Literacy Now

From the schoolhouse bells to the rows of desks, educational systems were once constructed to mirror the centralized structure of industrial workplaces. However, postindustrial workplace structures are rapidly adapting to living networks of collaboration and creativity. How can educators design hybrid learning environments that prepare students for the deictic literacies of future workplaces?

Connectivism, as defined by George Siemens, is a learning theory that embraces the impact of a global society that adapts to rapidly changing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) through real-time collaborative networks. When designing hybrid learning environments, the theory of connectivism provides an ecosystem for educators to move beyond hardcopy curriculum binders to an online living curriculum.

During the 2015–2016 school year, we worked with a rural school district in southeastern Pennsylvania as it began its second year of implementing Chromebooks within a hybrid model of literacy instruction. As defined by this school district, a hybrid model contains direct, collaborative, and independent learning using both print and digital texts. To help educators conceptualize connectivism, we use a terrarium as a metaphor to explain the process of cultivating a living curriculum.

Layer 1: Select a shared space for living documents

Just as the glass of a terrarium creates the environment for growing plants, Google Drive provides a space for educators to cultivate a living curriculum.Google Drive is a free, online file storage system that provides a space to create and collaborate with others in real time. Real time is an essential component of a living curriculum because it moves educators from individual planning to collaboratively designing hybrid learning environments. For example, teachers used the comment feature on Google Docs to post revision suggestions and questions as they differentiated their English language arts instruction.

Layer 2: Establish foundational essentials

Gravel, the foundational layer of a terrarium, is made of several different types of rocks. Like the gravel, educators need to determine the variety of essential skills students need to be successful in school and future workplace. For instance, Common Core State Standards and College and Career Readiness initiatives suggest learning goals by grade level and content area. Because literacy skills are required in every field of study, it was important for teachers to cultivate a living curriculum that provided opportunities for students to practice these multidisciplinary literacies.

Layer 3: Balance common print and digital resources

Charcoal filters out toxins in the terrarium so the plants can thrive. Layering in authentic and relevant texts, like the charcoal, cultivates an environment for students to thrive as readers and writers. Instead of buying new texts, teachers critically examined current resources (i.e., anthologies, basals, science and social studies textbooks) that were already predominate in every classroom. Outdated stories and articles were filtered out and replaced with free, online resources that support students’ diverse interests and reading levels. For instance, teachers were able to access free, digital archives of magazines like National Geographic Explorer, Highlights, and NewsELA. Even graphic novelists such as Andy Runton (Owly) offer free digital copies of their work. Teachers also integrated interactive digital videos (e.g., Wonderopolis, Playposit, and TED-Ed) to engage students and extend their background knowledge. The hyperlink feature in Google Docs enabled teachers to quickly link and access new resources to the living curriculum, which grew into relevant multimodal text sets that balanced authentic print and digital texts.

Layer 4: Organize and create module components

Adding soil to the terrarium provides a mix of nutrients crucial for plant growth. A module, like soil, contains a mix of eligible content crucial for effective literacy instruction. Using the Google Docs, teachers outlined four modules, one for each marking period, and sorted standards and resources in a way that allowed for a progression of learning. Though all domains (i.e., foundational skills, comprehension and vocabulary, writing and language, speaking and listening) were covered, careful thought was given to the amount of time students would need to master different skills. The organized list of multidisciplinary skills and resources helped teachers recognize patterns and connections to real-world situations. For example, teachers use to teach isolated units on story structure in reading, weather in science, and Post-Revolutionary War events in social studies. Analyzing organized eligible content across the module cultivated an environment that enabled teachers to connect these isolated units into one central theme that addressed the importance of understanding how changes in the world impact the way people relate to each other. As a result, Changes became the title of the first module. The last task in this layer required teachers to create 8–10 learning goals and scales, identify academic vocabulary, and pose essential questions as a way to clarify the behaviors and language students need to become inquiring, critical thinking citizens.

Layer 5: Add instructional methods and assessment

Selecting plants for a terrarium requires careful consideration of light, size of the foliage, and level of humidity. Because Google Docs have unlimited content capacity, teachers were able to carefully design a vibrant array of instructional methods and assessment. Each module contained seven cycles with six days of 90-minute English language arts instruction time. Within a hybrid learning environment, cycles were written to balance whole group, direct (small group), collaborative, and independent learning. Summative assessments were embedded at the beginning and end of each module to guide differentiating instruction. At the same time, formative assessments were embedded throughout each cycle to inform the level of scaffolding students required. Learning goals were paired with instructional methods to keep the learning fresh and vibrant. Teachers across the district, from three schools, were able to access the living curriculum, on demand, to add comments where instruction needed adjusted or to add links to new resources they created or found online.

Tending to a hybrid learning environment

The benefits of using Google Docs go beyond having teachers engage in ICTs in order to access the curriculum. Using Google Docs has cultivated a community of collaboration and connectivism, a sense that everyone is working as a team to tending to the living curriculum. Where scripted lessons were once provided in basal teacher manuals, educators now care for these living documents the same way they would a terrarium. Teachers continue to cultivate the hybrid learning environments by adding new or updated resources anytime from their devices with Internet access to Google Apps. Designated grade-level leaders review comments made on documents and make real-time changes that grow and adapt to the ever-changing technology, resources, and needs of students. In this manner, educators are able to keep the curriculum writing process in constant momentum without revisiting dead documents every five years. As a result, educators are invested in keeping teaching and learning alive.

Additional resources:

1. A module for second grade.
2. A cycle for second grade.
3. A previous blog post about the three-week instructional framework we used to support teachers’ pedagogical technological and content knowledge.

Julie B. Wise is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware. You can follow her onTwitter. Meg Rishel is an Instructional ELA Coach for Eastern York School District. You can follow her on Twitter.

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

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).

Do you remember what happened Nov. 4, 2008? If you said the election of the United States’ first African American president, you would be correct. But that’s also the day I began fearing technology and its negative impact on the teaching profession. That was the day I got the indisputable confirmation that technology would change the profession whether we wanted it to or not.

That evening I watched CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Atlanta interview will.i.am in Chicago using a 360­degree holographic projection, not teleconferencing and not  video conferencing. You might say, “What does that have to do with teaching?” Everything!

Would you love to have J.K. Rowling in your classroom reading Harry Potter to your children? Who wouldn’t love Neil deGrasse Tyson in their classroom every day to teach physics? Why not invite Elie Wiesel to your classroom to talk about his experiences in the Holocaust? If all those things are possible using technology, why do we need teachers?

As Laura McKenna from The Atlantic lamented the nationwide teacher shortage, she also mentioned how many states are implementing virtual­ education programs as a solution. TED million-­dollar prize winner Sugata Mitra even suggested we build a school in the cloud through the use of technology rather than relying on conventional schools with teachers.

Since then, however, I had a change of heart. As I reconsider my role as the classroom teacher, I can’t help but be grateful for this new Golden Age of Technology. Why? Because I finally understood what Seymour Papert meant when he said, “The role of the teacher is to create a condition for invention rather than provide ready made knowledge.”

The transformation began with gaining knowledge on learning science and better information on technology implementation in schools. For instance, when I saw that of 12,725 students who attempted Duke’s first-ever MOOC course, only 313 students completed it, I felt vindicated for thinking hybrid or so­-called blended learning models makes the most sense in today’s information economy. Even after learning about the TPACK Framework advocated by Matthew Koehler and Punya Mishra—which puts  equal importance among technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge of a teacher's knowledge base—I am more convinced than ever that a teacher’s technological knowledge is always subordinate to his or her content and pedagogical knowledge. A teacher with superior pedagogical knowledge can turn the most primitive piece of technology such as a paper and pencil into the best possible learning tool for his or her students.

Of course, I am not saying advanced technology is not important. It is vitally important in today’s learning environment. However, I am simply arguing that we should never forget the importance of good teaching that must accompany the tools.

Kentaro Toyama, associate professor of technology and global development at the University of Michigan, emphasized such a sentiment. Based on the research conducted in India where Sugata Mitra’s “school in the cloud” originated, Toyama found that less technology with superior pedagogy yielded better student learning than advanced technology without great teaching. As we learned from the error in judgement from the LA Unified School District's iPad debacle, no amount of instructional technology can yield good student learning without a solid pedagogy based on sound learning science.

As we think more about education technology, let us never forget that even with the best piece of technology such as his lightsaber, Luke Skywalker had to carry Yoda on his back to learn to be the best Jedi he could become. Yes, my students can learn great math skills from Khan Academy videos and learn foreign language from Duolingo on their smartphones, but without a caring teacher in their classroom to provide a solid context for learning, they will not succeed as well as they could. I am sure of it.

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.

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.