Literacy Now

Summer is the time when teachers recharge and set priorities for the next school year. As a teacher educator and digital literacies researcher, I’ve been using my “downtime” this week to synthesize a set of recommendations, grounded in evidence, that seem most important to share with the inservice teachers, graduate students, and teacher candidates I'll be working with during the 2017–2018 academic year.

I hope this list helps you to set priorities and reflect on what you can do to support digital literacies learning in your classroom this year.

• Use definitions of (digital) literacies to guide pedagogical design: There are many definitions of digital literacies to guide instructional practice (see definitions by Lankshear & Knobel, Spires, Bartlett, Garry and Quick, and the British Columbia Ministry of Education for three helpful examples) and in this TILE-SIG blog, authors have written about conceptalizations of digital literacies many times (see recent posts by Maha Bali, Ian O’Byrne, Paul Morsink for examples). For me, ILA’s recent definition of literacy is a helpful instructional touchstone. If literacy is “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context,” then instructional planning should include activities that teach skills (e.g., identifying relevant information in a range of texts or critically evaluating trustworthiness on the search engine results page), social practices (e.g., using hashtags in social media messaging) and communications mediums (e.g., blogging and podcasting) with digital technologies.
• Plan for online: Online inquiry projects driven by students’ own questions about a topic are ideally suited to scaffolding development of many digital literacies skills, strategies, and dispositions through iterative cycles of information seeking, evaluation, synthesis and creation, research shows. Importantly, much of the preparation for successful online inquiry happens before students touch the keyboard. Students need time to develop researchable questions, to generate lists of helpful search engine keywords that they predict will return relevant, reliable results, and to discuss how the questions and their communicative purposes will inform their choices during online research. Preparing students to stay focused on their inquiry and communicative goals can frame their online inquiry, equipping them to quickly skim and scan for information that is most likely to meet their needs. 
• Integrate making: According to research, when students learn to design and create digital and physical products (e.g., 3D designs for printing or laser cutting or e-textile projects) they develop new understandings of how digital systems work and begin to see themselves as powerful digital creators. For ideas and resources on how to integrate digital making into your curriculum, check out resources from Agency by Design, Make Magazine and those developed by range of research labs and nonprofit organizations dedicated to coding, making, and digital innovation in classrooms.
• Integrate video production: Work by many scholars including Suzanne Miller, Jason Ranker, and Diane Watt shows that video production can be a powerful instructional tool to empower youth and encourage creativity. When students produce videos about themselves, or about an issue that is relevant to their lives, they (re)write their own stories, show the world who they are, what they believe, and what they can do. 
• Plan for multiple projects on multiple topics for multiple audiences and purposes over time: A single project is never enough. Don’t assume that students’ out-of-school social networking and Internet use activities necessarily develop the complex literacies skills that students need to use, create and communicate via digital texts in any context. To see evidence of students’ growth in digital literacies skills and practices, you will need to create a range of opportunities for students to use digital information, create digital texts and to participate in a range of digital literacies contexts over time. This year, your students could create screencasts in which they describe a problem-solving process, create multimodal posters on a topic of curricular relevance, collaborate to develop and maintain a resource-filled classroom hashtag on a social networking site, design infographics, create a computer program using Scratch, or produce a website or a vlog. 
• Encourage an evaluative stance: Evidence from offline and online reading research suggests that students who understand knowledge as a human construction, who know that information serves ideological or economic interests, and understand how messages are constructed to influence, persuade, or further an ideological position are better equipped to question the trustworthiness of a text and to hold information as contingent as they seek out other evidence. Recent work by the Stanford History Education group suggests that even students attending elite colleges may not be able to detect fake news. Plan for activities that emphasize evaluation to prepare students to question authorship and the interests driving information this year.

Michelle Schira Hagerman is an assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada where she also directs the Canadian Institute for Digital Literacies Learning. 

Some of Erin Kessel's fourth graders have never left their rural North Carolina hometown, or even ventured to the nearest beach just an hour-and-a-half away. This fact is a major motivator for their participation in the Global Read Aloud (GRA), which allows “Kessel’s Crew” to connect virtually with students in faraway classrooms to read and share their ideas about the very same book. Conceived by seventh-grade teacher, author, and blogger Pernille Ripp, the Global Read Aloud has grown from its 2010 start with 150 students to among more than one million K-12 readers in 2017. In her September 2015 ILA chat, Ripp discussed the project’s beginnings and its continuing evolution.

Erin, a four-year GRA veteran, has connected her students with classrooms in three Canadian provinces and in Sunbury, Victoria, Australia to share their ideas about Marty McGuire, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Fish in a Tree, and The BFG. She and her students will join Global Read Aloud 2017 this October. After selecting a book study that's best suited for her students, Erin will connect with another teacher with similar interests through GRA’s Edmodo network. Together, they will decide how and through what venues their students will communicate. 

As a tech innovator in her school, Erin’s early GRA interest was linked with a grant-funded 1:1 Chromebook project meant to integrate global awareness, digital literacy, and technology within her literacy block. However, one of GRA's strongest assets is that teachers can employ whatever tech tools fit their comfort levels. In fact, her maiden voyage relied only on Edmodo, Skype, and “old school snail mail” to deliver a North Carolina-style care package to their classroom partners.

Erin and her students report huge payoffs from connecting with classrooms across the world, echoing benefits documented by expert sources such as the Center for Global Education. In addition to learning about tech apps and programs from other teachers, Erin signed on to GRA with the main goal of opening doors to the world for her rural students. “I want to ensure my students have an open mind about all people in our world and not just a stereotype based on what they see on TV or hear on the news. Allowing students to actively communicate and even see students from around the world and realize the commonalities that they share allows my students to create their own opinions of other's cultures and allows them to realize that although we may be different in some ways, we are all humans with the same purposes in life.”

 Autumn, a student who had not traveled outside of her hometown, said “The kids we talk to have the same interests as me…they even like Barbies and play video games! I thought since they spoke another language that they didn't do the same things as us.”

As these examples illustrate, using literature to forge connections across cultures has huge potential to promote empathy and unity, foster cross-cultural friendships, and help students gain greater understandings about the global community by looking more critically at the world.

Ready to take the leap? Erin encourages other literacy teachers by sharing her experiences and mentoring teachers who are new to GRA. Her first-time suggestions include:

• Setting attainable tech expectations
• Trying GRA with a small group of students before launching with the whole class
• Partnering with another grade-level classroom in your own school
• Being mindful of international time zones if you wish to connect live with international classroom partners
• Collaborating with only one class partner (GRA allows collaboration with multiple classrooms reading the same book)
• Considering the demands of adhering to the six-week timeline involved

Terry S. Atkinson is an associate professor in the Department of Literacy Studies, English Education, and History Education at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.

Take film to the next level in your classroom by moving your students beyond comprehension through active viewing, to critical thinking through discussion. Thanks to digital technology, there is a stock of creative independent film shorts from all over the world that can be used support students’ development of multiliteracies.

The resources and examples in this article will provide teachers with turnkey lessons on how to use film shorts as short stories for students to analyze, and discuss. These resources, along with tips on how to use video effectively in the classroom from Common Sense Education, will give you the tools you need to adopt this new approach with confidence.

I learned about the world of children’s independent film through my work on the Media Smart Libraries grant, an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project awarded to the Library School at the University of Rhode Island. The mission of the Providence Children’s Film Festival,  a partner on the grant, is to bring the community together to watch, learn about, and discuss independent and international cinema.  A great resource is the PCFF FilmHub, which includes a directory of films that can searched and filtered by subject area, film type, and age group. PCFF provides film discussion guides for specific films, as well as a generic guide that can be adapted to any film. The film guides give background information about the content and techniques, sample discussion questions, suggested follow-up activities, and lists of book tie-ins.

One film I have used in class is Just Breathe, a documentary about kindergarteners learning how to control their anger. The film guide helps students analyze the film through discussion about the narrative, characters, and setting. Students also learn how film techniques such as close-ups and sound are used to create a message that has an emotional and physical impact on viewers.

Another popular choice is PESfilm, a creator of stop motion animation films. Western Spaghetti is an entertaining way to get students thinking about story line sequencing and procedural writing as well as inference and symbolism. Fresh Guacamole, an Oscar-nominated short, and Human Skateboard, a 30-second commercial, will amaze and inspire your students to create their own stop motion films.

Autumn Leaves is a story about an Iranian girl who stops to play with a leaf while setting off to school. The film warrants several close viewings to give students time to identify details from the text that support their interpretation. This is a great way to introduce or reinforce argument writing skills.

Suzanne Jordan, an elementary school librarian, took film discussion a step further. She was inspired to develop the Francis School Fifth Grade Film Festival to give her students the opportunity to be film critics. She had minimal film background and will vouch that the PCFF FilmHub resources gave her the materials she needed to get started. 

Not all of the films in the PCFF Film Directory are available for free. One solution is to work with school and public librarians to build independent short film collections that support the development of literacy competencies. Another option is to find free educational films on sites such as Global Project Oneness. Help your students actively develop their literacy skills by using film shorts in the classroom. “Enjoy the show” will take on a whole new meaning!

Mary Moen is an assistant professor and coordinator of the School Library Media Program at the Graduate School of Library Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

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

I am a teacher educator and trainer in Argentina—one of the many Latin American countries where students are receiving laptops through the Conectar Igualdad (Connect Equality) program. According to a recent report, “Strategic Approaches on ICT in Education in Latin America and the Caribbean,” the program is working to bridge Latin America’s digital gap by increasing access to digital devices and providing training around these tools.

Yet, sometimes this isn’t enough. Addressing the digital gap also requires the development of essential, 21st-century digital skills. When schools are not seeing results from the Conectar Igualdad program, I recommend the following three professional development practices:

• Familiarize educators with important concepts. Technological changes in school settings are sometimes slow to gain traction. Consider Creative Commons; although it was founded in 2001, the resource didn’t become popular until nearly a decade later. Fast forward to almost two decades later, and most inservice teachers in Latin America are still not familiar with Creative Commons. Many teachers still operate under the notion that whatever is on the Internet can be freely used, as they did not learn about licensing concepts during teacher training. Helping all teachers to understand these important concepts is the first step in supporting their ability to model responsible digital citizenship for their students.
• Increase purposeful uses of technology. There are no recipes or quick fixes to integrate technology in education; different strategies work in different settings. Sometimes educators attend training in search of the latest apps they can use in the classroom. As a trainer, I recommend first looking for pedagogical models, such as Ruben P. Puentedura’s Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition (SAMR) model, that guide teachers in designing, developing, and implementing digital learning experiences.
• Encourage teacher networking and collaboration. Today, it is almost impossible to keep up with the pace of digital changes in education without connecting with other teachers. Those who are more familiar with online resources can help and encourage others to subscribe to blogs (such as Langwitches) or to join professional networks (such as ILA’s Special Interest Groups) to regularly exchange tips, resources, and information about promising practices.

To sum up, continuous and timely professional development has always been considered a necessity. The value of high-quality professional learning experiences goes far beyond earning credits. The vast changes in technology demand that we make professional development for teachers a priority to ensure that all learners are prepared for success in their digital worlds.

M. Carolina Orgnero is a professor at the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto and Instituto Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, and is the technology coordinator at Facultad de Lenguas at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. 

U.S. schools are out for summer! It’s summer time and the living is easy! Or is it? 

Perhaps you have encountered the same challenge: From the moment our grandchildren wake up in the morning, they are clamoring for digital devices. From Peppa Pig to hours of texting and constant “selfies” during family vacations, children are using technology and social media more than ever.

The Pew Research Center reports that 86% of 18–29-year-olds use social media, which is probably no surprise to most parents and educators. Another recent national survey by the Erikson Institute reports that 85% of parents allow their children under 6 years old to use technology at home. Television, tablets, smartphones, and computers are now part of the typical early childhood experience.

A joint position statement issued by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College notes there is conflicting evidence related to the impact of technology on child development. Research indicates a strong relationship between passive media use and childhood obesity, delayed language development, behavioral issues, and irregular sleep patterns. However, research also suggests that digital resources, when designed to incorporate best practices for reading instruction, can be positive learning tools. So how do parents and educators proactively manage their children’s media and technology consumption?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the use of their interactive Family Media Use Plan tool, which takes a step-by-step approach to creating a personalized media use plan for families. Users are asked to consider each family member’s individual needs as they work through questions related to screen-free zones and times, device curfews, digital citizenship topics, and more. Once a plan is completed, it can be printed and shared.

The Media Time Calculator provides information on how much time each person spends on daily activities such as eating, exercise, sleep, and media use. While the tool is designed specifically for families, educators will find that working through the questions will help them address media use during the school day.

After giving the Family Media Use Plan tool a personal test-run, I have made some changes in how our family uses media with our grandchildren. We have a media curfew at meals and are making sure to balance media time with outdoor and other physical activities. These efforts are helping to make our summer a time to “live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air” (as suggested by Ralph Waldo Emerson), with maybe a little dose of Peppa Pig!

Joan Rhodes is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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