Literacy Now

Digital media is an important tool for broadening access to knowledge and skills. Yet digital content and platforms can also reproduce structures of power. From white supremacist Tweets to ableist TikTok algorithms, oppressive ideologies show up everywhere online. Young people need critical media literacy practices to learn to identify and challenge the oppressive ideologies that undergird digital media and technologies.

That said, young people already use digital media to organize for justice and speak back to power. How can educators build on what students learn on social media to support and sharpen critical media literacies? To answer this question, we first need to know more about how students use digital media toward justice-oriented ends. I turned to LGBTQ+ YouTube to examine how young people resist intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and sexuality.

Critical media literacy on social media is serious work, but it can also be funny. Humor is nearly ubiquitous on LGBTQ+ YouTube, with reaction videos modeling a common form of critical humor. LGBTQ+ reaction videos respond, often comedically, to discriminatory media like right-wing political advertisements. I began to wonder: How do YouTubers who watch and comedically react to anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Black media perform critical media literacies? And how is humor functioning in reaction videos?

Humor as political possibility in digital culture

Through a multimodal analysis, I found that humor nurtures political possibility and supports critical media literacies. I approach political possibility as the sense that social change toward a more just world is possible. This possibility of transformation is vital for marginalized young people who may encounter injustice every day.

Humor also plays a central role in the YouTubers’ critical media literacy practices. Moments of humor defuse hatred and amplify agency to resist social injustice. Satire and parody in these videos challenge ideologies that undergird oppressive digital media, accomplishing important intellectual and political work. Viewers may learn moves for anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and anti-transphobic action. Humor as a performance of joy, exuberance, and care also lays the foundation for a better world.

Although humor may saturate new media, the use of humor to respond to injustice is not new. Queer and queer of color activists and artists have long used humor to disrupt hate and create community. As scholar Danielle Fuentes Morgan has argued, satire in Black communities subversively unmasks the unethical violence of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Reaction videos expand these practices of satire and parody to subvert phobic ideologies, build power, and cultivate joy.

Using humor in justice-oriented teaching

From YouTube to the classroom, humor has a place in social justice learning. Here are some ways educators can nurture humor as political possibility:

Develop a vision to value humor. Develop an expansive vision for how you can value practices of humor as political possibility. Build on the experiences, identities, and knowledge of your students and consider the sociopolitical context of learning. Consider making a point to better understand how funny digital media such as TikTok videos are meaningful to students as sites of learning.

See and support student digital activism. Marginalized students are using social media to get involved in social justice activism in their communities and online. Take notice of and find ways to support the everyday work students take up to resist and transform oppressive ideologies toward more just futures. For one, consider what knowledge students hold about social injustice and what desires they share for a better world.

Critically analyze everyday digital texts. To teach critical media literacies, bring in the digital media texts that students encounter on social media. Incorporate analysis of comedic multimedia texts such as reaction videos, memes, multimedia collage, or other forms of anti-oppressive remix. You might ask students to submit digital texts (videos, memes, images, etc.) from their everyday activities on social media.

Incorporate satire and parody in critical pedagogy. Educators engaged in critical pedagogy might incorporate parody and satire as forms of critical resistance in the pursuit of educational freedom. Through this approach, you can better understand the role of humor in critical literacies young people learn online and compassionately sharpen these practices with pedagogical assistance.

Design media production with digital mentor texts. Involve students in digital media production that engages the media they may encounter online, such as reaction videos. I tend to approach media production as an iterative cycle to engage ➝ explore ➝ reflect ➝ make. Engage with a mentor text, in this case a reaction video like that from YouTuber Mac Kahey, aka MacDoesIt. Explore other videos or posts of its kind on social media. Reflect together on what students noticed, thought, felt, liked, and would have done differently. Try it out by making a video that takes up and transforms the practices they saw.

 

Every educator needs to incorporate the important practices of social justice work and critical media literacy into their instruction. By examining these principles through the lens of humor, students connect with valuable lessons in how they can counter hate, create community, and speak out against potentially heavy topics in a way that keeps spirits high.

 

Addie Shrodes is a doctoral candidate in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Her dissertation work examines the roles of humor, play, and protest in the critical digital literacies of trans and queer teens. You can follow her on Twitter @AddieShrodes.

As a literacy coach for grades K–6, there is nothing I love more than seeing students deeply engaged in collaboration. From the excitement on the faces of kindergartners as they turn and whisper their thoughts in a think-pair-share to the quick-paced discussion of sixth graders determining where to place vocabulary words according to their shades of meaning, the classrooms in my school are typically full of authentic and lively student interactions.

Student collaboration is critical. Partner reading builds fluency. Sharing manipulatives to retell a story strengthens language development and reading comprehension. The ability to share the pen with another, communicate clearly, and problem solve in teams has so many benefits.

Students need collaborative work now more than ever. Social distancing is taking its toll on student learning, particularly the kind that comes when students work in groups. But how do we bring collaborative learning into a virtual setting this year?

I’ve been meeting with teachers around the United States virtually this summer to support them with the implementation of a literacy curriculum that we use at my school, which calls for authentic collaborative work and rich student discourse. In the course of these meetings, I’ve come up with a few ideas for bringing collaboration into a virtual space.

Set up routines

Just like at the start of any school year, set up class routines for collaborative work during remote learning. Explicitly state expectations, routines, and procedures. Talk about digital norms and practices, such as how to raise a hand or get attention during an online class and how to appropriately use the chat function of a digital platform.

Just as you’d have a checklist of expectations taped to the wall of your classroom, post your expectations on a shared site within the digital platform. Give consistent praise as students are learning the routines and redirect as needed. Allow time for student reflection on routines because learning how to participate and collaborate is just as important as learning the content.

Make the learning purposeful

Collaborative learning should be purposeful. Just like in the traditional classroom, teachers should establish why they’re using a particular group-based or partner approach during instructional time. This will focus the activity and give teachers a lens for choosing a collaborative strategy.

When students can’t be together in person, have them record video conversations on tools like Flipgrid or Padlet. Require students to watch and respond to classmates by posting their own short video or writing a response to create a chain of linking comments. Don’t shy away from giving students—especially younger students—prompts or sentence starters to help them build rich and meaningful conversations, at least initially.

Make the learning authentic

As adults, we work together to achieve a goal or converse to learn about one another, and we want to provide this same experience for our students.

This can mean taking collaboration out of the virtual classroom space and engaging in collaborative experiences with family, friends, or community members. Consider this question we ask kindergartners: “How has life in America changed over time?” They can reach out to caregivers or family members and ask them questions about their experiences in school and at home. If a student doesn’t have anyone available to talk to, the teacher can share experiences through recorded clips or a Zoom call. Stakeholders such as administrators or PTA members can share experiences, too.

Provide fundamental feedback

Keep an eye on how collaborative work is going and give students guidance to steer it in the right direction. That tends to happen naturally in a classroom environment but will take extra work virtually. Provide praise and corrective feedback regularly on both procedures and collaboration. Use class time to reflect on the process of virtual learning, noting what students like and dislike.

If students are engaging in peer editing using a shared online platform, teacher feedback is necessary for it to be purposeful. If student feedback isn’t particularly robust, use this as a formative assessment. Use your next class session to model an appropriate response and introduce a rubric or sentence starters.

Modify activities for virtual learning

Many in-person activities that educators already use in their classroom have the potential to be moved into a remote environment with a bit of creativity. An example of an activity I’ve been thinking about converting to a virtual experience involves Chalk Talks.

As an in-person activity, students meet in groups and answer questions about a book that is posted in the classroom. With my fourth graders, I have used Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. Students responded collectively to questions around topics such as how the main character changed over time and the difference between literal versus figurative text. In addition to responding to teacher questions, students have to weigh in on other groups’ comments.

Virtually, a teacher could place the students in several configurations. First, each student would work independently to answer a question. Next, students would meet in small groups in online breakout rooms and agree on one answer. Then, students would all come together in a whole group, giving “expert” groups a chance to share out. Finally, students would go back to breakout rooms and reflect on the different answers.

Younger students can also collaborate virtually. During an in-person kindergarten lesson, students might have worked together to identify the genre of a set of books. Then the students would have justified their choice by placing it on a graphic organizer.

To do this activity virtually, the teacher could record and share a video about the traits of different genres, and then students could come together in small groups in online breakout rooms to discuss their thoughts. Finally, students could drag-and-drop the titles in categories on Seesaw. Remember that younger students need to practice routines like speaking one at a time and using sentence frames such as “I agree with Katy because….”

I know educators are feeling nervous about the days and weeks ahead, but I also know they are putting a lot of thought into how to teach effectively and creatively in an online environment. By focusing on students’ needs, including the need to work collaboratively, I’m confident we can deliver great instruction.

Katy Tarasi is an elementary literacy coach in the Avonworth School District near Pittsburgh, PA, and a fellow with the Great Minds’ Wit & Wisdom English Language Arts team. In that capacity, Katy delivers professional development and coaching to educators around the United States. She can be reached via email.

In just a matter of days, educators from kindergartens to colleges around the world provided their students with printed learning packets or online learning plans before packing up their desks and leaving their campuses. Scan school websites today, and you will see instructions indicating that learning will be delivered “remotely.”

By its definition, remote means at a distance, far removed, and isolated. At a time when students may still be settling into learning routines and developing self-directed learning skills, these children are faced with schooling at home amid a global health crisis. Students are confronted with learning independently, away from school-age friends and their loving extended families.

Today’s COVID-19 crisis has come at a time when a digital divide still exists. With few days to prepare for delivering learning at a distance, many schools struggled to make learning continue through closures and extended breaks. In the end, whether students are asked to read print or digital texts or to write with pens or keyboards, the one important common denominator is that students need to feel a connection with their teachers and their classmates to succeed.

When planning for the best possible learning outcomes, educators must be mindful that learning requires social interaction for students to remain motivated. Yes, students need assignments tied to the curriculum, but they also need the continued support of a learning community, whether they are in grade school or graduate school. When students feel connected to their classes, they retain a commitment to their classwork, and teachers’ beliefs about the importance of fostering a class community are paramount.

What can teachers do to create connected communities for literacy learning?

• Provide timely and frequently written communication for students, whether sending home an online newsletter that you can make with Smore or posters made with Poster My Wall.
• Be available for two-way communication via telephone, email, or tools like Google Classroom and Google Hangouts.
• Build classroom relationships among students through their writing about their learning or about how they are learning differently at home. Students can establish classroom pen pals by exchanging tradition, handwritten letters and postcards or by posting to sites like Edmodo.
• Keep learning active and fun while respecting the diverse interests and abilities of students. Let students show what they know by composing comics with ReadWriteThink’s Comic Creator, creating characters with Voki, or uploading poems set to music with Flipgrid.
• Reduce the distance in distance learning by providing opportunities for synchronous learning wherever possible. Establish a class meeting time during regular school hours to check in with students using tools such as Zoom or Skype.
• Provide opportunities for students to share their knowledge with others by recording research projects and presenting them with digital tools such as Screencast-o-matic.
• Maintain high expectations for learning by getting a pulse of what your students have learned and still need to know. Kahoot! and Socrative are great game tools to garner student understanding and inform teachers of the need for future instruction.
• Keep students committed to reading and writing with high-quality lessons that can be found on sites such as ReadWriteThink, Newsela, CommonLit, and DOGOnews linked to engaging TE Ed videos.

Distance learning communities nurture feelings of continued connection and collaboration. For primary-age students especially, educators need to include families and caregivers as part of that community and join with them as partners for educating students. Online distance learning ends up becoming a family literacy experience because young children cannot easily negotiate technologies without help, and they should not be expected to do so.

Given the prevalence of online learning, educators  must not forget issues of privacy and online safety. Teachers should direct families and caregivers to appropriate resources for reading books (Epic! for example) and writing (Storyjumper). Common Sense Media is a great resource to use to determine appropriate digital tools. Furthermore, teachers need to check if new technology choices planned for lessons require added permissions. Also keep in mind that, although families may have laptops or smartphones, students may still need to share one device among several siblings.

For necessity’s sake, remote learning has now taken on a front seat as an instructional delivery method to teach and learn. We must recognize that remote learning can feel like removed learning if students aren’t connected with their families, teachers, and peers. It will take continued creativity and collaboration to make this new learning paradigm work as we all look toward “doing school differently.”

Likewise, educators must seek support from their schools and work with colleagues to find the best literacy learning solutions for students. Whether participating in peer-led conferences for professional development or seeking out professional organization resources, teachers also need to feel like a connected community of practicing professionals, even when teaching from home.

Cynthia Pope has researched K–12 online learning extensively, including her 2013 dissertation, Digital Distance Learning Communities. She an experienced K–12 educator, school administrator, and higher education professional, currently serving as a visiting assistant professor of education for Stockton University’s Teacher Education Program in New Jersey.

Teachers have great power in shaping students’ reading identities and reading lives. As the lead learners in the classroom, we model reading habits, invite students into reading with powerful read-alouds, cultivate diverse classroom libraries, and protect sacred, student-led independent reading time in the classroom. But before we can create the kind of vibrant literacy community that readers thrive in, we must first live as readers ourselves. And not just readers, but readers who read wide and diverse children’s literature selections and understand the potential power reading and writing has to change our lives and our place in the world.

This past summer, we created the #BookYourself Challenge to help teachers think about their reading lives and create the spaces they need to tend to it. Each day, we posted “Think Abouts” across multiple social media platforms to remind teachers to find the time to read daily, connect with other readers and broaden their reading community, and boost their book knowledge to include current and diverse children’s literature. 

Teachers across the United States came together for 21 days to renew their commitment to their reading lives. The #BookYourself Challenge pushed participants to change their daily routines to include time for reading, explore new titles and genres, and showcase their efforts through screenshots and “shelfies” (a photo of a person with the book that person was reading).  Participants read books in print and online, listened to audiobooks, subscribed to podcasts, explored local bookstores, and connected with the adult and student readers in their lives. The impact was immediate and a strong community emerged, particularly on Facebook and Twitter. This is a community that continues to thrive. 

The #BookYourself Challenge was so successful that we plan to offer an abbreviated challenge over the winter months to help keep us and our participants’ reading lives strong and to recharge our reading community. Over each day of winter break, we will post daily Think Abouts to help our participants find the time to read and broaden their reading selections using #BookYourself. 

You can access the #BookYourself Think Abouts on your favorite social media platform (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) or you can choose to receive a daily email sent directly to your inbox instead. You can follow the hashtags, like and retweet the posts, and share the challenge with other educators you think might enjoy the daily reminders. You can even join our Facebook community to connect with other teachers and educators to share book recommendations and to contribute your own ideas for carving out time to read. You’ll find a supportive reading community of teachers and educators who read, waiting there for you!

Stephanie Affinito is a literacy teacher educator in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany in New York. Stephanie regularly teaches graduate courses on elementary classroom literacy instruction, literacy intervention, and children’s literature. She has researched literacy coaching as part of her doctoral studies and focuses much of her current work on how technology and digital tools can impact teacher learning and collaboration. You can find her on Twitter at @AffinitoLit.

Kris McGee is an associate professor of Literacy at Frostburg State University in Maryland. She has been sharing her love of teaching and children’s literature for 29 years with children, preservice teachers, and inservice teachers.

App smashing is the act of combining two or more technology applications for the design and creation of your project. In 2013, I wrote a blog post on the use of creating screen casts to assist with your flipping classroom goals. Now, I’d like to introduce you to a free, savvy app called EDpuzzle. EDpuzzle allows you to upload your content videos to the platform and then add quiz questions to the video, which will engage your viewers, enhance their learning experiences, and increase accountability for instructional video use to support your curriculum goals. Additional perks of the tool include the ability to crop the video to help you focus on the most important content, creating voice-overs, and adding notes. EDpuzzle also offers a library of videos that will spark collaborative sharing with educators throughout the world.

How does EDpuzzle work? First, you set up a teacher account and upload your videos. You then add your quiz questions, voice-overs, and notes, crop videos, or both. When finished creating, assign them to students within EDpuzzle classrooms, have students enter an access code for viewing, send out guest links, or embed the instructional videos on your websites, blogs, classroom management systems, or wherever else you can embed code.

Conveniently, when you set up the classroom, the data for the quiz questions are collected on the back end and compiled on a spreadsheet. At a glance, you can see which students watched the videos, how long they spent on the activity, and their answers to the questions you asked throughout the video, which is helpful for facilitating any necessary reteaching. The management options include the ability to not allow students to continue watching the video until they answer the question posed at the checkpoint, which is a useful accountability check and motivator for students to engage with the video content. The videos also come in handy when students need to revisit the content for mastery learning, when students miss a class, when working with families/tutors, or when reviewing for tests and exams.

EDpuzzle offers a curriculum section that is categorized into three levels for elementary, middle school, and high school needs. You can also filter by topic when searching for videos of interest. With a click of a link, EDpuzzle makes it easy to connect with popular educational channels like Khan Academy, National Geographic, TED Talks, Veritasium, Numberphile, and Crash Course. Need more assistance? Subscribe to the EDpuzzle YouTube channel to learn more.

I’ve used EDpuzzles in many ways. Most recently, my teacher candidates explored the application for their flipping instructional video projects and to create interactive read-alouds. They had a fun time with the projects and were impressed by how easy Screencast-o-Matic was to use for recording their videos and app smashing them with EDpuzzle. The ability to enter comprehension questions, voice-overs, and notes and to crop their videos in one application was icing on the cake. EDpuzzle is so user friendly, even your students can create them!

Mary Beth Scumaci is the associate dean for technology education and associate professor of the Practice with the Department of Education at Medaille College in Buffalo, NY. She has a passion for working with teacher candidates to prepare them for the excitement of today’s tech savvy classrooms. Mary Beth instructs technology and literacy courses; is an online courses designer, and facilitates technology trainings for students, faculty, and staff. She can be reached at mscumaci@medaille.edu.

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