their reading. Alternatively, students could create a video of themselves describing the meaning in their electric art and share it via YouTube. They could also explore or respond to meaning in their classmates’ circuits during a multimodal writers’ workshop. Younger children could practice writing how-to texts to explain how they made the LED light shine. In this way, this multimodal ELA project becomes the week’s science project too.

Secondly, these activities generated a lot of smiles. Two hundred colleagues made a wearable electric circuit with us last week and every one of them smiled when their LED lit up. Every participant said “that was cool,” or “I’m going to do this with my students.” The first principle of any project-based learning is authentic engagement. If electricity can put smiles on our students’ faces, they will be more likely to persist in the face of challenge, more likely to care about the learning, and more likely to take risks in any discipline, ELA included.

In sum, I see the integration of simple electric circuits into ELA classrooms as an engaging way to bring science and language arts curricula together for students of any age and I encourage TILE-SIG members to give it a try! If you do, please let me know how it goes!

For more information on the Maker Movement and DIY project ideas: http://makezine.com/

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.

Michelle Schira Hagerman directs the Graduate Certificate Programs in Educational Technology and Online Teaching and Learning at Michigan State University.