Review of “Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen”

Wendy Sutherland-Smith’s piece discusses how teachers should reconcile their teaching strategies to acknowledge when students shift from reading print texts to digital texts.  Voices from her middle school study in Australia generally revealed that digital texts had a quick, “snatch-and-grab philosophy,” which aligns with how the internet age has impacted our attention span, at least the kind we bring to perusing information from the interwebs.  The internet has indeed transformed the notion of research from the traditional book-search that seemed more slow-paced.

Sutherland-Smith brought other considerations to mind, such that through the process of web literacy, students are also taught how to be skeptical about information.   Knowing how to conduct internet research efficiently helps students achieve not only in school but the work force.  I highly agree with Leu (1997)’s assertion that “individuals unable to keep up with the information strategies generated by new information technologies will quickly be left behind.”  With the popularity of smartphones and iPads, however, I don’t worry that our students won’t be up to speed with certain digital survival skills.  This discussion, however, reminded me of how my CT last semester modeled conducting “research” on celebrity gossip to show students how to Google search in an efficient and quick manner (strategies such as using quotations to search for conjoined words, etc). 

Thus, it’s not so much a matter of “whether technology serves a purpose in aiding student learning,” but how we can leverage students’ interest-driven networks to enhance existing teaching strategies.  If we want them to learn how to Google search, we can have them use that medium to look up a topic they are interested in.  With this said, what other specific “web literacy” skills are we concerned with honing?  Typing?  Searching?  Associative logic to explain why an image was chosen to pair text bullet points in a presentation?

To paraphrase Sutherland-Smith, web-based reading is not linear – it is interactive, multimedia, and helps students examine relationships.  While this is hard to debate, teaching reading strategies for print-based texts has its unique set of vital affordances – more attention to lengthier texts, the ability to physically search for books in a library and to cite books (as opposed to URL links).  I would imagine that the preference of one form of text over another would completely be contingent on factors such as book availability of a school’s textbook room and library, the curriculum or topic, the scope of the assignment, etc.  Print literacy can also enhance skill sets that Sutherland-Smith attributes to digital literacy (such as accessing and analyzing information), but print literacy’s shortcomings might be that it is not as interactive and multimedia-involved.

Review of “What Immigrant Students Can Teach Us About New Media Literacy”

             One of my students this semester just immigrated from China last year and though her grammatical writing does not always adhere to English conventions, she diligently translates words from Chinese to English on her iPad everyday.  I find it endearing that she is catching up so quickly to her English-fluent peers, and I’m also becoming more accustomed to her usage of the iPad in class (which I have never seen her use for any other purpose).  For her, technology has been an enormous asset in this catching-up process.  With this said, I think that “transnational digital practices” and the ways in which we can integrate them into culturally responsive pedagogy is largely contingent upon the kind of immigrants we have in our classroom.  Depending on their originating country, duration that they have lived in the U.S., and the skill level of their native English-speaking peers – our educational practices would be tailored differently.  As echoed by some of my peers, the scope of Lam’s piece did not acknowledge much of this heterogeneity. 
             Lam’s transnational framing of curriculum topics (such as global economies and immigration) and the way that her students facilitated a media production of immigration policy sounds like an ideal integration of technology and pedagogy intended to “enhance language and literacy development.”  I believe that with careful curricular scaffolding and available computers, this seems feasible, however, when I envision immigrant students, I think of the one in my current class and her struggle with writing English.  I am more interested in how we can leverage technology to help immigrant students and other ELL learners with basic writing and reading fluency, not to say that there isn’t value in leveraging their multi-cultural and linguistic knowledge’s for larger-scale multimedia projects.
             For example, when I discussed lesson plans with my CT and how I’d implement the students’ literary analysis essay (creating a thesis statement, developing essay structure, etc), she advised that I give more explicit instruction and models to better aid the aforementioned student, and a few other students in my class who have IEP’s.  I wonder if there are any existing transnational digital tools that these students could refer to, that could supplement the instruction that I give the rest of the class.
             I know that the focus of our discussion this week will concern diversity and ELLs overall, but since Lam’s focal student(s) were speaking to the Chinese experience, I wanted to point us to Lisa Lowe’s chapter on “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian-American Differences.”  Lowe's theory doesn’t connect to technology directly but can help us think about some of the differences and nuances that I mentioned earlier.

Possible Project - Evaluating Tech Tool

I'm interested in evaluating social media platforms as possible tools to enhance the writing skills of students.  Specifically, I'm really interested in Tumblr and I'm sort of interested in Twitter.  Facebook and Instagram came to my mind but I think that students likely will want to keep their Facebook account academically separate, and Instagram doesn't lend itself to create that much text.  Maybe Tumblr (which I see as a "hip" blog form) and Twitter might not be that great as possible "writing" tools, so I wonder if I should even sustain the route of social media platforms.  The appeal to this is that students are constantly on social media networks.  I guess we are too.

I was also interested in crimemapping.com as a possible teaching/learning tool.

Over the weekend, I read an interesting article on Powerpoint Poetry & Interpretation but I think Powerpoint will be outdated (that sort of inspired my desire to do a workshop on VoiceThread).  I also saw another article on using audio responses to comment on student work.

Or maybe Audacity.

I'm scattered!

Joy Bowers-Campbell’s piece “Taking it Out of Class: Exploring Virtual Literature Circles”

Joy Bowers-Campbell’s text argues that virtual literature circles are productive and engaging, based on a study she conducted of three groups of graduate students/preservice teachers; Bowers-Campbell shows examples of their discussion transcript and ways in which the content fell into coding categories such as Group Harmony (GH), Text-to-Text (TT), Text-to-Self (TS), etc.  Although she acknowledges drawbacks to this type of format (lack of face-to-face time, members might not respond, commitments might not be equal, etc), she states: “discussion from all groups were neither stilted nor sterile, as can sometimes be the case with face-to-face literature circles (as cited in Wolsey, 2004).”  This was a huge claim that I don’t think can be substantiated, at least not with the scope of this study.  Also, the subjects were preservice English teachers, much like our cohort.  Needless to say, this text would have been more useful for our curriculum thinking had the subjects been in high school or middle school. 

In Bowers-Campbell’s defense, however, I experienced an attempt at a qualitative study on discussion for my Linguistics course last semester, which similarly wasn’t fulfilling enough for my “practical” aims and pedagogical inquiries.  One of the largest benefits of online literature circles, as Bowers-Campbell and others have reiterated, is the idea that online literature circle provide written record; I had to painstakingly transcribe discussion audio for my study whereas Bowers-Campbell’s format likely afforded her to copy and paste.  We know that written records can be beneficial for future lessons, but what would be the purpose of a written record, unless we were actually going to look back and read it at a later time?  In this sense, I think virtual literature circles are way more convenient for the educational researcher.  For teachers, I don’t think there is another way to compare the formats besides for a trial-and-error comparison.  Ultimately though, as Bowers-Campbell mentioned, the teacher’s prompt is what will influence the complexity of thinking on discussion boards. 

 (An example of a coding system -- Purves, A.C., & Rippere, V. (1968).  Elements of writing about a literary work: A study of responses to literature (Research Report No. 9).  Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.)

Online virtual circles are not necessarily less vulnerable than face-to-face literature circles to the aforementioned “stilted” and “sterile” vibe.  It seems that with both formats, teacher involvement and direction (or lack of) will be what drives the conversation.  What’s important for us to figure out is what specific strategies for both formats will lead to a more effective, productive and engaging experience for our students. 

In my 9^th grade class, the literature circles comprise of four different roles: discussion director, word wizard, passage picker and illustrator.  Students are to rotate assuming each role during their month-long duration of reading the same independent reading book.  I had a chance to observe their first group meet the past week, and even though the distribution of roles does control  the conversation to a degree, I think students that age need scaffold and structure.  Similar to what I said in my last blog, I wouldn’t implement virtual literature circles until I felt that students got the drill of the face-to-face literature circle down first.  Then, maybe I would implement some type of hybrid format, starting with a face-to-face meet and ending with one. 

School Inventory

My school, Academy of Arts and Sciences in SF, or what we sometimes call Academy, shares its campus with the School of the Arts (SOTA).  Academy has a school library that contains 16 PC computers and an additional computer lab with approximately 28 Mac computers.  SOTA has its own computer lab of approximately 28 Mac computers (on the shared campus) that Academy can use per special arrangement.

My CT has one PC and one Mac computer in her classroom and a printer.  Her Mac, like the Macs in our computer lab, is not extremely new but dated sometime within the past decade.  Thus far, I have observed my CT use technology to project documents; she allows her students to print work during class.  Sometimes, she’ll allow up to two students to use her computers to type an in-class assignment that other students are writing.   She said that she hasn’t used technology with students that much this semester, but last semester she brought students to the computer lab for college and career workshops.  Students conducted internet research and created Powerpoints/Prezis about career topics.  

Integrating Technology with Small Group Discussions of Literature 2/5/14

Genya Coffey examines the role that technology can play to enhance small group discussions of literature and reminds us that cultivating print-based and digital skills in the classroom does not have to be a divorced process, but rather an integrated one.  Coffey grounds her research with Vgotsky’s notion of social development (learning is interactive in nature) and Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of literacy.  Looking at student-directed discussion of literature specifically, Coffey discusses benefits and challenges of asynchronous (chat boards) and synchronous (real-time online chats) formats.

The biggest pro that stood out was how these online formats could encourage shy students to voice their opinions, and the biggest con was how the lack of “Facetime” strips some organic elements that an in-person discussion might otherwise bring.  I don’t think I would use chat boards in place of class discussion of literature – I might as a supplement; I feel like I have yet mastered the art of facilitating conventional discussion. 

I recall that for summer session, our professor cancelled a class and had us write and respond to comments on an online web board in lieu of class.  I resisted the idea that that activity was to “replace” class, and I had much trouble staying focused on the 45-minute video we were to watch prior to “discussion.”  To empathize/associate with what might be our students’ viewpoint, I think it would be challenging to ask them to find access to a computer to write/respond to web boards, and the lack of in-person contact might make it difficult for certain students to remain focused. 

I can envision myself trying to integrate technology into specific instructional practices, but probably not for group discussion of literature – although, I will try to be more open to the idea that teaching print-based and digital literacies do not have to be separate processes.