Literacy Now

The new digital technologies, granting storytellers the ability to combine text with audio-visual, ludic, and hypertext elements, are not a death toll for the novel. Rather, like film, they present new frontiers for storytelling.

—R. Lyle Skains, “The Shifting Author—Reader Dynamic:
Online Novel Communities as a Bridge from Print to Digital Literature,” 2010

The emergence of new forms of digital texts blurs the lines among short film, journalism, documentary film, website, memoir, blog, short story, and novel. This cross-pollination of textual forms highlights the engaging new ways through which fiction and nonfiction stories can be told. A beneficial result of this development is new opportunities for teachers and adolescents to achieve reading and literacy standards using the lure of digital devices.

Here in Australia, our National Curriculum recognizes that literacy development is supported by the study of language in all its forms. Therefore, in addition to traditional texts types such as novels, short stories, and plays, students are required to “interpret, appreciate, evaluate and create literary texts in spoken, print and digital/online forms.” The multimedia features of digital texts enable students and teachers to cover a range of reading, viewing, and listening outcomes. For example, the use of a Web documentary–style digital text allows students to respond to the aural components of voice-over narration, background music, or audio interviews with subjects; print components of the written text on the screen; and visual components of video, photographs, or the graphic design elements of the text’s digital interface. In addition to these components, digital texts differ from traditional texts in that they often allow a self-paced, self-directed, nonlinear navigational pathway through the stories, enabling readers greater agency in their experience of the narrative.

Two nonfiction digital texts have been used recently with grade 11 students in my English classroom to analyze a range of literacy modes and meet the literacy requirements of the Australian Curriculum: “Firestorm” from The Guardian newspaper and “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” from The New York Times that features journalism, documentary film, and memoir to tell the dramatic survival stories resulting from both an Australian bushfire and a Washington state avalanche. “Firestorm” employs looping background video of the rural Tasmanian setting, and a rotating slideshow of photojournalism images deliver an “as it happened” sensation when the reader scrolls through both the text and interviews with the surviving family. The coupling of these videos and archival photographs with ambient noise—the rustling of wind through the trees and the local birdlife, the crackling of flames in burning bush land, and the quiet chattering of local residents in a teahouse returning to normality after the fire—further enhance the reader’s sense of vicarious experience.

Likewise, “Snow Fall” makes innovative use of multimedia to convey the story of the Tunnel Creek avalanche that claimed the lives of three experienced skiers. A rotating three-dimensional model of the alpine setting, a time-lapse sequence of the meteorological map showing the storm cell present on the day of the disaster, and a graphic model demonstrating the deployment of a skier’s protective air bag are all multimodal elements that sit alongside the extensive prose, slideshows and film interviews with the survivors and the victims’ families. Even the most perfectly composed passage of descriptive prose or the most in-depth investigative reporting of these events would struggle to compete with the engaging and aesthetic presentation of these two stories in this digital form.

The study of “Snow Fall” and “Firestorm” with my digitally connected adolescent readers has resulted in some rich discussions about emerging modes of representation, robust debates about what it means to be a reader, and the ways storytellers in the 21st century use technology to appeal to a range of audiences. From reluctant to avid readers, technology experts to newcomers, the adoption of digital storytelling texts in your classroom will enable all students to think about the future of reading in their lives.

For an uninterrupted reading experience of both “Firestorm” and “Snow Fall,” teachers and students should seek out a high-speed Internet connection. Although both texts can be accessed on a tablet, a laptop or desktop computer will better enable all features to function to their full effect. Both texts are suitable for grades 10 and above; however, teachers of younger students may consider Inanimate Alice as an alternative digital storytelling text for grades 5–9. Inanimate Alice is also accompanied by a set of educational resources.

Nicole Timbrell is a high school English teacher and e-learning integrator at Loreto Kirribilli in Sydney, Australia. She is completing graduate studies in Cognition, Instruction and Learning Technologies at the University of Connecticut where she worked previously as a research assistant in The New Literacies Research Laboratory. Find her on Twitter.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this regular column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners, moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning. 

As the end of the school year approaches, there are many things I know I am going to miss. Each Friday, for example, my students and I enjoy free reading and informal book chats. This is a time when students share something they are reading and truly enjoying. It could be a blog post, a comic book, or a traditional book that has sparked their imaginations. Although I plan for us to spend about half of a class period on this reading and chatting time, rarely do we limit ourselves to that time. Active discussions occur when students begin asking one another questions and making connections with other things they have been reading.

As I reflect back over the year, I notice a shift in my students’ reading patterns. At the beginning, they would usually choose a quick read. As the year progressed, their choices have become complex, more of an investment. An increased number of students are choosing books to share and discuss. They enjoy the ongoing dialogue. Students search on OverDrive, iBook, or Kindle or go to the school library to find (or put their name on the waiting list for) a book that a peer recommended. I have read so many amazing books this year because of student recommendations. One student said she needed to create a list to get her through the summer with great books!

Although our school hosts a digital forum for book discussion through our learning management system, many of my students spend a large portion of their summer traveling and at camps, away from access to the book forum. That’s why each spring our class has a “book tasting”—an opportunity for students to collect suggestions from their classmates.

My students admitted they have varied tastes depending on what is going on in their lives at the time. That was the perfect portal for introducing the book tasting. Each student created a recipe for a book he or she wanted to share that was also one others may not have heard of. They looked at recipes to determine what elements needed to be included in this style of writing in addition to what elements of the book should tempt the reader with their scrumptious literary dish. The day before the book tasting, each student brought their recipe and a copy of their book to share. Because I teach multiple classes, I included the books from the students in all of my classes to give them a wider selection.

When students arrive on the day of our book tasting, we have the classroom set up like a diner, complete with red-checked tablecloths, ’50s rock and roll music, and vases of daisies on the tables. Each diner is given a blank menu that has three sections: appetizers, for those books we want to try; entrées, for books that are “meaty” investments; and desserts, for books that are light, quick, and fun reads.

Students dove into their platter of books, reading the recipe and a portion of the book and discussing it with other readers in their party. Students were really drawn into some books, unwilling to relinquish them to others at their table. After 10 minutes or so of preview reading and discussion, they would receive a new platter of books to savor and discuss with one another. In the course of the period, students “tasted” at least 40 new books and almost all of the students had written down more ideas for their independent (and summer) reading than their menus could hold.

Through a book tasting, my students created a personalized reading list of books loved and recommended by their peers. Enough books to fill those summer days with adventure, imagination, and learning.

Julie D. Ramsay is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?”: Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3–8. She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog, eduflections.

Unlike traditional book reports that are often written only for the teacher as an audience, online book reviews offer students an engaging way to connect with other readers within and beyond the four walls of their classroom. With the continued influx of the Internet and an increasing availability of a wide range of digital tools, creating and sharing book reviews with a wider audience is easier than ever. In their Reading Research Quarterly article about using multimedia book reviews to increase elementary students’ independent reading, David Reinking and Janet Watkins reported that multimedia book reviews offer numerous benefits including improved attitudes towards reading, increased time spent reading, and enhanced confidence and engagement in literacy-related activities.

Third graders in Anna Derrick’s class at Monarch Elementary in Greenville, South Carolina experienced this firsthand when they shared their reviews of recently read books using AudioBoom, an online podcast tool that allows users to record and post up to 10 minutes of audio recordings. Known as “boos,” these recordings can be shared easily by posting the link on Twitter or sharing the QR code that is generated automatically by the website.

Derrick’s third graders were inspired to enhance the quality of their work after learning that their online book reviews would be accessible to a wide audience. To begin, they studied various book review formats by reading and critiquing other online book reviews written by kids on websites such as Spaghetti Book Club. Next, they drafted their book reviews and orally rehearsed their ideas by reading drafts with a peer. This peer interaction often resulted in discussion and suggestions for improvement, and students eagerly made both oral and written revisions to their thoughtfully composed reviews. After making revisions, students recorded their reviews using AudioBoom. Many students opted to record their reviews again after listening to the original recording in order to improve their fluency when reading, like that of Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.

To share their published book reviews with peers, students created QR codes and posted them on the classroom bulletin board. Their classmates then scanned the QR codes with iPads to listen to their peers’ online book reviews. To connect with a wider audience, Derrick used Twitter to share students’ AudioBooms using the hashtag #Readergrams. In fact, one fifth grader from Washington, DC, replied to a tweet about Nia the Night Owl Fairy, “Oh I used to love that in second grade! It’s a series!” This demonstrates the communicative nature of using technology to share about books. Perhaps the students in Derrick’s class will be inspired to read other books in the series.

Several benefits were observed among Ms. Derrick’s third graders after using a combination of AudioBoom to record their book reviews and QR codes and Twitter to share their reviews. First, these activities appeared to enhance students’ motivation and interest in reading. Second, their fluency improved through authentic opportunities for repeated readings, which corroborates with Chase Young and Timothy Rasinski’s findings in their Reading Teacher article “Implementing Readers Theatre as an Approach to Classroom Fluency Instruction.” In their study, they found repeated readings improved students’ fluency with both familiar and new text.

Finally, when Derrick’s students found out they would be sharing their book reviews with an audience beyond the teacher, they appeared to be were more thoughtful in how they composed their book reviews, which in turn helped to improve the quality of their writing. Overall, the activities observed in Derrick’s classroom reiterate the idea that having students create online book reviews can foster their motivation and interest as readers and writers while encouraging them to connect with a broader community of readers.

Katie Stover is an assistant professor of literacy education at Furman University in Greenville, SC. You can follow her on Twitter. This article is part of a series from the International Literacy Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

I pride myself on being a pretty good problem solver, and if you’re a teacher and you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re the same. As teachers, we’re constantly solving problems, big and small, as we plan and orchestrate daily learning activities.

Recently, though, I’ve realized that when it comes to integrating technology to foster literacy development, I should pull back a bit. I’ve noticed my penchant for quick and efficient problem solving is actually depriving my students of valuable learning opportunities.

Specifically—and not just in my classroom, but in classrooms I’ve visited—I’ve noticed that, when there are choices to be made and some uncertainty about which app or web tool to use, or how exactly to use a particular tool to solve a problem, the level of engagement and the quality of the intellectual work I see often shoots way up.

Why does this happen?

What I observe is that when students become partners in the work of weighing the affordances and constraints of using web tool A or tool B—or using web tool A or paper and pencil instead—they tend to have strong opinions.

What’s really interesting is I suddenly hear students spontaneously saying specific things about their literacy work habits and preferences (“I’ll start reading this on my phone and then read more later at home on my laptop”) and connecting those to particular affordances of the tool they prefer and to specific features of the texts they’re reading or are about to compose (“With the split screen feature you can read both texts side by side—if your screen is wide enough”; “With the search tool it takes two seconds to find all the places where the author used the word treachery”).

This kind of talk is music to my ears—students are metacognitive, stepping back from a task and thinking about what they’re doing and how they can do it best (or slightly better). Eliciting this kind of talk certainly does not require making technology the focus; there are excellent paper-and-pencil ways to grow your students’ metacognitive muscles. Still, with technology in the mix, I have observed greater interest in engaging in metacognitive reflection.

I also observe that when there is discussion about the pros and cons of tool A and tool B, it’s not always the same students who do the talking. Students who are less-frequent contributors during traditional ELA discussions about things like author’s craft or intertextual allusions may suddenly have a lot to say about a particular web tool—and how it helps them read or write in a specific way. This observation aligns with what we’re learning from research by Julie Coiro, Don Leu, and others about how online and offline literacies overlap but also have distinct knowledge and skillsets. You will likely find the same—some students demonstrate equal proficiency in both areas, and others may demonstrate proficiency in online literacies that eclipses their proficiency in traditional print literacies.

A bonus benefit is even when the discussion is fairly short, I invariably come away with specific new information and insights about my students.

The big pay-off, though, is that these conversations launch students into precisely the kind of thinking and learning we want to be doing in a literacy-focused classroom—thinking and learning about how, in our reading and writing, we can make choices that help us achieve greater clarity, comprehension, intertextual connection, aesthetic appeal, and so on.

However, even if class discussion about alternative web tools is incredibly rich and interesting, you probably don’t want a debate about the relative merits of CiteLighter versus Diigo to completely dominate the class period you set aside for your students to research sources for the essay—or blog post—they’re writing.

Give it a shot—try from time to time to involve your students in reflecting on, investigating, and debating the merits of alternative literacy tools or alternative uses of tools—even when you’re feeling pressed for time and part of your teacher brain is telling you to just make the decision on your own before class.

I predict you will find that when you involve your students in reflective discussion around problems of technology integration, it will stimulate deep thinking and learning that may surprise you. Some of this may focus on technology in a narrow sense, but much of it—the really valuable part—will be about the materials and strategies and challenges of doing things with words and ideas, about reading and note taking and finding contrasting perspectives in texts, about the constraints of a particular genre, and more.

What is gained by writing a text message rather than an email, composing a video essay instead of a traditional prose essay with embedded images, or using one note-taking tool instead of another? Let’s face it: Looking to the future, it’s these conversations—about the affordances and constraints of new apps and tools for enhancing reading, writing, and other literacy practices—that will be increasingly central to our students’ professional, personal, and civic lives.

Paul Morsink is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University. This article is part of a series from the International Literacy Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

Recently I was given an opportunity to interview teachers in Germany about their methods for teaching students to conduct online inquiry. Although I came away from these discussions with a variety of insights, the acknowledgment from a majority of the teachers that students need more preparation in critically evaluating online information resonated with me. I’ve heard similar comments from teachers in the United States and South Africa and read various research reports confirming this need.

Cited as one of the five primary processes within online research and comprehension, the evaluation of online information is unique to the digital age. With the click of a mouse, information is now available worldwide, regardless of its credibility or accuracy. Perhaps as a result of this situation, curricular frameworks in Australia, Manitoba, Canada, and the United States require the development of skills in evaluating information found online. Teachers, however, appear to lack specific processes to teach students how to consistently engage in strategies to verify and assess trustworthiness and reliability. Conversations have revealed a tendency to tell students that they should not use Wikipedia as a source. Yet there is much more to this process. Just as students need strategy instruction to be successful within “traditional” reading activities, they also benefit from explicit instruction in how and when to evaluate information found online.

Given the need for instruction in this area, there are several resources I think will be helpful for developing plans to teach this critical skill. First, I recommend an article by Shenglan Zhang, Nell Duke, and Laura Jiménez that describes the WWWDOT framework (Who wrote this and what credentials do they have? Why was it written? When was it written and updated? Does this help meet my needs? Organization of website. To-do list for the future.), which teaches students to direct their attention to six aforementioned dimensions of websites. In collecting and assessing this information, students render a decision on the trustworthiness of the site. What is helpful about the article is the description of one teacher’s process of teaching the framework across four lessons.

Julie Coiro and I also wrote an E-ssentials piece on how to use CAPES (Context, Actions, Products, Evaluation, and Standards) self-regulatory framework. The framework requires students to ask a series of questions, plan actions based on the questions, then evaluate the website on the basis of specific criteria (i.e., standardsof reliability)to determine whether it’s a trustworthy source of information. The article contains a shortened example of a think-aloud that can be used to teach the process of evaluation, and a companion site demonstrates the process in greater depth.

Another useful set of thinking prompts and lesson ideas can be found at Julie Coiro’s post on Edutopia.  From here, you can also read preliminary results of a study conducted among 770 seventh graders asked to make judgments about a website author’s level of expertise, his or her point of view, and the overall trustworthiness of the information provided.  Finally, there are several resources found at ReadWriteThink.org, including a strategy guide and a lesson plan, which both inform and help in lesson development. The common characteristic across the resources is that students are being taught to stop, plan, and reflect about websites and authors, actions they don’t normally take when seeking information.

As a final thought, let me share a comment from one of the German teachers in reference to Wikipedia. He said we forget some Wikipedia entries, such as one about The Beatles, have been edited and vetted by many experts on the band, thus providing factual information. So, instead of telling students they cannot use the website, he allows them to visit it first (which seems to be their natural inclination anyway) and asks them to consider the information on the site as well as the references. Rather than avoid sites that might be questionable, his message was that if we can teach students to effectively implement strategies for thinking about and examining websites and information, they can still effectively use the resources they are most comfortable with. In turn, we can be comfortable knowing that we have prepared them to be systematic, analytic, and critical, as they search for information in the digital age.

Michael Putnam is an associate professor and interim chair for the Department of Reading and Elementary Education at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).