Literacy Now

Two years ago, I took leave of absence from my seventh-grade teaching position and spent much of the year teaching and traveling in Southeast Asia. Classrooms at the schools I visited also had no computers, students did not carry cell phones, and sometimes I even struggled to find a piece of chalk. The lack of technology was frustrating at times, but it usually meant my students were not distracted. They were accustomed to listening to their teacher. Since returning to the United States, it seems that my students have a different set of priorities when they enter the room, and listening to me isn’t always on their agenda.

“Can we listen to music?”

This is a frequent request from my students. I should be prepared to answer, but honestly, I don’t know the right answer most days. I want them to listen to music so they will avoid distracting each other. I want them to listen to music if it motivates and inspires them to do their best work.

On the other hand, I know that some of the students will spend most of their time hopping from one YouTube video to another. Others will have the music on so loud that even their peers will say it’s distracting. And then there are the students who sneak out their phones or wirelessly connect to their smart watch. This just leads to distracting and tempting notifications from social media accounts, putting further distance between my students and me.

What the research says

Not surprisingly, there are many different opinions on whether or not listening to music helps students study. Many variables, such as the volume of the music, type of music, and presence of lyrics, have been studied. A review of research published in The Guardian explains that students did not perform as well while listening to music as when learning in silence, and if students do listen to music, higher volumes tend to be more distracting. On the other hand, music can help improve one’s mood. Perhaps this could put students in the right frame of mind for completing their school work.

Starbucks to the rescue

One solution for me has been to implement “Starbucks Mode” during some classes. This idea has been shared frequently online since it was first posted by teacher Megan DuVarney. Students love following these simple guidelines, adapted from DuVarney’s original poster, during Starbucks Mode:

• Headphones in if you want jams
• You can sit anywhere (except somewhere dangerous)
• It’s Starbucks, so we’re all strangers here. Don’t be the weird guy who talks to strangers.
• Quiet, zen coffee shop vibes

This has helped a great deal while students are working on writing assignments. Students now just ask if we are in Starbucks Mode. They have learned that there are times when listening to music would be a distraction, and they know that Starbucks Mode will return on days when it is appropriate.

Since reflecting on this issue, I’ve also realized that I frequently listen to music while working, as I am now. Sometimes it is distracting and I turn it off to work in complete silence. Other times, I use it to drown out the screaming toddlers next door or to motivate me through a mundane task, such as grading.

I realize now how important it is for students to monitor themselves and learn how to make their own decisions about when to work in silence. So, I will continue to have conversations with students about what works best for them and what the research says. I will remind them to keep the volume down, maintain a balanced approach, and listen to their barista.

Tim Flanagan is a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Pawcatuck Middle School in Stonington, Connecticut. You can read more on his blog, The Alternate Route: Teaching, Traveling and Learning Across the Globe, and follow him on Twitter.

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

The recent shift in education brings to light a heavier emphasis on college and career readiness at all levels of learning. The critical skills needed to be prepared for an ever-changing college and career future are all wrapped up in project-based learning (PBL).

The basis of PBL is in the design, thinking, exploration, and creation of materials for authentic purposes, learning, and discovery. The process allows students to see transfer opportunities for skills with teacher support and facilitation. But what does the process look like for ELA classrooms at various levels?

PBL for the elementary classroom  

Much of early literacy exposure comes from whole class read-alouds and teacher modeling. Imagine this process as a close read pointing out text features followed by a conversation about how valuable books are and the importance of sharing. This discussion turns into a PBL opportunity where students dig into the purpose and use of Little Free Libraries through newspaper articles and website research where text features are also emphasized.

Taking this project to the next stages of planning and design based on a specific audience (their community) and following it through all the way to creation. Throughout this process the students have done close reading, looked at nonfiction text, collaborated, written letters asking for donations of materials and books, perhaps even participated in the hands-on creation of the library, and then advertised the opening of the library. Think of the learning possibilities and authentic opportunities to teach literacy skills as well as the application of college and career readiness skills.

PBL for the secondary classroom

Research papers and informational process pieces are traditional staples in the English language arts classroom. PBL takes all those standards and authenticates them through project-based learning, allowing students to dig deeper into standards-based content that interests them and ignites their curiosity. With PBL, students have opportunities to create in multiple avenues using technology and hands-on creation. Here are a few of my favorite 21st-century PBL tools.

Kasey Smith is a staff developer at Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12 in Pennsylvania,  where she specializes in K–12 literacy support as well as curriculum development with technology supports. Prior to staff development, she spent 11 years in the secondary English language arts classroom. Kasey is also an ISTE Certified trainer. Connect with her on Twitter at @kaseysmithpd.

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

3D printing—an emerging technology that facilitates the creation of objects through material design—is a powerful educational tool. Research has documented the technological affordances of 3D printing as an innovative learning tool across disciplines such as secondary history, anatomy, chemistry, and technology education. Despite these STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) perspectives, 3D printing is a lesser known technology in teacher education classrooms and, more broadly in English language arts classrooms. I work with prospective teachers in an undergraduate education program, and one of the classes I teach is titled “Teaching Social Studies and the Arts.” Through experimentation, I've discovered ways to mobilize 3D printing as both an educational technology and an artistic medium for developing my undergraduate students’ response to children’s and young adult literature.

Fabricating a response: Explore, engage, and evaluate

The “Fabricating Response…” assignment was designed to demonstrate the connection between technology, literacy, visual arts, and social studies. The 3D printing project engaged prospective teachers in a collaborative, semi-guided inquiry activity. As part of their inquiry, they were asked to design an “artifact” that signaled their response to Francisco Jimenez’s The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (University of New Mexico), one of the central young adult texts in the course. We centered our literary inquiry on the topic of immigration, and used 3D modeling and printing technologies to discuss the politics of design. In essence, we explored how responding with the visual arts could enhance, affect, and/or reject student’s responses to a text.

Spanning three class meetings, the project followed a three-phase model of explore, engage, and evaluate. During the explore session, prospective teachers became familiar with 3D printing technologies and software such as Tinkercad (see figure above). In this phase, our conversations focused primarily on integrating children’s and young adult literature in the social studies curriculum. After discussing central themes of The Circuit, we examined what it may mean to crystalize our understanding of these themes through materials. Prospective teachers used an array of materials (e.g., rocks, tempera paints, pipe cleaners, etc.) to respond (see figure below). This introductory class session was critical to building an understanding of how elements of design (i.e, color and texture) led to both literal and metaphorical responses to The Circuit’s plot.

During the engage phase, prospective teachers worked in grade-level teams to both discuss the focal text and prototype their design using cardboard (see below). Our discussion in this session focused on understanding the politics of response as design. With a goal of having three prototypes to share during the last phase, prospective educators brainstormed numerous possibilities. As expected, students were less familiar with the technical elements of 3D printing. As a result, they were drawn toward third-party sites like Thingiverse to remix and remediate user-produced designs.

In the third and final phase, students staged and evaluated their group’s 3D artifacts. Using a variety of critique protocols and strategies (e.g., Visual Thinking Strategies), we collaboratively talked across the affordances, constraints, and tensions of fabricating response. Working with mixed media, prospective teachers were asked about their responses as they detailed the artifact’s purpose and possible reception. After this final in-class session, students returned to their prototype designs and revised them for the final time. Afterward, students submitted the final TinkerCad file and used the 3D printers to print their designs in class.

So, what? Why 3D print?

As we discovered, most students worked toward the prepared goals of multimodal design. In other words, designing the 3D artifact merely encouraged students to reproduce the knowledge they received during the instructional activity. TinkerCad was a means to an end, rather than an iterative tool to disrupt or otherwise challenge traditional ways of thinking about design and literary response.

Conceptually, however, fabricating response illuminated the material conditions of ideology and the politics of arts-integrated response. In other words, what students designed signaled their attitudes concerning the recent rhetoric surrounding the Mexico–U.S. border wall and beliefs about immigration. Prospective teachers used the available tools of design to construct a 3D artifact that conceptually detailed personal responsibility (e.g., an empty classroom with a single chair knocked down) over a pertinent topic and theme (e.g., immigration and the inequitable education for migrant youth) in The Circuit.

Teachers were also concerned by the limitations of 3D printing and yearned to use other aesthetic materials and media to design meaning. As Colleen, a prospective teacher, described, “I couldn’t just design something on TinkerCad and be OK with the printing. I felt like I needed to make something more, something else.” In sum, prospective teachers felt as if they had to use media outside of 3D printing in order to illustrate their personal conviction of a political topic (see figure above).

By encouraging invention and fostering creative thinking, 3D printing served as an invitation to arts-based production and literary response. I encourage you to explore the possibilities of 3D printing in your own learning space to see firsthand how the practice can help to promote design-based learning, creativity, and critical thinking.

Jon M. Wargo is an assistant professor of literacy in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in digital literacies, qualitative research methods, and arts-based inquiry. Follow Jon on Twitter @wargojon.

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

Earlier this year, I embarked upon the task of designing one of our graduate courses to be completely online. This cannot always be done with a master’s of reading program, but students see other online programs and desire this format.

Additionally, spring weather in Pennsylvania can be challenging; I have already lost four days of classes and it’s only the beginning of February! Certification tests and future instructors need all the content covered. I had to find a way to teach, even if I could not be face to face with my students. Therefore, I sought out technology to support synchronous and asynchronous learning.

Synchronous video chatting

This past winter, at the start of our winter course (and to close it out as well), I used Zoom, a video conferencing app that was recently acquired by our university. I have also used Zoom to attend mandatory biannual meetings with an online professional development organization I worked for in the past.

I prefer to use Zoom because it allows you to mute attendees to avoid distracting background noise; to foster interaction by using a polling tool, the results of which can be shared with the entire class; and to encourage students to ask questions and post responses without interrupting the speaker using the chatting feature. I was also able to record our live session in case a student wanted to revisit a lesson or could not attend.



Zoom also automatically saves a .txt receipt of any chatting that takes place during the session.

After my third set of classes was cancelled this past week, I used an intriguing feature that allows the instructor to divide students into breakout rooms. This was a great success. For one class, I manually and strategically broke students into groups so that they could present lesson plan ideas with each other. With another class that was being quiet (there were 21 students in attendance), I had Zoom break them into pairs for discussion. I could visit each of the breakout rooms, send all the rooms an announcement, and reunite the whole group with just the touch of a button.

My mid-level education students shared that Zoom offered more opportunities to interact with others as opposed to just accessing static information online. Some of my students who commute long distances expressed gratitude that they could attend a Zoom session instead (I offered to add Zoom to a face-to-face class for students facing barriers to travel).

Online discussion tools

Of course, I don’t always plan for us to be synchronous. I have tried to mix up the different tools that I use for asynchronous discussion and interaction with the content of my courses.

In addition to having students use the typical discussion board through the university’s online management system, I have been a long-time fan of Padlet, a digital corkboard where students can post through a variety of means (as shown in the figure below).

With Padlet, students can reply to each other’s post with a comment, whereas before, they would have to create a new post and name it to grab the attention of the person to whom they were responding. Students appreciate the opportunity to share a favorite resource that supports the content we are learning.

Communicating online is convenient, but it can also be slightly impersonal, until students get to know each other. Therefore, I have recently become a big fan of Flipgrid.

Flipgrid allows students to discuss a topic for as little as one minute and up to five minutes. Not only do students reply to each other with their own video, they can also respond with “vibes,” emojis, and stars. Its interactive nature and resemblance to social media platforms makes Flipgrid one of the “coolest” tools available.

With Flipgrid, I got to know my students better through listening to and watching them. It was also a personal way to hear their ideas.

This spring, I have given students the opportunity to participate in a blog run by one of the Keystone State Literacy Association’s local chapters. A different teacher/author poses questions about the week’s chapter in a blog post, and all are encouraged to post their thoughts/reactions and reply to others. Although this takes a very similar format to our discussion boards, the opportunity to interact with individuals outside of class adds a layer of meaning and interaction that I would not otherwise be able to embed in my class.

One colleague shared her frustration via social media that students as young as elementary school should not lose days of learning due to weather. Rather, they should know their learning can just take on a different format. Many of the same tools I am working to integrate into my college classes can be used productively with younger students. My colleague argued that it should become the standard to use virtual tools rather than miss learning opportunities because of closed facilities. After my experimentations this winter and spring, I would concur. I encourage you to explore these tools in your classroom as well!

Aileen P. Hower is an assistant professor of literacy and the Graduate Coordinator for the Masters in Language and Literacy at Millersville University in Pennsylvania where she teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She also offers a summer literacy institute in writing through her university. In addition to teaching, she is the president of the Keystone State Literacy Association and was the conference chair for the KSRA 50th Annual Conference in Hershey, PA, in 2017. Aileen is a proud member of TILE-SIG. You can find her on Twitter at @aileenhower or on her blog at aileenhower.wordpress.com.

In a previous post for ILA’s TILE-SIG series, author Carolyn Fortuna discusses how digital literacy is different from other literacies in that, among other things, it’s best acquired through hands-on learning. One potentially promising hands-on application I am exploring with my research team in kindergarten classrooms is the YouTube Kids app.

Since its launch in 2015, the YouTube Kids app has generated a flurry of support and critique. Most concerns have stemmed from inappropriate videos finding their way past the algorithmic filters, such as sadistic Peppa Pig videos or other so-called “YouTube Poop” videos (see Burgess’ in-depth analysis). In response to this criticism, in 2018, YouTube Kids developers created new filters to allow for more parental control. Parents can now create individual profiles for each child, choose the videos they want their children to watch, and turn off searching for younger children or open the search to revamped, “safer” algorithms.

But, when it comes down to it, what does the YouTube Kids app allow for in terms of entertainment and learning for children? In this post, I describe some of the app's features and how it can be used to enhance digital and media literacy skills. 

Features of the YouTube Kids interface

After opening the app, a child must decipher several multimodal images and tools: the supportive images of category icons, the decorative images on the side of each video, and the thumbnails of actual videos that the child can select to watch. Children choose recommended videos by clicking on the thumbnails and swiping for more options.

Once the video opens, the child gains access to more controls that overlay the video, including a back arrow, a pause button, a scrollbar to fast forward or rewind the video, and a next button.

Another multimodal feature is the search function, which provides opportunities for children to practice media literacy skills. Children can use the search feature to explore a topic (such as “dogs” in the image below). Children can learn to search by using the microphone or search bar. Then, a selection of recommended videos appear in the same format as the home screen. The familiar elements across different parts of the interface helps build confidence as children begin to intuitively interact with newer parts of the app to navigate the space more independently.

Challenges become opportunities to teach media literacy

As with most digital tools for young children, the interface is not without its challenges, especially when children use the app on their own. Although the selection of recommended videos shown with each video creates choices for the child, the interface also enables and encourages children to seamlessly watch more videos. While parents and teachers can set a timer within the app, it isbetter for children to learn how to set limits for their own consumption.

Narrowing down search terms to recognizable words for the computer algorithm can sometimes be difficult for children to  understand.  Moreover, as Google warns, unless a parent has turned off searches, searching in YouTube Kids is governed by algorithms, rather than by humans. The search feature is more open, therefore children will need more skills to navigate that feature on their own.

Before allowing our children to use this app on their own, fostering media literacy is imperative. Parents and teachers should set aside time to prepare children to interact with the app (e.g., helping them to set their own boundaries for video consumption, along with practicing other media literacy skills, such recognizing semiotic cues in the thumbnails of recommended videos or in searches to suss out inappropriate content on their own). Media literacy at home and at school could make the difference between a child who consumes YouTube media with awareness and one who is reliant on the YouTube Kids’ interface and its inherent faulty algorithms that are beyond their control.

Damiana Pyles is an associate professor at Appalachian State University. After teaching as a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Wyoming, she decided to pursue her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her research interests focused on media production, identity, and media literacy practices in order to understand the intersections of the visual, the spoken, the written, and the performed in digital and print literacies in youth media production in non-profits across the U.S. Her current research projects include exploring literacy and science learning in kindergarten classrooms, understanding parent and teacher beliefs about preschool literacies, and exploring concepts of space and place around Instagram and local organic farming.