Literacy Now

Imagine a school where students arrive at their classroom and start their day by using their mobile device to scan a unique QR code posted on the door. The QR code points the students to a website that includes a series of activities aligned with their individual learning needs. As the teacher enters the room a short time later, she briefly conferences with each student regarding his or her progress, while the rest of the class continues to engage with their tasks.

This approach to instruction would be analogous to what most people refer to as personalized learning. Specifically, the scenario represents a form of personalized learning referred to as playlist-based instruction. Unlike our Spotify or iTunes playlists, however, these playlists are not composed of music. Instead, they are a series of activities focused on specific content and matched to student needs. The intent of playlist-based instruction is to differentiate instruction while providing students control over various aspects of learning, including path, pace, or modality. Digital playlists are a natural extension of how many students are using technology in their personal lives, and thus may increase motivation as students gain ownership for how they will meet their academic objectives.

Playlist creation is fairly straightforward: Teachers begin with a unit, standard, or objective and break it down into a series of tasks. These tasks are then meaningfully reassembled based on assessment data to address students’ learning needs, including readiness, interest, and background knowledge. Students are then provided access to the playlist to complete the tasks, ideally with the flexibility of choosing where to start and what order to proceed through the tasks. Access is provided through technological means, which further facilitates assessment and differentiation as it allows teachers to monitor performance quickly and create or adjust tasks accordingly.

There is a growing variety of tools that can be used to create and deliver playlists. Some, such as Gooru and PowerMyLearning, provide specific content that can be used to organize and deliver playlists while also allowing for teachers to integrate content from other sources. Other tools, such as Blendspace, Symbaloo, and Google Docs, offer similar functionality but often without the flexibility of design. Fortunately, many work with the common learning management systems such as Google Classroom, Moodle, and Canvas.

The following playlists use some of these tools:

• "Research-Based Argument Writing"
• “Reading Plan”
• “Parts of Speech Review”
• “Proportional Lengths”
• “Digital Citizenship”
• “Decimals”

Consider these recommendations as you explore creating your own playlists: 

• Start small with a specific standard or single unit
• Ensure opportunities to learn through different media (e.g., text, video, podcasts)
• Use symbols for visual references (e.g., a book for a reading task or headphones to indicate a listening/viewing task)
• Preview content on different devices to ensure it can be used/viewed properly

It is important to remember that creating and using playlists is an iterative process, thus continuous monitoring is necessary to determine potential adjustments. As comfort and proficiency are gained, there is also the potential to consider codesigning the playlists with students.

Tom Vander Ark notes that playlists create “opportunities to expand the roles of student and teacher in diverse, exciting ways that better meet individual student needs.” Indeed, playlist-based instruction can provide students with greater choice and motivation while giving teachers more time to provide individualized support to students who need it most.

The following resources provide additional information about personalized learning and playlists:

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ video, which reviews different options for creating playlists
• McGraw-Hill Education’s article, “The Six Hallmarks of Personalized Learning”
• Innovation: Education’s blog post about self-directed learning and playlists
• Edutopia's blog post on “Using Playlists With Kindergarten Students”
• TeachThought’s blog post on “How to Create Learning Playlists in A Textbook World”
• Education Week’s article, “Curriculum 'Playlists': A Take on Personalized Learning”

S. Michael Putman is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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

According to a recent Forbes article, data storytelling, which involves weaving data and visualizations into a compelling narrative, has become a sought-after skill in the job market. Today’s variety of online tools and resources offer an opportunity to prepare our students to interpret their research in new and creative ways and to effectively communicate data-driven insights.

Getting started

There are several powerful examples of data visualizations that students can learn from. Tableau, a powerful online data storytelling tool, has a public gallery that students can peruse to gain insight into telling stories visually. Other unique data visualizations can be found on Gapminder’s Dollar Street Project, which displays global public data in colorful, moving charts that make global trends and patterns easier to understand. You can also find many techniques and strategies for creating data visualizations on the Storytelling with Data blog, which provides tips, tools, models, and even an invitation to a monthly challenge for everyone to share ideas.

Once students become comfortable representing their data visually, they can begin to focus on storytelling formats. There are a number of ways to present information beyond reports or slideshow presentations. One popular example is the use of word clouds through sites such as Wordle or Tagxedo. Word clouds display words or short phrases in a list or body of text, in which the size of each word indicates its frequency or importance. The visual representation of the larger texts stands out to an audience and focuses their attention to the words/phrase rather than the number of responses. Many teachers and students have used this to represent class feedback or to show survey responses in a different way.

Telling stories with infographics

Infographics have become a standard way to tell a story, persuade an audience, and present facts and figures in a visually appealing way. Students can easily create their own infographics through online tools such as easil.ly, Visme, and Canva.

Teaching students how to weave a story around data visualizations is a great way to help them translate concepts learned through both data interpretation and the writing process. Students can brainstorm important ideas about specific content while interpreting and analyzing data. Those ideas can then be structured into a narrative or an argumentative form to highlight the points behind the data. Finally, students can think about injecting detail, emotion, or language to inform their target audience. With data storytelling, ideas from both literacy and math can be integrated to help students move beyond the pie and bar graph report and effectively communicate their ideas in new and creative ways.

William Yang is an assistant principal at the Edgewood School in Scarsdale, New York and is on the faculty for the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy at the University of Rhode Island. He can be reached on Twitter @wcyang.

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

Teachers are the sine qua non—indispensable part—of implementing any meaningful change in our schools. It is well documented that when teacher educators study problems of practice in their own classrooms, this can result in meaningful professional learning that not only grows the knowledge base of the teacher, but also can positively impact student learning over time.

At North Branch Area Schools in North Branch, Michigan, my colleagues and I have been looking at the embodiment of digital integration in a different esteem—as a way to embrace teacher inquiry as a legitimate means for growing insights and knowledge into classroom digital practices.

In the context of technology integration, we wanted to learn how schools can build teacher research communities that invite teachers to:

• Think deeply about their intentions with digital tools
• Test assumptions about the technology in their classrooms
• Find meaningful connections with their practice

A teacher research model of tech integration

Research shows that some schools experience challenges with the implementation of 1:1 technology initiatives in K–12 classrooms due to such factors as teacher buy-in. In our district’s attempt to think differently about integration, we explored a teacher research model that has strengthened our approach to professional learning and has increased teachers’ digital literacy knowledge through inquiry, action, reflection, and collegial sharing.

In the spring of 2017, our Technology Committee and Board of Education approved the district’s first Teacher Technology Grant Initiative. With allocations set aside, any teacher could submit an online grant application, via Google Form, for technology that would help address a problem of practice, put learning first, align with state academic standards, and cultivate rich learning for students. 

Teachers were encouraged to apply on their own or with grade-level colleagues in any configuration. Online applications were accepted from all disciplines and careful consideration was given to unique applicants who had vision and drive for meaningful, minds-on, creative, tech-integrated projects.

Applicants had to describe the technology they were hoping to acquire (e.g., name, cost, quantity, model numbers) and provide a written explanation of their plan, including answers to the following prompts:

• Describe your digital focus and how this connects to a problem of practice in your classroom/s.
• What is the purpose of this project? What will students create/do?
• What role will teacher/s play in this project?
• What is the team rationale for this project (e.g., connection to grade-level content, skills, dispositions, and state academic/content area/specialty standards)?
• How many students will your project impact? What is the sustainability?
• In what specific ways will technology enrich the foundation of the project you are proposing?
• Does the design of this project have strong curricular flow and/or cross-integration of content areas?

Submission of the application was an agreement from participants to implement their technology plan during the 2017–18 school year; collect and upload digital artifacts related to their project; communicate learnings, insights, and challenges with their peers and the Board of Education; and participate in a year-end survey about their grant experience.

Proposals were blinded and scored using the Triple E Framework. Applicants were made aware that proposals could be fully funded, partially funded, or not accepted at the time. Personalized letters of acceptance were sent and personal contacts made for those projects not funded.

Insights and learnings

There is value and impact in championing teacher research models for technology integration. 

With this initiative, 16 projects—Ozobots, VR Glasses, Lego WeDo Kits, and more—were funded. The outreach and impact of this approach has been far greater than we had imagined. Not only are all the digital tools being fully utilized, but many of the grant recipients are sharing their learnings with colleagues across the district. As a result, we have just approved and posted our 2018–19 Teacher Technology Grant Initiative.

Amber White is a reading specialist, a teacher consultant for the Saginaw Bay Writing Project, and the director of Curriculum and Instruction for North Branch Area Schools. You can find her on Twitter @AWhite100. 

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

Teaming up with your school librarian can be a great way for teachers to increase meaningful use of technology that strengthens student literacy development. Yet teachers may be unaware of all the ways school librarians can serve as instructional partners. A couple reasons for this could be that educator preparation programs rarely focus on collaboration with school librarians and, more significantly, the role of the school librarian has evolved so much that people’s understanding of their role may be outdated.

How can school librarians help in a digital learning context?

School librarians have always been information specialists, but they are especially attuned to helping teachers meaningfully use digital technologies in practice. One excellent go-to resource created by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) is the 2017 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning: a list of free websites that are useful for media sharing, digital storytelling, communicating through social media, curriculum collaboration, and more. Two popular websites are Buncee, a content creation website for students, and Wizer.me, a questioning and response curriculum tool that librarians have been using in blended learning station rotation activities.

The AASL’s Best Apps for Teaching and Learning is another great resource that adds value to inquiry-based learning in content areas such as STEM, humanities, and reading. Two examples of these apps are Heuristic Shakespeare, a digital book app which pairs text with performance, and Disaster Detector, a game-based app from the Smithsonian Science Education Center that lets players make predictions and analyze and interpret data. The websites and apps on these lists are thoughtfully evaluated and selected by a committee of school librarians who value high-quality resources that encourage student interaction, higher level thinking skills, and increased literacy development.

What can collaboration with a school librarian look like?

School librarians are trained to be instructional partners so they are comfortable with all levels of collaboration. The following are examples of three types of collaboration—aligned, cooperative and conceptual—and what each can look like between school librarians and teachers.

In the aligned phase, the classroom teacher identifies and communicates particular student needs to the school librarian. An example could be to address a weakness in reading comprehension of informational text for fourth graders. The teacher could use a digital resource for informational text developmentally appropriate for those students such as NewsELA. The school librarian can reinforce those same skills during library time by using a research database for upper elementary students such as PebbleGo Next. A benefit of aligned collaboration is that students learn the same skill across digital platforms and content areas.

In the cooperative phase of collaboration, a little more time commitment and communication is necessary. The teacher and librarian get together and decide the best way to teach the same learning objective, such as using Google Keep for note-taking to answer a research question or problem. The teacher and librarian agree to help each other and/or teach jointly for this specific learning objective in the project.

Conceptual collaboration is the most sophisticated type and requires teachers to combine their expertise. It usually occurs for a complex project-based learning activity and involves sustained, collaborative planning from start to finish. A great example of a more sophisticated collaborative project is a high school librarian who collaborated with 11th-grade ELA teachers on a literacy criticism assignment for Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. The librarian used virtual meeting tools to bring the author and cyber security experts into the classroom. Students not only had access to primary sources but learned interview techniques and were exposed to career options. Although it takes time and planning, the possibilities for meaningful collaboration at this level are exciting.

Connect with a school librarian today and make plans for real world collaborative projects that deepen student learning.

Mary H. Moen is an assistant professor and coordinator of the School Media Program at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. You can find her on Twitter @mary_moen.

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

Madelaine called me on a Tuesday. She needed advice for her fifth-grade project on internet safety. With her teacher’s help, she put me on speaker phone and asked my permission to record the conversation. Her questions were important. Among them, “How can kids stay safe online?” and “What advice do you have for teachers and parents about how to teach kids to be safe on the internet?”

Toward the end of our conversation, Madelaine’s teacher noted that it is difficult to know what resources to use or where to seek advice on internet safety. Her comments made me wonder whether other teachers feel this way, so I decided to use my post this week to share research that can help teachers and parents minimize risks while preparing children to practice smarter, savvier, and safer internet use.

How can kids stay safe on the internet?

During my conversation with Madelaine, I emphasized the importance of parents, teachers, and students talking openly about what safety means, the kinds of sites or activities that might pose a risk, how to avoid risks, and what to do if they find themselves in an upsetting situation. A 2011 landmark study published EU Kids Online found that 12% of students ages 9–16 had experienced situations online that made them feel bothered or uncomfortable. Interestingly, a much higher 55% agreed there is online content that would upset other students their age.

The study also found that, although more internet use predicted higher probability of exposure to online risks, students who used the internet for more diverse purposes at school and at home also seemed to acquire a more diverse set of digital skills that allowed them to take advantage of online learning opportunities. Another 2011 report, also published by EU Kids Online, found that digital skills may protect students from risks, even as they continue to be more active online. Therefore, teaching digital literacy skills such as how to block unwanted messages, delete browser history, and search for information online may mitigate risks.

What can teachers and parents do?

A recent article published by Journal of Communication found there is no single best approach. However, it seems that a constellation of parenting strategies called “enabling mediation strategies” may strike the best balance of empowering children to develop internet skills while minimizing online risks. The study found that when parents encourage their children to engage in online learning; participate in online activities with their children; explain online sales practices; identify which websites are appropriate or inappropriate; suggest ways to use the internet safely; assist with problem-solving; discuss strategies for independent problem-solving; and monitor use, they increase children’s self-efficacy in dealing with online risks.

Restrictive mediation is associated with fewer online risks but at the cost of opportunities to build critical digital skills. Interestingly, parents who report more advanced digital skills are more likely to use enabling mediation strategies, which suggests that one important way for schools to support children may be to support parents in their development of digital skills.

In a thank you letter, Madelaine wrote that she learned, “How we need to empower kids so that they have choices.” As teachers, we can create learning spaces that empower student choice and scaffold foundational online safety skills by creating opportunities to practice a range of skills and by inviting conversation about what to do when things go wrong.

Michelle Schira Hagerman is assistant professor of educational technology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. Madelaine and her parents gave permission to use her real name in this blog post.

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