Literacy Now

For two years, I’ve had the privilege of researching a K–12 school system thoughtfully integrating one-to-one technology for a decade. The most intriguing aspect of this work has been listening to more than 200 administrators, teachers, students, and parents speak about their experiences, hopes, concerns, and advice. A resonating theme emerging from the voices of veteran educators is the reality that we must do more to prepare students (and educators themselves) to critically examine how technology shapes human behavior and embrace practices that promote responsible and healthy technology use, a goal commonly aligned with digital citizenship standards (e.g., Common Sense Media and ISTE Student Standards).

These veteran educators echo insights about technology from a field known as media ecology, founded in work by scholars such as Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. The field advanced the idea that technology is not neutral. As we use technology, it is in turn shaping our practices and ultimately our cultures. This understanding moves us beyond thinking about technology as just a tool; rather, technology transforms us whether we are conscious of it, an idea explored in a thoughtful post by George Couros. To prepare students to participate responsibly in a digital world, we must also prepare them to consider how technology shapes human experience and encourage responsive action.

Critical examination and action promoting digital citizenship will look different in every school and classroom because it requires members of the community to reflect on the unique contexts of their own collective and individual values and practices. As the veteran teachers reminded us often, there are no right answers but, rather, intentional questions and paths of action and practice that flow from reflection. It was in this process that these teachers felt they were truly preparing students for participation in a digital world. Here are three examples from these veteran teachers in hopes of stirring your imagination.

Media fast

One teacher wanted students to reflect on personal technology use by assigning a media fast. He encouraged students to cut out self-selected media (with the exception of that needed for school work) for three days. During this time, students maintained a journal reflecting on their experiences. He also encouraged critical thinking about practices and in class fueled conversations about the ways digital technologies shape human behaviors. He challenged students to embrace new or revised technology practices for the entire semester.  

Community change

A group of teachers wanted their students to research online the unique challenges within their own community and establish relationships that led to student action. Teachers required students to extensively research community challenges and identify community agencies that were working with community members toward solutions. Next, they facilitated students’ transition from developing awareness and knowledge to participation. Students committed to volunteering with one of the community agencies for one semester. The assignment reminded students that the Internet was a bridge to the local community, an idea sometimes overshadowed by attention to the Internet connecting them to the global world. In turn, this opened up opportunities to become active citizens in their own communities.

Questioning cell phone practices

Another teacher wanted to promote discussions with her students about the use of cell phones within and beyond school. This was relevant given the widespread use of phones within some classrooms and the confusing mixed messages about appropriate cell phone use. In her classes, she encouraged students to keep their cell phones visible, inviting the class to collectively and continuously discuss the use of cell phones. She wanted students to develop “a sense of integrity,” determining when it may or may not be appropriate to use cell phones. She believed if students were hiding cell phones in laps, under desks, and in sweatshirt pockets, then she was “reinforcing students’ lying.” She wanted students to make informed decisions. She reminded all teachers, “The cell phone is not just a school tool…[we must] help students learn to manage [it] in all their spaces.”

Each veteran teacher recognized that educators and students are just beginning to ask the most crucial questions about living in a digital world, an endeavor they all believe should have been a focus earlier in their experiences of teaching with technology. So their advice to all educators and students is to move beyond viewing technology as just a tool. Recognize the ways in which technology shapes human experience, and be explicit about the pursuit of digitally responsible citizenship grounded in critical questioning and intentional action. For further ideas, see resources like Common Sense Media and The Media Education Lab. 

Kara Sevensma is an assistant professor of education at Calvin College. She is currently a co-investigator on a research project examining educational technology and human flourishing in a Christian school. The research is supported by the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning.

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

In higher education, textual materials are the most used forms for meaning making. However, as pointed out by Gunther Kress, being literate involves understanding not only words and texts but also multiple modes of representation. Meaning making happens through various modes, such as texts, images, graphs and moving images, and the interplay between the different modes. Multimodality already has an integral role in the Finnish National Core Curriculum and should also be given more emphasis in programs designed to educate future teachers and educational professionals at universities.

Some of us have had positive experiences using digital video composition, but are open to broadening our repertoire of multimodal practices to use infographics more effectively.

At the beginning  are a lot of unanswered questions: What are infographics? What kinds of tools might be helpful to create or interpret them?  What kinds of skills might be involved? How should I model processes of creating infographics?

As a social being, I (Carita Kiili) was not all that confident in thinking through these questions alone, so I partnered with Eliza Brinkman who is from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and is doing a three-month internship at the University of Jyväskylä in Finalnd.

We started our inquiry project by searching for a definition. Mark Smiciklas defines infographics “as a visualization of data or ideas that tries to convey complex information to an audience in a manner that can be quickly consumed and easily understood.” To understand what this would mean in practice, we explored the website Information is beautiful by David McCandless. In one of his infographics, he describes the components of a good visualization as that which consists of a useful goal, integrity of information, a meaningful story, and a beautiful visual form.

At this point, we were pretty convinced that in order to reach a deeper understanding of the art of visualization, we needed to design an infographic by ourselves, using the aforementioned components.

• Our goal was to create something that could be used in a digital literacy course. To that end, we came up with an idea to help us visualize literacy concepts in an infographic using Google Scholar as our data source.
• We constructed a search for particular terms that would align with aspects of the digital literacy course (so, the graph is far from representing all literacy concepts).
• To create an interesting story, we looked at some trends in time related to the frequency with which different literacy concepts appeared in the research literature. In addition, we were interested in how different research communities use a singular and plural form of literacy.
• To create a visual form for our infographic, we used a digital tool easel.ly.  Along the way, many skills were needed including ICT skills, designing skills, and even mathematical literacy skills.

Here is our first infographic—showing that anybody can be a designer. During this journey with Eliza, I have built the needed self-confidence to design a course using infographics.

Because visuals are increasingly important in many areas of life, ranging from business to teaching, we are convinced that learning more about these types of practices will put us both on the right track for developing multimodal literacy practices that can be applied in higher education. We encourage you to join us in exploring how infographics can be useful in your own classrooms. 

Carita Kiili is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Eliza Brinkman is a master’s student at Radboud University, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

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

Cowinners of the 2015 ILA Technology and Literacy Award, Libby Curran and Carolyn Fortuna, are exemplary digital role models. Their work informs how to create, innovate, and use technologies for students to become successful, lifelong readers.

Libby Curran, a first-grade teacher at Richards School in Newport, New Hampshire, was recognized for her project,The Reading Train: Learn to Read Books, Songs, & Games, an award-winning app, for use on Android devices and iPads. She created the app to offer motivating books to engage and support emergent readers, special needs students, and English learners. Drawing from 20 years of teaching experience, she designed the app with over 200 nonfiction and fiction books children listen to, read, and record. Books include simple language, pictures to support concept words, and topics of interest to children. The books also address Common Core State Standards and align to Guided Reading Levels A, B, and C.

The Reading Train gives emergent readers opportunities to practice independent reading with the support of interactive audio, visual scaffolding, a picture/audio dictionary, and a tap/hold option to hear spoken words. It includes quiz games, songbook rewards, and books that build background knowledge, decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension skills. With unlimited user accounts, teachers can listen to children’s recordings, track number of books read, and monitor quiz scores. Libby designed the app specifically so children learn about the world while learning to read.

The Reading Train is a must-have app for teachers, tutors, families, and community-based agencies.

Carolyn Fortuna, an English teacher at Franklin High School in Franklin, Massachusetts, was recognized for her project, “Reading Meets a 1:1 Digital Environment” in Senior High School English. Her work changes how students engage with texts like Deconstructing Disney. It uses digital tools to help students interpret how media messages influence perceptions and to create a voice to compose, produce, and read the 21st-century worlds. 

Using digital media literacy, a mix of topics, primary source documents, Google websites, Chromebooks, Prezis, Quizlets, YouTube videos, film trailers, and more, Carolyn cross-links assignments to build students’ background knowledge and visual deconstruction of media messages. Reading activities include reading intertextually, researching across cultures, analyzing critically, and composing digitally, using multiple modes of print, audio, digital, visual, and video. Questioning prompts to deconstruct media messages include How might different people understand this message differently than me? or Why is this message being sent?

Deconstruction of media messages starts with Google Chromebooks, populated with heuristics, to scaffold students’ encoding of textural messages. Units focus on advertisement analysis, digital workshop argumentation, survey of nonfiction essays with collaborative teaching, study of curated museums of texts through e-learning modules, and production of genre-based compositions with embedded images, podcasts, narrations, YouTube videos, poems, fiction and nonfiction. All experiences move learning from “recall to critical analysis, digital composition, transformation, and publication.”

Through inquire opportunities, students learn to read 21st-century worlds focused on how to interpret texts differently. “Intellectual conversations that critically examine the production, distribution, and meaning of messages” strengthen lifelong learning, critical literacy skills, and 21st-century reading.

Also founder of IDigIt Media, Carolyn supports educators to incorporate critical analysis and digital composition in courses and workshops. Her work certainly “creates spaces where people from divergent viewpoints can work together to better understand the power and place of digital and media learning and literacy in today’s society.”

The ILA Technology and Literacy Award, honors educators in grades K–12 who are making an outstanding and innovative contribution to the use of technology in reading education. All entrants must be educators who work directly with students ages 5–18 for all or part of the working day. Application deadline is January 15.

Tammy Ryan is an associate professor of reading education at Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL.

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

Integrating technology into instruction can be an overwhelming task for classroom teachers. How do new digital technologies fit with what I am currently doing? How do I add one more thing to an already overcrowded day? How do I make the best choices? What does technology have to do with literacy anyway? These are just some of the many questions facing classroom teachers today that can lead to resistance in adapting technology for literacy and learning.

The teachers at Benchmark School had these concerns. We knew technology was important for preparing our students to be successful literacy learners, but we had more questions than answers. Benchmark School is a small, independent school for students in grades 1–8 who have challenges with how they process language or have experienced a mismatch in how they learn related to how they have been instructed. A few years ago, the school took on the challenge of equipping its teachers and students to leverage the power of technology and develop a framework for technology integration.

There are many resources that provide direction for technology integration. The Benchmark community examined a number of these:

1. International Society for Technology in Education Student Standards
2. Manitoba Literacy with ICT Continuum
3. NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment
4. Mozilla Web Literacy Map
5. Common Sense Media K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

As we explored each of these resources, we reflected on how they matched the instructional philosophy of the school. We also consulted with leading literacy researchers with interest in technology, including Julie Coiro and Jill Castek, for feedback and direction.

Out of our reflections and discussions developed the Benchmark School Framework for Technology Integration. The framework covers five key areas:

1. Online Research and Reading Comprehension
2. Communication & Collaboration
3. Problem Solving & Creative Innovation
4. Digital Citizenship
5. Strategic and Efficient Use of Technology

For each of these key areas, we developed a rationale and list of student standards.

After completing work on the framework, we felt that it was important to develop a version of the framework that was student-friendly and could be used by teachers in instruction and to cue students to implement what they have been learning. The five key areas from the framework were posed as questions:

1. What are my strategies for reading and researching online?
2. What strategies can I use to work well with others online?
3. How do I use technology to creatively think about and solve problems?
4. What strategies can I use to be safe and respect the privacy of others and myself?
5. What strategies do I have to be an effective, efficient, and strategic user of technology?

Each of the key questions was broken down into more focused questions to help students (and teachers) understand various aspects of the key questions. Finally, a poster was developed to display in classrooms so that the questions would be visible to all and to serve as a constant reminder for the strategic and efficient uses of technology.

Once the framework and poster were complete, we determined a process for implementation of the framework. We began by asking teachers to focus on one question, “What strategies can I use to be safe and respect the privacy of others and myself?” The next year, we expanded to another question to build on the previous year’s work. Once teachers are familiar with the five key areas and have developed classroom lessons, we hope they will focus on all five throughout the school year.

First and foremost, we learned that technology integration is not an “add on.” Technology helps us to achieve our goal of developing more strategic and effective learners. Second, it was helpful to have a conversation about the role of technology for our students. The most important aspect was taking the ideas of others and adapting them to the particular needs of our school and its students. Each school, to effectively leverage the power of technology for literacy and learning, would benefit from a similar discussion. As a literacy community, we all will benefit if we seek ways to share the frameworks we develop and build on each other’s work to meet the needs of our particular communities. As the framework states, collaboration is a key strategy for our digital world.

Eric MacDonald teaches in the middle school at Benchmark School in Media, PA.

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

Sometimes called “affordances,” the digital world offers advantages to students. Teachers’ repertoires today likely include Twitter, Glog, Kahoot!, Prezi, TED Talks, LiveBinder, podcasts, Animoto, screencasting, and blogging. These and other platforms infuse ways for students to become better readers of their worlds through nuanced textual interactions, inquiry, analytical thinking, and composing, with a number of skill sets developed in a number of ways.

Textual interactions

Online tools transform students into text detectives who have fun while hunting for clues. Start with quickly paced e-learning modules pointing to key evidence; primary sources offer a wealth of possibilities. A Civil War–era journal entry, sheet music from the Roaring ‘20s, a dairy-free World War II cake recipe, or Civil Rights protest photo can spur conversations and engagement, and each can be accessed digitally. Alternatively, daily digital newspapers and blogs allow students to explore modern local and global perspectives. E-readers and audiobooks bring professional narration to combined reading and listening experiences. Digital book chats, online student book reviews, or one book/one school programs can foster a school community through common literary experiences.

Student inquiry

E-learning centers immerse students in appropriately challenging investigations. Online design tasks might include image-based visualizations that spur language acquisition. Vocabulary games, multilevel or multitiered questioning, close reading wikis, or online discussion boards introduce new concepts. Moreover, social justice simulations can unveil lives that have been affected by race, class, language, gender, or religious difference. Further, a curation tool like Storify can help students to develop critical perspectives and to become more curious about others who don’t fit their own community’s definition of “normal.”

Analytical thinking

Do science and English collaborations seem a bit avant-garde? Scientific texts can fulfill various English and literature standards through readings available at National Geographic, NORAD, NASA, Sierra Club, and Nature Conservancy websites. Follow up with a computer lab gallery walk, cartoon slideshow, TED Talk about study skills, sports podcast to spur argumentation, or celebrity media evaluation. Add in online guided questions, dictionaries, and translation tools to help struggling readers. Visual texts are important in our symbol-based society, so digital classic works of art, stylized comics, minimalistic advertisements, and short films can be “read” as balanced, integrated elements.

Composing

Infuse background and context into writing-to-learn activities then let students blog! Because blogging is a reflection of identity, student bloggers gain insights into the human side of composing; they discern the complex interplay of words and ideas for an audience, making sense through print, sound, images, and videos. Digital photography can also bring personalization and purpose to the writing process. And don’t forget how fan fiction creates an outlet for imaginative mediation of the demands of audience and genre.

Ultimately, the richness of the digital world resonates with students, for, as W. Somerset Maugham said, “The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”

Carolyn Fortuna, PhD, is the recipient of the International Literacy Association’s 2015 Award for Technology and Reading. She teaches high school English in Franklin, MA, and is an adjunct faculty member at Rhode Island College.

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