Literacy Now

As a former high school teacher who taught at a Title I school, getting a call from a graduate who seeks advice as he or she attempts to navigate the challenge that is college is not uncommon. So I wasn’t surprised to get a call from my former Associated Students Government President who was a junior at UCLA. He was hoping to get the summer internship at Hulu. As he was completing the application, he realized that Hulu wanted a personal digital portfolio. Despite my telling all my students repeatedly to set up an engaging personal website, to be active on Twitter, and to maintain a robust LinkedIn profile, he did not think it was that important for him to do so until it was too late.

Some readers might wonder why I would encourage anyone, especially high school students, to create an online presence. After all, if The New York Times’ article, “European Court Lets Users Erase Records on Web” is any indication, wouldn’t it just be better for my students to not have a social media account or a website?

I began working on creating positive digital footprints because of a post I saw on a website called Rate My Teachers 10 years ago. Although they were mostly positive, seeing posts about me as a teacher without my input prompted me to create a personal website. I did not want someone else’s perception of myself and my work to be the only thing on the Internet. It is true that I have received more than my share of junk e-mails, but I continue to collaborate and connect with researchers and teachers all around the world.

Social media and getting a job

According to the 2014 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey, 73% of employers used social media as their primary recruiting tool, and 94% of those used LinkedIn as their primary tool. For highly skilled tech-related jobs, the percentage increases. Although many employers said they rarely care about a candidate’s political statements, their negative perceptions are strong against illegal drug references (83%), sexual posts (70%), spelling and grammar errors (66%), and profanity (63%) on any social media platforms. With the advancement of big data analysis tools, teaching our students to take control over what is being posted on the Internet is more important than ever! Here are a few things to remember to share with students.

• Whether you want to or not, you will make digital footprints. Once I spoke with a teacher about the need to maintain a professional website. She said, “I don’t want people to know about me, so I don’t have Facebook or any social media accounts.” I told her to Google herself. Needless to say, she was not happy with what she found. She realized that her students, friends, and family members have posted a lot of information without her knowing. For some teachers who have not considered themselves to be public figures, knowing that our salaries, work places, and our licenses are all accessible by the public under The Freedom of Information Act could come as a shock. Our work e-mails and browsing history when we access information on our work-issued devices can also become public. I don’t know about you, but I would rather maintain my professional website where I have control over what is being posted to be the first result to come up if someone searched my information. This leads me to my next point and example.

• If you don’t, someone else will tell your story. Take control. At the recent International Literacy Association (ILA) Conference in Boston, an attendee asked me if I had a business card with my information. Before I could answer her, she said, “Never mind. I will just Google you.” I was thankful I have maintained my personal website and a YouTube channel for many years. In fact, my first presentation at the ILA conference (then the International Reading Association) three years ago came about when another researcher found me on YouTube and wanted to include me in her presentation.

• Everything is permanent. Even the things you share on Snapchat. Many of my students believe that disappearing display on Snapchat means that the information is gone forever. I always tell them it is gone until they are running for political office or applying to become an FBI agent. I tell them unless they want whatever they shared to be on the homepage of Yahoo, MSN, or Bing or as a Google Doodle, they shouldn’t share it. Ever. I also inform them they should remember that having a Wi-Fi–enabled device means that the information is posted somewhere or shared with someone as soon as they take photos or videos on that device.

• Every post tells a story. Make it count. Because everything is nearly permanent online, one should be careful of what one chooses to share. I used to tell my students that I am an advocate for freedom of speech, which doesn’t guarantee them freedom of judgment from others. As the Jobvite Survey shows, all employers judge potential candidates on the basis of their social media behaviors.

• Be discreet on different tools, but keep in mind of the larger online persona. Although I have all the major social media accounts, I use different tools for different purposes. For example, I post only professional information on LinkedIn and Twitter as I consider it to be a professional space. On the other hand, I use Facebook and Instagram to share my personal activities only with my friends and family. It is no different from choosing the right type of literature genre to express one’s feelings and ideas. Sometimes one needs to write poems whereas other times one must write an essay! So why not consider it before your next post?

Exercising digital citizenship

We all live in a digitally enriched world where one’s knowledge and information have become an important commodity for success. You will notice now many major news outlets such as NBC, ABC, and CNN reported what was posted on the Facebook accounts of the victims of Orlando shootings or the slain Dallas police officers. You hear daily what was tweeted by presidential candidates.

Whether you consider yourself to be a public figure, taking control over your digital persona is a must. And teachers must teach their students to exercise good digital citizenship. For more information on how to help your students, please check out Common Sense Media.

Most important, remember that your digital footprint is your personal brand.

Kip Glazer is a native of Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States in 1993 as a college student. She holds California Single Subject Teaching Credentials in Social Studies, English, Health, Foundational Mathematics, and School Administration. In 2014, she was named the Kern County Teacher of the Year. She earned her doctorate of education in learning technologies at Pepperdine University in October 2015. She has presented and keynoted at many state and national conferences on game-based learning and educational technologies. She has also consulted for Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning and the Kennedy Center ArtsEdge Program.

As an elementary teacher for 10 years, I dabbled in technology as a learning tool but always looked at it from the outside in. I used the Smartboard to present lessons and show my students fun math games. Technology was an insertion to my lesson, not a means to deeper learning.

Recently, I turned technology inside out and started to see it as a vehicle to move the content or unit of study to a deeper level. I asked myself: How can technology enhance the learning of my students and the learning process? How can technology support learning through collaboration, communication, and creation of information?

So my first graders and I embarked on a four-week journey into the unknown world of producing an iMovie together. I asked them: “What makes real reading?” To answer that question, we viewed videos of students demonstrating reading strategies. We evaluated these “texts” as an audience to see what worked and didn't work. These young learners identified that students who talked directly to the camera were easier to learn from than those who read from a script. They noticed showing examples of reading strategies was more informative than singing a catchy song. They thought deeply about the way others communicate through video.

After they had some schema of the film they would create, we stepped away from technology. Making the movie was our tool and motivation to communicate, and the goal was to share our learning and understanding of real reading.

During one work session I said to the reading specialist, “This video is going to be a mess! It is taking too much time out of our reading instruction.” Her response was clear: The students were internalizing learning and doing meaningful work. Having a supportive colleague who recognized the important work our students were doing allowed me to forge ahead. It validated the time and energy the class spent on the project.

Students wrestled with questions like What does visualization really mean? and How can I communicate what “looking for chunks” to decode really is? Through the process I did not give students answers but guided them and pushed them to be clear and articulate. It became a sort of formative assessment, where some partnerships moved independently and others needed recurring support and scaffolding. I didn’t know how the process was going to unfold and it didn’t matter. Learning existed in each moment. For every time I doubted the process, I was inspired by students’ thinking and processing.

Of course I’ve used an iPad before to record video, but never have I handed it over to 7-year-olds to do the real work. The morning I pulled the microphone out of the box and assembled the tripod, there was a buzz in the classroom as recording day finally arrived. The children rehearsed and revised on the spot, knowing their reading strategies and examples inside out. They asked to rerecord until they had it right—and would have kept going for perfection had I not cut them short. They saw the vulnerability in trying something for the first time and if they weren’t successful, they worked at finding a solution.

After editing, we shared our first film on Twitter and YouTube.

Even though I was convinced by this point that developing collaboration and communication skills through a digital medium was paramount to the product, the debut of our video was priceless. Parents thanked me for the “gift,” our school leader mistook us for third graders, and gurus in the literacy world retweeted us. The children had a real audience and received authentic feedback to solidify their learning. They recognized that people beyond our classroom walls know and use the same reading strategies. They felt famous for talking about reading.

Technology cannot be an add-on to the curriculum or an afterthought to boost motivation. It adds to learning and engages students in new ways, but becoming digitally literate is more than being able to manipulate the latest program. Technology changes in an instant, and we cannot equip our students for the tools and programs of tomorrow. This journey showed me I can endow my students with experiences that promote original thinking and creativity. I can create situations where they rely on one another to develop ideas and communicate. I moved from reading teacher to a facilitator of multiliterate learning. I led the way and set the vision, but the children did the real work.

Caroline Petrow is a first-grade teacher at Durham Academy in North Carolina.  She has 11 years teaching experience and a MEd Reading Education.  Follow Caroline and her students on Twitter. ​

It’s summer time, a time when many of us are looking for professional development opportunities to help us prepare for an exciting new school year. If you are in search of new ideas, explore the options at the SimpleK12 Professional Development in Your PJs website. The educator community is awesome and has much to offer in the form of webinars, resources, collaborative sharing, and more. Their mission:

…to help educators inspire their students, engage their learners, perfect their craft, and share their experiences to help others do the same. Never stop growing. Never stop learning. Never stop sharing. Online professional development. Anytime. Anywhere…even at home in your pajamas! We call it PD in your PJs. So put your bunny slippers on, and come join us!

I discovered this PD site on my mission for Google training. I was investigating professional development options and came across the SimpleK12 website. I signed up for a free all-day Google Apps webinar and was so impressed, I purchased a membership. There are many perks to the membership including professional development certificates after the completion of webinars, synchronous or archived. SimpleK12 offers more than 700 professional development hours and thousands of professional development webinars on hundreds of timely topics in education. The trainings target educators including administrators, media specialists, classroom teachers, literacy coaches, and technology specialists.

Webinars are facilitated by the energetic SimpleK12 team and are instructed by educators and specialists from the field who share practical and relevant information, skills, strategies, and best teaching practices that can be applied immediately. Webinar options include podcasting, digital citizenship, differentiated learning, counseling, Web tools, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). To view a listing of all webinars, download the SimpleK12 catalog or explore the website for opportunities. In addition to webinars, you can download classroom resources and e-books and participate in periodic free webinars.

There are three different membership options, Free Basic, Premium, or Group Membership. I purchased mine during my first all-day free Google webinar and received special pricing—membership deals are offered periodically. I can view 30-minute webinars in real time or watch archived webinars whenever and wherever I want.

SimpleK12 makes PD fun by awarding completion certificates, achievement badges, and Bunny Bucks you can spend in the SimpleK12 store, perhaps to purchase your own blue bunny slippers (the logo of the site that showcases it makes PD in your PJs possible). Follow SimpleK12 on Twitter, where they post excellent resources throughout the day. You can investigate free tech tools, live webinars, career opportunities, interesting articles, and much more. There is nothing like the blue bunny slipper alerts coming right to the palm of my hand. From one educator to another, I highly encourage you to investigate SimpleK12 and all it has to offer. This techie teacher rates SimpleK12 five blue bunny slippers up!

Mary Beth Scumaci is a clinical associate professor and technology coordinator with the Division of Education at Medaille College in Buffalo, NY. She designs and instructs technology courses and trainings for students, faculty, and staff. Her mission is to help prepare teacher candidates for a successful career in education.

Mobile devices have permeated teaching and learning environments. Apps can improve preschool students’ math understanding, can positively impact science learning, and can be used to promote healthy behaviors. There are also a significant number of apps for literacy and language instruction. 

A challenge for literacy educators is finding good literacy apps, given that 2015 data show at least 1.6 million apps for Android devices and 1.5 million apps for iOS devices. A good app, in our definition, provides opportunities for pedagogically sound literacy instruction and provides adaptability to meet the needs of learners. It also, as Richard Beach and Jill Castek noted in "Use of apps and devices for fostering mobile learning of literacy practices,” is supported by research demonstrating its effectiveness and addresses “individual differences.”

Pedagogical stances

Given this need, we began to explore literacy apps, literacy app integration in the classroom, and the ways in which literacy educators are introduced to apps. In the winter of 2016, we observed a second-grade teacher from a local elementary school. We used an interval recording methodology to document (a) teacher instruction, (b) app use, and (c) student engagement. For this particular project, we were also interested in how students with disabilities engaged with apps.

One of the most interesting outcomes dealt with pedagogical stances. Educators have teaching beliefs and strategies. However, remembering that mobile apps come with their own set of pedagogical stances and strategies is also important. We found interesting differences in engagement when the teacher’s pedagogical stance matched or misaligned with the pedagogical stance of the app.

Our data suggested the following:

1. There is less student engagement when the teacher matched direct instruction (e.g., writing a scripted presentation) with an app aimed at content creation (e.g., Haiku Deck) or when she matched exploration (e.g., choice reading) with an app oriented around a task (e.g., Kids A-Z).  
2. We found higher levels of engagement when the teacher matched direction instruction (e.g., reviewing spelling words) with a task orientation app (e.g., Spelling City).
3. The most student engagement occurred when the teacher matched exploration goals (e.g., creating comics) with apps supporting content creation (e.g., Toontastic).

SpedApps and next steps for teachers

Educators can benefit from a deeper understanding of their pedagogy and the learning and the teaching strategies of apps.  Educators also profit from seeing lists of quality apps as well as models of app integration. However, apps are not always explicit in what they offer or how they can be used in the classroom. 

With these concerns in mind, we worked with an interdisciplinary team to create SpedApps. The website, a database of over 400 apps, provides a number of important features for teachers, parents, and learners. Searching for apps can include sorting by cost, name, content area, learning need, or physical development, or they can be searched directly by title. Once an app is selected, users see additional information about whether the app includes practice, feedback, progress monitoring, usability affordances, and customization. This website has an editor review, but more important, educators, teachers, and parents can create a login and provide their own review of apps (and suggest new apps). 

Our research on technology has suggested that it’s not a question of if a form of technology works—it’s more important to ask under what conditions  that form of technology works. In the example provided, a teacher found success matching her pedagogical strategies with the pedagogy of the app. SpedApps is one example; regardless of the tool used, we encourage researchers and educators to benefit from crowdsourcing when and how apps might be used for literacy instruction.

Kristine E. Pytash is an associate professor at Kent State University. Richard E. Ferdig is the Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor, IT, Research Center for Educational Technologies. Enrico Gandolfi is a research fellow at Kent State University. Rachel Mathews is a doctoral student at Kent State University. This work was funded, in part, by a corporate gift from AT&T.

Instructional goals should drive teachers’ approaches to technology integration and implementation. Not only is this important in meeting teaching and learning objectives, but we’ve also found that students are more engaged when a teacher’s pedagogical beliefs are aligned with the technology being used. 

Often educators are advised to first consider their instructional goals and then find a digital tool that will help them in satisfying their teaching needs. However, we’ve found that by exploring digital tools and apps, teachers can see new possibilities for writing instruction. Therefore, learning about digital tools can act as an impetus for considering alternative approaches for strengthening writing skills. 

At Kent State’s Research Center for Educational Technology, we have the privilege of collaborating with local teachers and students to integrate technology into their education and learning. Teacher and student cohorts visit our technologically advanced classroom for six weeks, five days a week, for two hours each day. This spring, we observed a second-grade teacher as she received situated professional development for integrating technology into her literacy instruction while her students had opportunities to explore digital tools for writing.  On the basis of that implementation, we offer suggestions for programs and mobile applications that might best help educators facilitate writing activities and assignments in their classrooms.

Preparing students for writing

• Why It’s Important: Although the writing process is not a lockstep, there is strong evidence to support that students are more successful as writers when they understand it. Therefore, engaging students in prewriting and organizing activities before they start the first draft improves the quality of their writing.
• Digital Tools: Digital notebooks, such as Penzu, can serve as writing journals for students to generate ideas. In addition, applications like Popplet and Padlet can provide a space where students may independently or collaboratively brainstorm about topics or genre elements. By using these digital tools, students can make their planning visible as they can easily organize and reorganize ideas. 

Multimodal compositions

• Why It’s Important: Technology is changing how people write. By composing with images, audio, and video, students learn to use multiple modes to convey meaning. For students who might be considered struggling writers, composing with a variety of modes can also help students be more strategic in their rhetorical decision making.
• Digital Tools: There are a number of apps and digital tools that allow students to produce multimodal compositions. Haiku Deck, Buncee, and Adobe Spark are a few tools we routinely use with teachers and students. However, we would also encourage teachers to think about how programming and coding with apps such as Daisy the Dinosaur and Scratch Junior might also help their students engage in digital storytelling. 

Publishing students’ writing

• Why It’s Important:  When students publish their writing for a wide audience, they have opportunities to receive authentic feedback. This process develops their writerly voice: They become more aware of who will be reading their composition and tailor their voice according to the purpose, the context, and the audience. 
• Digital Tools: Digital platforms, such as Edmodo and Seesaw, are spaces for students to share their writing and then receive feedback.

Conclusion

Apps should align with pedagogy; however, teachers can reimagine how they can implement engaging, research-based writing instruction by exploring digital tools. This reimagination can also be facilitated through conversations with others; teachers grow by seeing the best practices of others. In addition to providing some examples in this blog, we also developed and have now opened access to SpedApps, a database with over 400 apps. This resource is not only a collection of mobile apps for content instruction (e.g., literacy) but is also a community where teachers can share the promise and pitfalls of mobile-based instruction as well as add their own favorite apps. 

Kristine E. Pytash is an associate professor at Kent State University. Richard E. Ferdig is the Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor, IT, Research Center for Educational Technologies. Enrico Gandolfi is a research fellow at Kent State University. Rachel Mathews is a doctoral student at Kent State University. This work was funded, in part, by a corporate gift from AT&T.

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