Literacy Now

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.

Making sense of today’s complex media sources has been the topic of many blog posts on Literacy Daily and is addressed in the National Association for Media Literacy Education's list of core principles of media literacy education. Thoughtful scholars and educators have emphasized the need to include media in the classroom, to learn to critically evaluate complex representations and engage civic media literacy practices in a post-truth society, and to consider the range of questions we might pose to scaffold student understanding and sensemaking about digital texts and media.

Less often addressed, however, is the immediacy of a maelstrom of media reporting about complicated news that might directly deal with violence, politics, and inequities. In fact, a new genre of media and online text might be understood as “disaster media,” or media produced in response to intense global disasters (man-made or natural).

While doing research in a small town in the rural Midwest, I worked alongside elementary teachers who joined Global Read Aloud in the fall of 2015. Classes around the world read books and participated in social media and video conversations with other classes. In fall 2015, one of the books, Fish by L.S. Matthews (Yearling), dealt with migration caused by war and climate change. That fall also saw intense and pervasive media reporting about refugee migration from northern Africa to the shores of southern Europe. Media stories shared gruesome details about the trek people took across the Mediterranean; the uneven, and at times violent, welcomes received in Europe; and the extraordinary loss of life by people, including many children, making this journey.

It was impossible to avoid this media as we read a book about migration with fourth- and fifth-grade students. As one teacher put it, “no one could have planned for the events going on in the news.” Together, I worked with other teachers and students to collect and share numerous news reports about this global disaster. We discussed the news, explored historical migration and refugee experience, defined key terms, and continued to read children’s literature. In addition, we spoke with classrooms around the world about their reactions to the book Fish and to the horrific images and events being reported. Across these conversations, every child expressed a strong desire to help the individuals seeking safety. One classroom in Chicago, Illinois, described sponsoring refugee families in their city. Another classroom in Buenos Aires, Argentina, described examining the political response to welcoming refugees to their country.

In the small town in which I worked, students did not have access to refugee services to sponsor a family in town. Their community is very politically conservative, and teachers were wary of diving straight into politics. Instead, together we devised a series of questions for students to critically interrogate just how to help refugees. We did this by identifying texts that might come up in a typical Google search. For example, recent sources about supporting or helping refugees include a listicle from TED (the popular lecture video series) and the UN Refugee Agency's guide. We used an online reading platform to allow students the time to examine a series of these online texts in pairs, using the following research-supported questions to scaffold textual critique and reader reflexivity.

• Who created this source?
• Why was this source created?
• What story does this tell us about refugees?
• What does this source want you to feel, think, or do?
• What ideas does this source give you to help refugees?
• What would you need to help the refugees based on this source's ideas?
• Would these ideas be possible for you (and your classmates or family or community) to do? Why or why not?

Students came away from these discussions with concrete next steps that matched their local experiences and context. Teachers and I hoped these critical media literacy practices would support thoughtful ways of taking action. After brainstorming, discussion, and planning, students lead several actions. They created a letter about the need to support refugees and were then given time to read their letter at a local school board meeting. They started a fundraiser for a nonprofit organization selected from their critical reading and donated money they had raised. They led read alouds on migrant and refugee experiences in lower grades classrooms at their school. The students, and their efforts, were, frankly, remarkable.

As a result, teachers and I learned that the media of the moment, often media that is not deemed appropriate for children, cannot be avoided in any classroom—regardless of the age of its students or the content or the local context of education. We now recognize the need to integrate media thoughtfully, to look for opportunities to support critical media literacy, and to allow students the time and space to act on their desires for a more just future world.

Alexandra Panos is an assistant professor of elementary literacy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research focuses on the literacies needed to address complex spatial and environmental challenges. She seeks, along with the children she writes about in this blog post, a multitude of ways to contribute to a more just future world.

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

“Alexa, spell.”

“Alexa, define.”

“Alexa, tell me a story.”

Meet Alexa—the voice-controlled, search engine assistant who listens for commands and then responds with an answer, reminder, joke, fact, music, song, story. Users can also enable Skills, or third-party voice apps that allow the device to communicate with hardware and software to perform tasks.

Yes, Alexa is a convenient device for checking the weather or playing music hands-free. But it’s also emerging as a powerful tool for engaging children in fun learning experiences.

Engaging children in fun literacy learning using Alexa

Following are five Skills that enhance children’s vocabulary, comprehension, and phonics development while engaging them in global topics. These Skills are free with the purchase of a device.

• Play Mad Libs. “Alexa, open Mad Libs.” This Skill involves an entertaining word game. First, Alexia asks for adjectives, verbs, nouns, or plural nouns. After she collects the words, she embeds them in a uniquely created story or poem.
• Listen to a short story. “Alexa, launch Bedtime Story.” These short stories are personalized using your child’s name. You can also upload your own stories.
• Strengthen listening comprehension. “Alexa, ask Hutch to tell me a story.” This Skill offers happy, silly, spooky, or tall tale short stories focused on Hutch, a fifth-grade boy and his adventures, such as eating too much chocolate cake. After listening to the story, Alexa asks yes or no questions and gives correct answers to incorrect responses.
• Encourage curiosity. “Alexa, open Curiosity.” This Skill delivers interesting facts on topics of interest. Subjects include science, fashion, history, music, health, current events, and more.
• Practice spelling. “Alexa, open My ABC.” This Skill features alphabet, word, song, and spelling practice. Simple say, “Alexa, alphabet,” “Alexa, song,” “Alexa, word,” “Alexa, spell (give word).” It features animal sounds, rhymes, and songs.

For more ideas, check out TurboFuture’s article “25 Amazing Kid Friendly Alexa Skills.”

Tips for home and the classroom

Alexa is continually updated with new Skills and features. The following tips will support your shared learning experience when using Alexa with children.  

• Speak clearly. Alexa app offers a voice recognition option to help Alexa better understand a spoken command. If a statement is not recognized, you will need to rephrase the command. Rephrasing is an authentic way for children to practice speaking and listening skills.   
• Practice commands. At first, you may want to write commands in a notebook and keep the notebook handy until they are memorized. “Alexa, Cheat Sheet for the Classroom,” offers commands to use at home.  
• Stay informed about the pros and cons of using Alexa and activated voice assistants. “What Parents Need to Know Before Buying Google Home or Amazon Echo,” published by Common Sense Media, is a great place to start.
• Do your research. Learn more from research exploring the use of technology with children. “Apps, iPads, and Literacy: Examining the Feasibility of Speech Recognition in a First Grade Classroom,” an article published in Reading Research Quarterly, examines the feasibility of using speech recognition technology to support struggling readers in an early elementary classroom setting.

Tammy Ryan, and ILA member since 2002, has over 25 years of teaching experience. She is an adjunct professor of reading education at Jacksonville University and at the University of North Florida where she teaches undergraduate and graduate reading courses.

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

It’s common for ELA teachers to require students to cite the sources they use in their compositions, but it was always a bit of a mystery to me as to my how students were interpreting those sources and integrating them into their writing. When my students composed problem–solution online essays this semester, instead of having them link directly to their sources, I had them link to their annotations of those sources using NowComment—an online annotation tool that has given me unprecedented insight into my students’ writing processes.

As my students and I read George Orwell’s 1984 (Houghton Mifflin) this fall, we kept a running list of his predictions. Then, they were asked to craft inquiry questions about  whether there was any relevance to what they have observed, read, or experienced. For example, in her essay, Yulisa makes connections between the rampant xenophobia in 1984 and the treatment of foreigners in contemporary society. Not only does Yulisa provide links to her sources, it’s clear how her annotations contributed to the essay.

It’s worth noting that Yulisa obtained some of her sources from SolutionsU, a website that curates stories that serve as models for how to identify, analyze, and solve problems.  This turned out to be a valuable resource because, as the quarter progressed, it seemed like this assignment was creating a sense of doom among students. I found it especially helpful for this assignment to have them annotate sources that not only documented problems, but also those that offered solutions.

Another affordance of NowComment is that annotations are searchable and all in one place (using the blog feature in NowComment), which made it more manageable for students to reference as they composed their essay. Collaboration became a lot easier too; some students who were researching similar topics combined their collections using the group blog feature on NowComment.

NowComment also enables students to be critical readers. For example, when Anika remarks on a questionable source, Ari counters, “This sounds a little extreme to me. Is there any example that proves this or that puts it in context of what is really happening in the US?”

NowComment has also made it easier for me to help struggling writers. Yulisa’s essay was well written, but others weren’t. By being able to go to their annotations, I was able to make them aware of common problems, such as not providing enough evidence for their claims or where they had misread the text. In many cases, it amounted to merely going back over the source with the student to help them see the examples that were already present in the text but that they had overlooked.

And finally, unlike many other annotation applications, NowComment allows users to annotate videos and images. That makes it especially useful for the kinds of multimodal compositions our students are producing.

Chris Sloan teaches high school English and media at Judge Memorial in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the summer he’s an instructor for Michigan State’s MAET Overseas program in Galway, Ireland. Join him on the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast every Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.

In backpacks, pockets, and purses, students bring their connected devices to school. But “connected” may be the wrong term; perhaps “connectable” devices is more accurate. Bandwidth means that a network can deliver data in a specified amount of time. For many schools, bandwidth may be a limitation. For some teachers, there is nothing more frustrating than planning a lesson that requires students to access the internet only to find that the bandwidth delivers data at speeds at which snails would sneer.

Some educational settings require restrictions on access to the internet, such as those that serve incarcerated youth or adults. Others are so distant from internet connections that it is prohibitively expensive to ensure all students have access.

Meet RACHEL, a server capable of delivering open educational resources to students’ devices offline. Students connect their devices in the same way they would to any Wi-Fi connection. Once connected, they can surf sites, engage in research, and participate in educational simulations all without actually being on the internet.

RACHEL stands for remote area community education and learning. Stored open educational resources are downloaded to the device, and once downloaded RACHEL can be transported anywhere. Although they can use content gathered and curated by World Possible, the nonprofit organization that produces RACHEL, teachers are free to add their own resources, subject to fair use and other copyright considerations.

Do you need RACHEL? You might if your school or district’s bandwidth is too slow for several students to be online at once. You might if your school or institution doesn’t have access to the internet because the school is in a remote or rural location and cannot reliably connect. If institutional requirements limit internet access (such as schools that serve incarcerated youth), you might need RACHEL.

One strong example is the Maya Jaguar Institute in the Department of Huehuetenango. The Institute operates a middle school (basico) and a high school (secundario). Internet access is via satellite, a source that is unreliable, slow, and expensive. Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala bought its first RACHEL server last year for installation at Maya Jaguar. It became so popular for students to use critical internet skills that the foundation bought a second server for the middle school in 2019. Students use RACHEL and its open educational resources in the same way they would to participate in internet workshop, Webquest, or online simulations for science or history courses.

Could your school benefit from RACHEL?

• The school or district internet bandwidth is so slow that pages end up timing out.
• Your school or institution restricts access to the open internet.
• Access to the internet is expensive, unreliable, or unavailable.

How do you get RACHEL?

The best ideas are often openly available. Savvy educators can build RACHEL themselves. World Possible also sells the servers with the content you choose. If you want to download or customize the content on your portable web server, that’s no problem. You can choose resources in several languages, in addition to popular websites including Khan Academy, Wikipedia, Career Girls, and more. Knowing there is a problem is one thing. Working toward a solution to that problem is quite another. The digital divide remains a problem in today’s world, but RACHEL is helping bridge that gap.

Thomas DeVere Wolsey teaches in the Graduate School of Education at The American University in Cairo.

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