Literacy Now

On the first day of classes last fall, I asked education undergraduates to create a professional Web space where they would document their growth as teachers. In addition to learning core content, I explained we would work to develop professional digital literacies skills, including skills allowing us to create online content and participate openly in professional online networks. I explained that students would share their in-process work on their blogs. I encouraged them to chronicle and curate evidence of their emergent teaching skills, too. Add images, videos, lesson plans—even the ones that flop, I said. Looking around the room, I saw dozens of millennial faces—fresh, eager, and terrified.

At the end of class, I invited students to submit pressing questions on exit slips. I expected nerves about lesson plans, differentiation, whether they could hack it as a teacher. I did not expect that 20 out of 80 comments would be about online participation.

One student wrote: “I prefer to keep close control over what I put online. And I feel that might stifle what I’m willing to put out there. Plus, I might want to save the best ideas for myself.”

Others wrote:

• “I don’t like putting information online.”
• “I have no idea  how to create a blogging space.”
• “I have privacy concerns about public assignments.”
• “I’m a little concerned about creating a digital hub and a Twitter account, as this is all really new for me.”
• “What are we allowed and not allowed to put online as far as professionalism goes?”

At mid-term, I invited more feedback.

One student wrote: “I don't want to be on Twitter, nor will I be required to be on Twitter as a teacher, yet it is a requirement for this class. Same for the personal website. I will not be required to have a website as a teacher.”

From my perspective, the benefits of social, networked learning have been well documented by scholars including Roy Pea, Henry Jenkins, Lev Vygotsky, Christine Greenhow, and danah boyd. As a learner, I think with, through, and because of others. To me, sharing and learning from others online is beneficial. Some of my students felt differently.

Professors Jon Dron and Terry Anderson of Athabasca University offer an explanation that resonates. In their recent chapter entitled “Agoraphobia and the modern learner,” they point out that when learning moves into the open, as it did in my class, students can feel vulnerable. Skillful online learners know when, how, and how much to share in networked spaces, but for novices, the networked world brings new reasons for fear. Online work might reify their ignorance, or expose them as inadequate. Moreover, the authors note that offline social structures in any learning community play a significant role in learners’ willingness to contribute openly. On the first day of their professional preparation program, I bet nobody felt sure of their place offline or online. 

A report published by MediaSmarts in 2015 places openness at the center of its model of teaching and learning in the digital terrain. Mozilla’s Web literacy framework does, too. Together, these frameworks suggest that literacy today includes sharing, collaborating, participating, and understanding how to use and create openly accessible resources, without (as Dron and Anderson also say) shame or fear of being wrong. My experience with teacher education students suggests there is work to do. 

With support from ILA’s Literacy, eLearning, Communications, and Culture Committee, Ian O’Byrne, Heather Woods, and I soon will launch a survey of digital literacies teaching practices at digitallyliterate.net. We’re particularly interested in the ways teachers design learning experiences that build confident online collaborators. Our processes, our data, and our analyses will be shared openly on our website. As the project grows, we will invite your thoughts and critical perspectives. Importantly, we hope the project will generate new understandings of what literacies educators around the world are doing to prepare children, teens, and adults to live and learn in open, digitally networked spaces.

Michelle Schira Hagerman is assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Ottawa.

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

Michael Manderino, from Northern Illinois University, and I will be coeditors for a new column in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (JAAL), “Digital Literacies for Disciplinary Learning.” Mike studies disciplinary literacies in digital contexts in history and English language arts and the use of multimodal texts for disciplinary learning. My work explores online reading and research, digital literacy and problem solving in libraries, and the use of apps to support learning in science.

The introductory column will be published in July 2016. We approach this opportunity with great excitement because this collaboration unites Mike’s and my individual interests and complementary perspectives to forge new ground. The column will illuminate important questions and identify trends emerging in the field. As we explore topics with invited coauthors, we bring the mindset of colearners: making connections along with our readers and pooling our collective experiences to think about innovations in instructional practice.

Column content will use examples demonstrating new possibilities for innovative digital and disciplinary instructional designs. Although new technologies and apps will be highlighted, literacy and learning practices that accompany the use of these tools will be the focus. This approach to digital and disciplinary learning demonstrates it is not the orchestration of technological tools that should be emphasized in quality instruction. The social and intellectual practices that accompany the use of those tools is the true transformative takeaway.

Given our preference for interactivity, we will offer a number of additional resources linked from the online edition of JAAL. We will include digital content which may take the form of interviews with invited column authors who will draw out and highlight key ideas from their pieces. Supplements may also include expanded examples in the form of digital pictures or video of the learning environment, digital student work, and links to related research. These features will bring content to life and give readers with a vision of possibilities.

We have invited esteemed colleagues who work in schools and community settings to share their insights. These articles will include illustrative examples and implications for research and practice. These invited authors represent a range of disciplines and contexts and work with adolescent and adult learners at different points in their learning trajectory. Mike and I will reflect, along with the authors, on the territory covered across the column series, and on our emerging understandings the synergies and intersections of digital and disciplinary literacies. These insights offer us a rich opportunity to refine, reshape and reflect on additional considerations that came up when thinking about Digital Literacies for Disciplinary Learning. Mike and I are excited about this journey and anticipate a rich set of learning interactions with JAAL readers and the TILE SIG community.

Jill Castek is a research assistant professor with the Literacy, Language, and Technology Research group at Portland State University.

As the importance of digital literacy and digital freedoms for all learners grows, so does opportunity for transformation from Pre-K through higher education. In this context, “open education” is a critical focus for literacy and technology supported programs, both those strictly online as well as blended learning environments. Open learning, or open education, is a set of practices, resources, and scholarship that are easily accessible, free to use and access, and to repurpose. As an emerging practice, definitions of open learning are currently being developed, impacting aspects of educational learning design, practice, pedagogy, and theory.

To better understand these spaces, researchers increasingly are conducting research and interacting openly online. Open research is research conducted in the spirit of free and open source software, making elements of the research methodology, data, and results available online. Open research practices such as sharing data, materials, and analysis alongside published articles have many benefits, including easier replication and extension of studies, increased availability of data for theory building and meta-analysis, and increased possibility of review and collaboration even after a paper has been published. Although modern digital texts and tools make sharing easier than ever, uptake of open practices and research has been slow.

As an example of an open research project, Michelle Schira Hagerman from the University of Ottawa and I are starting a project to study the knowledge, skills, and dispositions used by educators as they embed digital texts and tools in literacy instruction, The Digitally Literate Project. This research and their reflections will be carried out openly online. The ILA’s Literacy, eLearning, Communications, and Culture Committee tapped us as project leads for this work to identify the challenges, changes, and consequences experienced by teachers worldwide in integrating digital literacies into the literacy curriculum.

The research project is just getting started. If you are an educator and have a story to tell about the integration of digital literacies into literacy instruction, we want to hear from you. This research will be conducted globally online and needs a sample from a global audience. Please get involved if you’re a literacy educator and integrating new and digital literacies in an international classroom with an online survey so we might better understand the challenges and opportunities educators are facing. Following this, interviews will be conducted and distributed online. Visit the project’s website for more information.

W. Ian O'Byrne is an assistant professor of Literacy Education at the College of Charleston. His research examines the literacy practices of individuals as they read, write, and communicate in online spaces. You can follow him online on Twitter,and his blog. O’Byrne also publishes a newsletter on literacy, technology, and education.

One of the greatest perks of being a university professor (other than teaching amazing students!) is to be able to travel to many schools and chat with the teachers in the field. Most recently during these visits, I kept hearing the same recurring theme: “We have all this technology, now how do we use it?” From my own observations and research, I have found that teachers are comfortable using the technology itself and actually want to integrate technology into their instruction but they are unsure of how to do this in a way that is authentic, relevant, and meaningful for their students. From preservice teacher candidates to graduate students and inservice teachers, I get the same question: “Where do I begin?”

Recognizing the need to ensure that undergraduate preservice teachers are prepared to integrate technology meaningfully into their future classrooms, I have started modeling technology in all of my class sessions. For example, one of the first lessons I teach in my Technology Integration for Early Childhood course is how to find a professional learning community (PLC). Because technology is ever-changing and new tools are popping up daily, it is important for teachers to find information on the newest resources and connect with other teachers who are using these resources successfully in their classrooms. 

A simple Google search will produce thousands of resources for educational technology PLCs. In addition to the wonderful resources that are presented here on the TILE-SIG blog, here are a few of my other favorite PLC sites to visit:

• Teaching Like It’s 2999!  This blog authored by Jennie Magiera provides tons of information for the digital classroom. Jennie offers lists of iOS and Android apps that are useful in the classroom as well as tips for using iPads along with samples of student work using these tools. She also offers resources for using Google Apps for Education and locating grant opportunities.

• Classroom 2.0 Classroom 2.0 is a great resource for any teacher beginning to integrate technology into his or her classroom. This site hosts The Learning Revolution blog that describes a variety of free professional development resources including blogs, podcasts, and webinars. There is also a forum to connect with educators from around the globe.

• Free Technology for Teachers Author Richard Byrne posts daily blog introducing readers to a variety of digital tools and ideas for application in education. This site is very user friendly and is a good place for teachers who are just beginning to integrate technology to get ideas. One of my favorite features of this blog is Byrne’s “Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week.” Readers can have these tips sent to them in one weekly e-mail.

All of these resources are inspiring and offer a wealth of information, but this can also be overwhelming to someone just beginning to use technology in the classroom. Thus, I end with two pieces of advice:

1. Technology is just a tool in the lesson. The focus should always remain on the content being taught, not on the technology used to teach it.
2. Start small. Technology integration can be overwhelming if you try to do too much at one time. I advise my preservice teachers to pick one thing they would like try and stick with it until they are comfortable. As they become more comfortable, then they can add more.

Kristin Webber is a veteran teacher with over 22 years of teaching experience. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Department of Early Childhood and Reading at Edinboro University, where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in literacy and technology. She also serves as the program head for the Graduate Reading Program. While in the classroom, Kristin has taught at every level from preschool to high school. Her research interests include the new literacies, instructional technology, adolescent literacy, and reluctant readers.

Although there is no single definition of literacy, most hold that literacy is not just a trait that resides solely in the individual—it requires and creates connections with others and leads to empowerment. Literate members of a society are capable of being active participants in their communities. If your goal as an educator includes preparing future citizens, then you might want to look into one project associated with the upcoming 2016 elections: Letters to the Next President 2.0.

The biggest differences between the educational activities offered now compared with 2008 (the last time we knew for sure that we’d have a new U.S. president) are the many ways students can have conversations online. During the 2008 presidential election, Facebook and Twitter were relative technological newcomers. Google Docs was also rather new in 2008, and it serves as a good case study for how things have developed since.

Google Docs was the central technology piece in the original Letters to the Next President in 2008, launched by Google and the National Writing Project. The website was the collecting point for the text of letters to whoever the next president was going to be, written by over 10,000 students. The project was innovative, and the well-designed site featured an interactive map with links to letters from students across the country, indexed by issues. What the site didn’t have was a way for youths to have conversations around those issues.

This year promises to be different. The activities around Letters to the Next President 2.0 will have a lot of opportunities for students to have conversations with one another while they research, write, and make media about issues that matter to them.

For example, Hypothes.is will be organizing “annotatathons” where readers annotate political language together—debate transcripts, candidate websites, speeches, and op-ed pieces. To get more comfortable with social annotation as we introduced it to our own students, some educators and I experimented with synchronously annotating the 2016 State of the Union address, and it was an engaging experience with about 250 comments and replies made during the course of the speech. In February, there was a weeklong Presidents' Day annotatathon featuring great speeches from a diverse sampling of presidents such as Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan; there will be another annotatathon beginning March 14 around President Obama’s 2008 “A More Perfect Union” campaign speech.

I’ve written before on this blog about different ways to annotate text and other media online, but one of the most intriguing aspects of an application like Hypothes.is is that the comments are anchored to the text. In other words, when a user clicks on a highlighted part of the passage, the comment associated with that passage pops up; similarly, if a comment is selected, the part of the passage that it’s based on appears next to the highlighted text (see screenshot).

A number of other partners are involved in the Letters to the Next President project. KQED Education has already begun gathering Do Now resources to facilitate student discussions on political issues via Twitter or on their blog; KQED will also be providing support for classrooms to create and share multimedia responses like infographics and political art. The Lamp’s Media Breaker will engage students in conversations by remixing and annotating political videos. Some of the other partners for Letters to the Next President 2.0 include Mozilla, The New York Times Learning Network, and PBS NewsHour. To follow and add to the conversation use #2nextprez on Twitter.

The months leading up to November 2016 will provide some engaging learning for educators and students. Join the conversation.

Chris Sloan teaches high school English and media at Judge Memorial in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project and KQED Education. In the summer, he is an instructor for the overseas cohort of Michigan State University’s Master’s in Educational Technology program.

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