March 2009
| Volume 66 | Number 6
Literacy 2.0
Marge Scherer
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Jason Ohler
Being literate in the 21st century means being able to read and write multiple media forms and integrate them into a single narrative or "media collage" in the context of Web 2.0. Eight guidelines can help teachers guide students through the learning process to develop the literacies they need. These include shifting from text centrism to media collage, valuing writing, integrating the arts, blending traditional and emerging literacies, harnessing both report and story, practicing private and participatory social literacy, developing literacy about digital tools, and pursuing fluency.
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Urs Gasser and John Palfrey
Multitasking is digital natives' favorite strategy for coping with information overload. This article reviews research on the effects of multitasking, and draws three general conclusions: (1) multitasking does not make learning impossible, but it usually increases the amount of time needed to complete a learning task; (2) multitasking is likely to change the quality of learning by making the learner rely on less flexible memory systems; (3) multitasking is likely to impede students' ability to learn new facts and concepts. Because it is impossible to prevent digital natives from multitasking, the authors recommend teaching them how multitasking affects learning and how they can use it most effectively.
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Michele Knobel and Dana Wilber
With Web 2.0, amateurs and hobbyists participate in the production of media, collaborate with interested parties, and tap into distributed expertise and knowledge. This model of participation, collaboration, and distribution holds true for literacy 2.0, in which people appropriate digital applications, networks, and services and develop ways of reading, writing, viewing, listening, and recording that embody the 2.0 ethos. Literacy 2.0 challenges how schools traditionally have valued a single author working alone to create a unique text. Web 2.0 has developed a range of free participatory, collaborative, and distributed resources that educators can use in their classrooms, such as blogs and wikis and sites like fanfiction.org.
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Will Richardson
Students today are living in a world of online interactions for which they have few learning contexts or models. Schools must begin to prepare students for their connected futures online. Teachers need to embrace new technologies in their own practice and add an important expectation for learning—namely, that by graduation, students will be able to create, navigate, and grow their own personal learning networks in safe, effective, and ethical ways. This means that teachers need to acclimate students to hypertext environments, teach them to critically "read" both information and people, hone students' skills in writing for authentic audiences and in multiple modes, and promote organized sharing of online sites and resources.
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Maryanne Wolf and Mirit Barzillai
An early immersion in reading that is largely online tends to reward cognitive skills like multitasking. It also habituates the learner to immediate information gathering and quick attention shifts, rather than to deep reflection and original thought. Research has shown that what we read and how deeply we read shape our neural networks. Digital culture's pervasive emphases on immediacy, information loading, and speed may hinder the formation of the circuits necessary for the formation of the expert reading brain. However, we can use technology to teach young readers to be purposeful, critical, and analytical about the information they encounter online. Online reading tutors; WebQuests; and programs that embed strategy prompts, models, and think-alouds may enhance the kind of strategic thinking that is vital for deep reading online.
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Margaret Weigel and Howard Gardner
This article discusses how educators can bring the potential benefits of the new digital media to their students while avoiding the possible pitfalls inherent in these media. The Web and other technologies enable students to easily access and create content. The authors explain how educators can use such technologies to support constructivist learning, informal learning, and social learning.
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Naomi S. Baron
Are instant messaging and text messaging killing language? The author's research has found that electronically mediated language is only changing the mechanics of traditional speech and writing in a few minor ways—for example, the incorporation of such acronyms as brb (be right back) and lol (laughing out loud) into everyday language. Of more concern, she writes, is the way the new media may be changing attitudes toward language. Two attitude shifts stand out: (1) a shift away from caring about language rules or consistency; and (2) a tendency to view language not as an opportunity for interpersonal dialog but as a system we can maneuver for individual gain.
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James Paul Gee and Michael H. Levine
Digital media can support student learning in two crucial areas—foundational literacy skills and the higher-order thinking skills that the 21st century requires. Digital games can increase the book vocabulary of children who may not have had adequate early language-based preparation for school by combining action in relationship with environment and generating vocabulary used in actual situations, which makes word meanings clearer and easier to remember. Some simulations also enable students to hone essential 21st-century skills by enabling users to experience worlds in which they are required to use complex language and other symbol systems to solve real-world problems. To leverage the potential of digital media to transform classrooms and motivate students, teachers need to become tech savvy and engage in hands-on work with digital tools.
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William Badke
The Internet is the biggest revolution in information since the printing press. Never has so much information been so freely available to so many people—and with so little quality control. Sadly, the average high school or college student lacks the skill to evaluate and use online information, writes author William Badke. This important 21st century skill must be explicitly taught—not through one-shot lessons, but by making information literacy the foundation of content-area instruction. The article gives an extended example of a World History unit that integrates information literacy into a student research project.
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Julie Coiro
Assessment of reading comprehension must change if it is to reflect key differences between reading online and reading in print. To highlight distinctions between these two realms of reading, Coiro draws on her experience as a researcher with the New Literacies Research Team observing students' online reading. She perceives five differences: (1) Students need new skills to comprehend information online; (2) Students' attitudes toward the internet affect online reading skill; (3)students often seek answers collaboratively; (4) Students' reading processes inform reading instruction more than do student products; and (5) the definition of online reading comprehension is changing rapidly. Because of these differences, traditional assessments geared to student reading of assigned print-only texts miss many of the new skills and prerequisites that students must have to evaluate and read information efficiently from online sources. Coiro gives examples of new approaches that better measure online comprehension, chiefly online reading comprehension assessments (ORCAs). ORCAs challenge students to answer content-based questions by finding and evaluating information online, synthesizing that information, and sharing it through digital communication tools like wikis or blogs. New software tools actually enable teachers to record and review a student's every online activity during an ORCA assessment to gauge whether students are using solid and efficient processes for searching, verifying information, and expressing their findings.
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Rebecca Moore Howard and Laura J. Davies
The main reason plagiarism in student writing continues to plague schools, the authors argue, is not that teachers don't inform students about the logistics of citation, but that teachers discuss plagiarism shallowly and with no accompanying guidance on how to write well using outside sources. The internet—with its plethora of easy downloadable text—is often regarded as a key culprit in widespread plagiarism. These authors debunk that myth, citing research showing that students have been plagiarizing in their writing since at least the 19th century, even when teachers have given clear instruction in how to credit sources. Rather than banning online research, Howard and Davies urge secondary teachers to combat plagiarism by teaching in more depth the activities involved in writing with outside research. They especially recommend teaching students to summarize long arguments from outside texts. Research shows even students at good colleges work only at the sentence level when integrating ideas from other writers into their texts and are woefully bad at summarizing.
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James Bucky Carter
Although graphic novels have received increased attention in recent years, some would argue that the form itself dates back at far as cave paintings. In this article, James Bucky Carter shares some facts about the history of sequential art narration—broadly defined as images placed in sequence to tell a story—and dispels some common misconceptions about comics and graphic novels. He asserts the graphic novels are best defined as a form, rather than as a genre. Although useful as a means of engaging reluctant readers, study of the form can also benefit already motivated readers. The form is popular with many young readers, but Carter urges teachers to exercise caution and good judgment when deciding which texts are appropriate for their students. He also shares several practical suggestions for incorporating graphic novels in the classroom. These include pairing the novels with text-based works on similar topics, sharing single panels and sequences with classes, and having students write and illustrate their own comic-style stories.
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Anne P. Davis and Ewa McGrail
In a yearlong weekly blogging class, a group of 5th graders learned to build their writing skills as they wrote for an authentic audience. Davis and McGrail, along with the students' classroom teacher and the school's technology specialist, prepared students to write on their own blogs by teaching them about linking and commenting and sharing examples of other student blogs. They also recruited people from outside the class to read and comment on the students' blogs. Students could choose their own topics, although they were given a few prompts to help them get started. Readers' comments on the blogs gave students ideas for improving their writing and their thinking and sometimes led them to do additional independent research. Students were motivated to write clearly because they wanted readers to comment, and they used reader feedback to build their skills and enhance their learning on the topics they were writing about.
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Johanna Mustacchi
In this age of always-on digital technologies, any time students communicate online they can be subjected to bullying, harassment, or threats—even from fellow students and even during classtime. One study showed that 11 percent of students surveyed had been recently targeted by what Mustacchi calls "cyberabuse." Mustacchi, a middle school teacher in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, describes one aspect of a curriculum she created on Internet safety. She capitalized on her 8th grade students' thirst to talk about cyberabuse by assigning them to research the subtopics of flaming, "phishing," cyberbullying, cyberharrassment, cyberbullying or harassment by proxy, and online "grooming," and to create engaging 15-minute lessons. Her 8th graders delivered polished lessons—complete with multimedia, handouts, and practice exercises on deflecting bullying online—to her 6th grade students. Mustacchi connected this teaching to her media literacy curriculum for younger students by having the 6th graders write newspaper articles about the experience of the 8th graders teaching them, and their thoughts on cyberabuse.
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Jane L. David
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Douglas B. Reeves
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W. James Popham
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Joanne Rooney
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Deborah Perkins-Gough
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Kathleen Conn
School leaders often wonder how to handle electronic harassment and cyberbullying of educators that students engage in outside of school time. Insulting blogs, online caricatures, or imposter profiles on MySpace or Facebook are more than simple nuisances—they can escalate to the level of defamation and threats. This article reviews recent court cases that indicate school officials have the right to discipline students for out-of-school speech if that speech materially and substantially disrupts the operation of school or interferes with the rights of other students. Because court rulings are mixed and lawsuits can be costly and time-consuming, the article cautions that schools should respond calmly and seek other remedies before imposing discipline or calling in the law.
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James Angelo, Kay Conners and Tara Helkowski
At Auburn Middle School in Fauquier County, Virginia, several teachers have transformed their teaching practice. In these classes, students interact with information through researching and communicating over the internet to complete projects, working on individual laptops and exploring resources independently during classtime. The authors describe three digital literacy practices involving online communication and creation that Auburn students tackle as part of history, language arts, and geography classes: digital presentations on the Holocaust, podcasts related to a particular country, and posts and responses on an online class message board. In these classes, students enthusiastically create and exchange knowledge as well as absorb it.
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Monica Mohr and Jennifer Orr
Getting students to think deeply about their reading is an inherent goal of reading instruction. One of the best ways to do this is to provide students opportunities to discuss or write about texts and their thinking. But elementary educators Mohr and Orr found that traditional strategies they used to encourage students to discuss their reading—such as book groups and interactive read-alouds—were unsuccessful for certain students who found reader response daunting. Mohr and Orr successfully used student blogs to encourage reader response in two 5th grade classes. After preparing for blogging by practicing writing posts and providing students technical training, they launched individual student blogs on a secure site and encouraged teachers and students to comment on these blogs. These educators saw great results: Formerly reluctant readers and talkers became highly motivated to share their thinking, students read more and showed deeper understanding, and students' classroom relationships were strengthened.
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Meg Simpson
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Teresa Preston
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