Literacy Now

I grew up in the '80s. The [original] Star Wars movies were staples of my brothers’ and my childhoods. The news that Disney and LucasFilm would be releasing a new episode in December of this year has us rewatching all of the movies in marathon fashion, arguing about the best order in which to watch them (Big Bang Theory calls it the Machete Order), bemoaning the change in the re-released Return of The Jedi, and debating whether or not Jar Jar Binks was an asset or liability to Episode I.

Ever so slowly, word has trickled out about the new installment via leaked photos of the first table read, actor interviews, and finally, the official trailer, in which we catch an ever-so-fleeting glimpse at the newest droid to join the Star Wars family, the BB-8.

In the classroom

The BB-8 available for sale is an app-enabled droid, powered by Sphero and designed by the creature shop and puppeteer team on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I purchased one for my students—a new one starts around $150 online—to see what its capabilities were as far as robotics and programming integration. We have not been disappointed.

Until now, much of our coding in class has taken the form of drag-and-drop blocks of code in Scratch to create projects or games, and some of the more advanced students have worked independently in Khan Academy, learning how to use HTML for web design and JavaScript for animation. The droid can be controlled using the Sphero BB-8 app, which allows users to drive, patrol, and message using any app-enabled device. Taking it one step further is the Tickle app, which expands the users’ powers to create programs that will run at the touch of a button. Students find it very similar to Scratch in the user interface, where coding takes the form of dragging and dropping blocks of JavaScript code.

Curriculum alignment

The one droid and device serve my technology classes, which can have up to 25 students in them. Small-group work and time management are critical. Multi-day experiments foster creative problem-solving and collaboration, communication and critical-thinking skills, tenets of 21st century learning. The BB-8 is age versatile and can be integrated into just about any subject or curriculum: robotics, Next Generation Science Standards, and STEM skills are the most obvious.

In education, motivation and ”the hook” to engage students come in varying formats, shapes, and sizes. In my class these days, it’s in the form of an adorable round app-powered droid.

Tina Hurlburt is a grade 5 and 6 technology teacher in Regional School District 13 in Connecticut. Her work includes teaching students the digital and media literacy skills they need to navigate the ever-changing technologies they are faced with every day, providing them with opportunities to try a variety of technologies and software.

As digital technologies become more available in classrooms, digital multimodal composition has become a common classroom practice. Digital multimodal composition refers to creating digital texts using various modes such as written language, images, video, voice, audio, and so forth. Digital storytelling, digital book reviews, and digital poems are examples of digital multimodal composition.

As a researcher and an instructor of a course on digital multimodal composition, I am asked frequently how to evaluate students’ digital multimodal compositions. For example, a fourth-grade elementary school English language arts teacher in my class recently shared that her students enjoyed creating digital book reviews using iPads and seemed very motivated to read the book more carefully. However, she explained her hesitancy to use these practices more frequently because she is less confident in how to assess digital multimodal composition.

In this post, I introduce five research-based domains to consider when evaluating students’ digital multimodal composition. Then, I share several sources of rubrics that can be modified easily to meet your needs.

Domains to consider while assessing students’ digital multimodal compositions

In 2013, 10 teachers and literacy researchers in the Multimodal Assessment Project (MAP) group wrote a book chapter on domains for multimodal writing assessment. As a result of this 18-month collaboration, the MAP group identified five domains that are essential when assessing digital multimodal composition as a performance:

• Artifact is the finished product of digital multimodal composition. A well-created product conveys a coherent message to audiences by using appropriate structure, medium, mode, and technique.
• Context involves the rhetorical and physical surroundings of the artifact. Purposes, audiences, composing environment, and modes are elements to consider around context.
• Substance refers to the quality and significance of content and ideas presented in the digital multimodal composition. The credibility and accuracy of information presented are also important criteria to evaluate the substance of an artifact.
• Process management and technique are related closely to composing skills and processes. To compose a digital multimodal text, students should be able to use not only digital devices such as laptops or tablet PCs but also Web 2.0 tools such as iMovie or MovieMaker. Students also need to manage the entire composing process from planning to publishing.
• Habits of mind refer to students’ behaviors or attitudes that develop over time while they compose digital multimodal texts. Creativity, persistence, risk taking, mindfulness, and engagement are examples of important habits of mind.

To understand fully students’ digital multimodal composition as performance, teachers should assess all five of these domains. However, domains such as context, process management and technique, and habits of mind cannot be assessed through the evaluation of final products. Specifically, context and process management and technique can be assessed through a teacher’s observation of overall composing processes. Changes in students’ habits of mind can be measured by collecting students’ written reflections, conducting a short interview, or asking students to complete a survey that captures affective dimensions of their learning.

Useful rubrics for the evaluation of digital multimodal composition

Rubrics are a common form of performance assessment that can help teachers evaluate and score students’ final products. I share a research-based and modifiable rubric and a comprehensive website you can use to locate easily several other types of rubrics for assessing a variety of digital multimodal texts.

Rebecca Burnett and her colleagues conducted a research study on using a common rubric to evaluate multimodal processes and artifacts. As part of the project, they created a so-called “programmatic rubric” and verified its appropriateness through a case study. The rubric included five categories—rhetorical awareness, stance and support, organization, convention, and design for medium—and defined six different levels of performance. The five categories in the rubric cover artifact, context, and substance domains of a digital multimodal composition so that these categories can be assessed through brief observation of composing processes and careful examination of finished products. There are two major benefits of this rubric. First, definitions of each category and level can be applied to different types of digital multimodal composition. Second, teachers can choose several levels to customize the rubric.

The “Assessment and Rubrics” portion of Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything website also provides links to various assessment tools and rubrics.  The section on “Multimedia and Apps Rubrics” includes links to rubrics for different genres of digital multimodal composition such as a book trailer, digital story, PechaKucha, podcast, and stop motion. The section on “Web 2.0 Rubrics” presents rubrics related to specific Web 2.0 tools such asAnimoto, Glogster, Twitter, and Wikispaces. You can print out these rubrics to evaluate students’ digital multimodal composition or can create your own electronic version of the rubric using one of the programs listed in the “Rubric Builders and Generators” section. For example, Quick Rubric is a website that lets teachers create and save their own rubric. Overall, the rubrics and assessment tools in this post offer a range of practical solutions to help use more digital multimodal compositions as in-class learning practices.

Sohee Park is currently a doctoral student at the University of Delaware.

Meaningful technology integration has become a major component in the courses I teach at my university. I want my teacher candidates to be comfortable with and knowledgeable about integrating technology in their instruction during field and student teaching experiences and eventually into their future classrooms. Because of this, I am always excited when students report back on what they are doing with technology in their placements.

Recently, my student Meg asked what I thought about her giving students a math quiz on telling time using the game-creation tool Kahoot! I immediately told her that I thought it was a great idea and to go ahead with her plan. Her school site had recently received iPads, and she was going to be the first to use them. A couple of weeks later, Meg burst into my office, telling me how successful her Kahoot! activity was. Her students loved the game format and demonstrated that they understood the content well. Then Meg shared some real interesting information regarding assessment in her class.

She stated that the students were very successful with the Kahoot! quiz for review and she expected them to perform satisfactorily on the pencil-and-paper test that followed. However, that was not the case. Despite demonstrating understanding of the math content in a digital format, students performed poorly when given a traditional test assessment. This is evidence that 21st-century learners desire their in-school literacies to match their out-of-school digital lives and that it is time to rethink how we assess students.

After this exchange with Meg, I was reminded of my own experience with digital assessment. When I was teaching a mixed-age middle school class, I found that traditional literature circles were not working with my students. They did not read consistently and were disengaged during face-to-face discussions. Their responses to my discussion prompts were superficial and lacked any evidence of deep thinking.

When I moved the literature circle to an electronic format, I saw an increase in engagement and higher level thinking regarding the text immediately. A group of five students who read Tuck Everlasting used the annotation and notes features in the iBooks app to record their thinking. Collectively, the group recorded 211 annotations and 80 notes. They also posted 91 substantial comments to the digital discussion board for the book. These digital tools provided excellent formative assessment data and allowed me to see my students’ thinking about the text we were reading. That my students were more comfortable with the electronic format and were willing to engage with text at a deeper level than they were with traditional literature circles was evident.

Whether the goal is formative or summative assessment, there are many digital tools available to assist teachers in gathering information on the performance of their students:

Kahoot! is a free, interactive, “game-based” tool that allows users to engage with content in quiz, survey, or discussion formats. Kahoot! is multiplatform, and teachers can use this tool for preassessment and postassessment, as well as connecting with other Kahoot! classrooms globally. As a challenge, students can create their own Kahoot! quizzes.

Nearpod is a multiplatform presentation tool that allows teachers to embed real-time assessments into their instruction. Assessment tools include quiz, poll, drawing, and open-ended responses. The basic version is free. For a small yearly fee, teachers can upgrade to the gold version, which includes options to print individual and class assessment reports.

Socrative is a free tool designed specifically for assessment. Teachers can create multiple choice, true/false, and short answer questions. There is an option for individuals or teams to play a customizable quizzing game called Space Race. Students can submit exit tickets for formative assessment through Socrative. Socrative also provides an assessment reporting system for teachers.

Other digital assessment options include drawing apps and having students record their thinking through video and audio. The possibilities for integrating digital assessment are limitless, especially when teachers embrace assessment methods that go beyond the traditional pencil-and-paper test.

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. 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.

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

Why do we, as teachers, find teaching with digital technology scary? In her recent Literacy Daily blog post titled “Offsetting the fear of digital applications in the classroom,” Carolyn Fortuna wrote about “ideas to gain digital proficiency,” often a very real stumbling block in teaching with technology. Technology can also feel alienating because so often it is mandated without attention to the unique needs of our students—our diverse, idiosyncratic, goofy kids. Blended learning, with programs that designate the amount of minutes and number of questions students must work on each week, or top-down choices about integrating iPads with required apps, can make the digital work of the classroom seem very disconnected from what we as teachers know about our students. We understand the complexity of the needs of our students—from their learning needs to their diverse home lives and languages. And we also understand that we can rely on one another to meet our students’ needs.

As teachers, we must push back against alienating mandates to use digital technology in prescribed ways in order to resituate the goals of the classroom and digital tools as part of our schools and communities, tightly connected to what we know will work. One way to do this is to form a group of like-minded educators in your school and meet to discuss and plan for digital curriculum that matches the needs of your students. It is possible to unite around a shared mandated requirement (such as integrating digital technology into your curriculum) with a shared meaningful goal (such as integrating digital technology that meets the needs of your students in your community) by creating teacher study groups. Your collective voices can guide curriculum to meet your students’ needs and be a supportive space as you try out new digital texts and tools in your classroom.

In a school I have been working with for the past year, I witnessed this occur first-hand. Teachers were tasked with integrating technology (iPads, apps, blended learning requirements, lesson planning tools, etc.) and, as is not surprising, many were initially overwhelmed. Finding time to work together to discuss and solve problems helped teachers feel anchored to their tasks and identify uses of digital tools that were meaningful to their students while also meeting curricular goals. These teachers came away from a year of teacher study groups around issues of digital technology integration with a sense of what mattered to their students. 

The teachers I have had the opportunity to work with in teacher study groups began thinking about technology beyond mandated programs or apps, and they created lessons and units that matter for their unique student population. These teachers have helped students use Skype to discuss global problems like the refugee crisis in Europe, iPads to map their communities and home lives, and social networks to write to kids around the world and community leaders nearby. These ideas came from the opportunity to discuss the needs of their students in teacher study groups.

If starting a teacher study group on digital technology seems like a good fit for you and your school, consider the following steps and ideas:

1. Find like-minded colleagues
   • Who in your school is also deeply interested in integrating technology in the classroom in ways that are meaningful for his or her students?
   • Who is struggling with some of the mandated technology requirements?
   • Who has shared curricular goals that might be met with digital tools?
   • Is there an instructional or literacy coach or expert tech user who could help facilitate your joint conversations?
2. Determine a good time and make a schedule
   • One idea is to use time you are already contracted to be at school: immediately after school, during shared planning, or at regularly scheduled PD days (if allowed).
   • Make a set schedule for the semester or year and stick to it.
3. Choose a study group model and set some shared commitments
   • Lewison, for example, describes a teacher study group model in “Taking the lead from teachers: Seeking a new model of staff development,” a chapter in Teachers and Principals at Work: Becoming a Professional Leader, in which teachers discuss a text or video at each meeting, keep running notes and reflective journals, and work on a shared question or goal.
   • Each meeting can include reading/viewing time, a discussion component, time for questions or problem sharing, and time for reflection or planning on materials from/for the classroom.
   • Share responsibilities about choosing texts, organizing materials, and facilitating discussion.
4. Decide on possible goals and outcomes of the group
   • As a group, take the time to set some attainable goals with possible outcomes, such as developing a meaningful unit plan, writing a grant for additional technology, or bringing a suggested change to mandated technology to the administration.

We all know that students need the chance to use digital technologies in our classrooms, but we also know that it must be meaningful for them. Working together with other teachers can make this possible!

Alexandra Panos is a PhD student in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University. She holds an M.Ed in Teaching & Learning from DePaul University in Pennsylvania and is a former middle school English Language Arts teacher.

Most seasoned teachers can point to a few instructional methods that have been “game changers” in transforming their practice. Some of the most compelling moments of my career have emerged within the context of a face-to-face discussion method, the Socratic seminar. As a technology integrationist, however, I also love the possibilities afforded by digital discussion forums: increased engagement, time for articulating one’s thoughts, a written record of contributions, among others.

If you aren’t familiar with the Socratic seminar, ReadWriteThink, the National Paideia Center, and the Teaching Channel provide introductions to the method. In brief, students sit in a circle to discuss an open-ended question related to a text. The goal is to shift the locus of control from teacher to students, who take turns participating instead of raising hands. However, a few outgoing contributors can sometimes dominate the conversation while excluding quieter personalities. Enter a digital solution: a backchannel chat.

Incorporating a backchannel in any class discussion cuts the number of discussants in half. In a Socratic seminar, an inner circle discusses the question and refers to the text for evidence, while an outer circle observes, listens, and comments within the digital chat space.

It’s important with any classroom backchannel to establish clear objectives. I most often direct the backchannel to observe and comment on the quality of the discussion, noting specific behaviors that move us toward collective meaning construction. Halfway through the hour we switch roles, so everyone gets a chance to speak and to chat online. In our last “metacognitive chat” students wrote, “I can tell they’re listening well because they have good eye contact,” “That was a great piece of evidence for Claire’s point,” and “Luke’s question challenged the group, but it was respectful.” I take this opportunity to teach about positive contributions in digital spaces, and our future seminar goals are informed by the transcript.

In fact, the transcript is what makes a chat so powerful. Although traditional discussions disappear, digital chat remains for future reference. Sometimes I’ll ask students in the backchannel to discuss the same questions as those talking, resulting in two parallel conversations, one vocal and one written. I’ll always have students switch roles at some point, so that vocal and nonvocal students have equal opportunities for participation. In this case, the second “round” begins with a new question, producing a transcript that focuses on two different aspects of a text. Those transcripts become powerful tools for extended learning: sources of evidence for essays, records of changing perspectives and intellectual growth, starting points for blogging; goldmines of our collective thinking.

Picking the right tool for the backchannel is also important. Although we could chat in Google Classroom or in Twitter, I prefer to “cordon off” a conversation to its own digital space. My favorite tools are Todays Meet and Backchannel Chat.In both, I can set up a chat instantly and have students jump right in. (I’ve also used the chat option in Tackk.com.) Each provides a record of the conversation, which I can link to my digital class site or copy to a document. TodaysMeet allows up to 140 characters per comment, great for teaching students to be concise. Backchannel Chat allows space for longer explanations. Both have free versions that meet my basic needs, and paid versions are reasonably priced.

Used thoughtfully, the backchannel is more than a gimmick: It’s a great tool for turbocharging classroom talk.

Angie Johnson is a technology integrationist, media specialist, and language arts teacher at Lakeshore Middle School in Stevensville, MI. National Board Certified in 2002, she has been an educator for more than 25 years and is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University.

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