Week 6: Comprehension and ebooks

     This week’s readings offered so many sites to explore for online reading. In Johnson’s book, chapter 5, she makes many comparisons between online ebooks; those that are read-alouds, and those that are interactive storybooks.  I’d like to challenge us this week (or next week) to try and use one of these sites within our own classroom, “borrow” another teacher’s classroom, or at home with one of our own children.  If teachers don’t know any sites that offer free online stories or interactive stories, have 2-3 sites from which they can choose one to try-out.  I’m curious what responses the kiddos have regarding the interactive features, and if they felt the features were distracting or supported their comprehension of the story. I’m wondering if the students had the choice to customize their experience, how many would use or turn off features such as, narration, sound effects, music, or automatic page turns.

     I found it interesting that findings have concluded that if literacy-building practices are to be prioritized, then print or basic ebooks are preferred over those intended “just for fun” (Johnson, p. 75).  I’m inferring the author is alluding to books that are overly interactive.  However, as noted, enhanced e-books may motivate a young reader who otherwise does not want to pick up a book.  What are your experiences with online books of either type?

     I’m especially interested in apps such as, Subtext www.subtext.com, (Johnson, p. 74), which allows a teacher to embed instruction, videos, web links, and assignments right on the pages.  Students are also able to annotate text as they read to discuss with their classmates.  Similar apps are Read mill (readmill.com/ipad), Bookshout (bookshout.com), Ponder (www.ponderi.ng) , and Marvin (marvinapp.com).  I’m going to give Subtext a go this week with my students in reading lab.  Stayed tuned for how it goes!

     I also am anxious to try out Flipboard (www.flipboard.com).  Users are able to subscribe to online magazines, skip advertisements, save content that interests them, and then have the ability to create their own magazine of content that they have personally collected and created.  I’m curious about what apps from our readings are you anxious to try?  Virtual Field Trips incorporating extension activities sounds too good to be true! What have been your experiences with ebooks, hybrid books, and free book apps? If teachers implemented one new technology practice every 2 weeks that would enhance one of their lessons, I wonder what engagement, motivation and learning would look like.  If teachers were given a list of 10-20 free educational sites that could be used on a SMART Board, in the computer lab, or with whatever technological devices that would be applicable, and those sites were shared in PLC meetings (Professional Learning Communities—teachers meet to discuss best practices, curriculum and student achievement), I wonder if teacher success would breed additional teacher success in regard to more technology integration to enhance comprehension, collaboration, and creativity.  What is your thinking regarding some of the ideas and sites that I’ve discussed, or that are featured from our readings this week?   

    Also, make mention of Digital Bloom's Taxonomy as it is referenced in the new literacy skills and learning activities.  As for what I will try out this week with Subtext, I see commenting, reviewing, posting, collaborating, and networking (Evaluating) all embedded within this new literacy component.

Discussion Leader Order (9/27~10/18)

Hi Wannabies!

Here's a just gentle reminder for our blog discussion leader order for next 4 weeks:

Week of 9/27 : Barbara
Week of 10/4 : John
Week of 10/11: Jacqueline
Week of 10/18: MacKinley


"Way to go, Wannabies!!! :)"


Cheers,
John with the Tiara

Week 5- Johnson Ch. 3, BABR Ch. 6, White, & IRA Digital Discussions

In reading the Johnson chapter this week I was immediately pulled into the chapter as it began by discussing the significance of teacher talk and building classroom community. In my job I travel around the district and visit many schools. It is no secret that our district is plagued by discipline and behavior issues, however I have noticed that many of the worst issues arise in classrooms where the teacher has been unable to build a community of respect. These same teachers can often be heard using sarcastic, mean, and demeaning language, and frequently yelling at their students. Now I do not think that everything will be fine and dandy and there will never be any problems if a teacher builds a positive community, but there is strong evidence to point to a significantly less amount of behavior issues when students feel invested in the class, the work, and the teacher.

The activities that Johnson suggests to build classroom community are interesting, and I appreciate her breaking them down step-by-step. By doing this she makes it easy to understand for someone who has never worked with the programs before, and she is modeling effective instruction. I was able to make the connection between what I have always done at the beginning of the year (a powerpoint to introduce myself & a mystery bag activity for my students to introduce and share information about themselves) and how these activities can be transformed using web tools. I really like the use of feedback and collaboration within the activities, which beat the heck out of the post-it notes my kiddos would write questions on for their classmates.

The chapter out of the BABR was also very interesting. Right off the bat I felt a little lost again as they referred to virtual environments, of which I have absolutely no clue or understanding of what those are or how they work. (Jacqueline your expertise would be much appreciated here! Lol) I have never so much as played a game on the PS3 or X-Box. Playing Super Mario Party (don’t judge!) on the Wii with my kids is about as fancy as I have gotten when it comes to any sort of online or computer gaming.

As the chapter shifted focus and began sharing the benefits of digital discussions, I was excited to see the reference to constructivist theory, which is where my personal teaching philosophy lies. If you’re not familiar with this theory, a very brief explanation is that people build their personal understanding and knowledge based on experiences, both past and present. This method of learning involves exploration, questioning, and problem solving, which transfers to a very active classroom, in which students become “experts” and the teacher acts as a facilitator of learning. I’m not sure why it took me so long to make the connection to new literacies, perhaps because this topic is so new to me, but I now see the relationship and it is beginning to make more sense to me.

I think the most beneficial part of the BABR text for me is the plethora of resources given in each chapter. For someone who has had minimal exposure to such a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools, the extensive list of websites and apps is very beneficial, particularly when their purpose, location, and strengths and/or limits are provided. The Digital Discussions article this week provided so much good information and was written in a very easy to understand format. I think it would be an excellent article to share with classroom teachers who are not currently utilizing new literacies with their students. The White article was also fantastic. I loved how in depth it went with explaining how the research study and instructional unit were planned and executed, as well as what worked really well and what presented challenges.

By seeing the examples and applications presented in this week’s reading, my understanding of the TPACK model has deepened and I am feeling slightly more confident in my understanding of how Web 2.0 tools and technology can be utilized to facilitate and deepen understanding of both content and technology. In all honesty, I have just been absorbing so much new information that I am not sure what questions I have at this point, or perhaps better stated as I don’t know what I don’t know!

What I would like to know from my group is how you see the information (presented in class and readings thus far) impacting you as an educator and writer, specifically with regards to your particular area of focus in your degree program. I’d also be interested in knowing how you would respond to the student survey (Figure 6.1) located on p.132 in BABR and if you feel like your answers now would be different from 5 weeks ago. Finally, I’d be interested in your thoughts regarding the research presented regarding the relationship between “textspeak”, writing, language, and reading (on the bottom of p.120- 3^rd paragraph on p.121 in BABR). Did any of the information surprise you? If so, how? If not, why?

Week 4 -- BABR2, Hutchinson, Reading Today

(Note: The W on my keyboard doesn't always type, so if something doesn't make sense, add a W to it and maybe it will. I think I took care of all of the issues, but I can never be sure.)

I would get the week we're reading about planning to ensure NL/nl is addressed in our lessons/curriculum, of which I have none (lol, smh). Since I can't add any personal teaching experience to the readings, nor can I talk about how to integrate NL/nl into my curriculum, I am going to focus this blog on the similarities teachers and journalists have when dealing with integrating new literacies into our educational products.

Since multimodal communication is everywhere (we've been watching ads on TVs at Walmart, for example, for about a decade now), and technology is so prevalent, how do we start to integrate this into everyday use, like the classroom? To refer to my own background, I know one of the most difficult things for a journalist to do is to think of the new literacies way of presenting information, and I'm sure this is an issue not just limited to them. When we write a story, as journalists, we are encouraged to consider the best way of showing the information and involving our audience in the story, which is one of the most difficult things to keep in mind. For every event, for example, we must remember to get the opinions of our readers before creating a full story package. So, there's the coverage we provide by way of the traditional story, and then there's the extension of that, typically showing our audience reacting to the event, by way of a Storify done on reader opinions Tweeted our way. A movie review should have a YouTube video of the trailer attached and a link to show times and maybe a link to the book or book summary the movie was based off of. It's about sharing our story plus the resources for the reader to obtain the whole story, if he or she would like.

I see this as similar to teaching in that, in order to ensure everyone is new literate, lessons should do the same thing. To plan for a multimodal lesson, at least as far as I can tell from our readings, the teacher has to do the same thing a newspaper has to:
1) Evaluate the audience (or class). What do they need to know here? What are their interests? What is their lifestyle? What are their limitations? How will they be interacting with my information?
2) Evaluate the mission statement--or in the case of an educator, the pedagogy.
3) Identify the pieces of information that will be required to bring that audience to a place of necessary knowledge (determined in the first step), and create a plan for how and in what order this information should be presented to them for maximum understanding of the basics.
4) Identify how this audience, considering its limitations and where we can cover the gap, will be interacting with this particular piece of information. Then identify how the audience will most likely follow up on this information, if they would like to learn more. Put these two together, and now there should be three elements to the full lesson: conveying the story (or lesson) itself, the medium with which this story/lesson will be transferred, and the medium through which the audience should be following up on the information.
5) Create the story/lesson and reevaluate to ensure it will reach and make sense to every kind of reader/learner within the projected audience.

It's essentially teaching in both cases, considering it is geared toward the transfer and assimilation of information to an outside, limited audience. Even in journalism, we can't assume people are literate. We are supposed to aim for a 5th-grade reading level for the sake of our readers' varying literacy levels, and though we are "digital first," meaning we focus on our online content and the interactivity, we do have print products that focus more on visuals (infoboxes, photos, layout, etc.) than interactivity to ensure our legacy readers (those readers who prefer traditional media) still receive the same attention to multimodal literacy our online readers do.

However, even from my limited experience as a journalist and advertising art director, I am only able to comment on how to integrate multimodal technology into my information conveying practices. It is passive, to an extent, and is not in person to tiny, curious people. So, my question for you all then is how would the list of steps I gave above of the similar steps teachers and journalists must take to create a viable multimodal, new-lit educational experience change when used for the classroom? Are there extra steps I didn't include that would be necessary in a classroom but not in  newsroom? What do you all do to take interactivity into consideration in your instruction? What do you wish you could do more of? I ask this last bit so maybe we can all brainstorm about how to make those things a reality.

Week 3 - J2, Bruek, O'Byrne et al, Steckel

Hi all, 

I hope you enjoying the pouring rain on our campus now; it is strong but cooling down the hot weather. Reading this week's chapter and articles, under Dr. Beach's leading posting as well, I came up with the four questions:  

1. First off, I would like to tackle the core questions: what are similarities, differences, and challenges of TPACK, TPAK+, 21^st Century Literacy Learning, Open Learning, and IRT?

2. Consider the six social practices (BABR, p. 3). To what extent, do the three teachers examples in Steckel et al. involve the six practices? On the other hand, what do they miss among the six? If they missed anything, how can we make up the missing parts?

3. In Debbie’s example (Johnson, p. 27), the use of souldcloud.com seems beneficial for sharing individual and authentic feedback – which is a form of formative assessment. However, this case does not mention any thought about summative assessment aspects in the context. What pros and cons might be there when using such technology application for summative assessment? This might be a concern about the affordances concept as well. How can we deal with this topic with the notion of affordances?

4. I am also very interested in your questions as well. Any other questions are welcome as always. Thanks! J

The title for this should have said, "Week 2: Knobel, J1, BABR1, Mandarin Art--

Week 2: Knobel, J1, BABR1, Reading Today Mandarin art.

     I must admit, I find the topic of new literacies fascinating and frightening at the same time.  My exposure to technology tools was a black and white television growing up and a typewriter to type my papers during college.  I used an airline computer to book flights, hotels, and cars when I owned a travel agency in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980’s, and that was pretty big time back in the day.  My first cell phone was in my 40’s wired inside my company car.  It wasn’t until almost a decade later that I got my first IPhone 3.  So you see, I didn’t grow up with much technology.  I don’t believe there is a fear of it for many in my generation, but I’m still perplexed at why it still seems so foreign despite my willingness to engage and use the many different tools in both my profession and personal life.

     I believe our roles, as teachers, and the understanding of those roles, must change to meet the needs of our 21^st century students. We have to take the time to grabble with what literacy currently means, and how our pedagogy may need to shift to meet those changes.

     As I ponder how I visualize the world of literacy embedded and fused within technology, I am filled with wonderings and questions of what that environment will look like, how believes may conflict, worry that many will be left behind, and that technology without social purpose could lead to a nation of factions that are undirected, misled, and confused.  Certainly, not wanting to be too dark regarding our future, I do have positive thoughts that technology and literacy can open gateways of communication with paradigm and instructional framework shifts.

     I have many questions and wonderings from our readings regarding new literacies.  Take a look, and respond to whatever inspires your thinking.

    

1.     I pondered on Johnson’s statement (Reading, Writing, and Literacy 2.0) that “the preparation and support children need to meet the challenges of the 21^st century will depend as much on how they are taught as what they are taught.  The focus here is on the pedagogy of literacy rather than the actual literacy curriculum.  It makes you think what is it about new literacies that require new constructions of lessons to support literacy in digital environments over what has been used in the past with print? 

2.     Will students that don’t receive instruction in new literacies not be able to develop and construct knowledge at a competitive level using old literacies?

3.     What is the tipping point using technology to move the dial towards enhanced understanding and literacy knowledge?

4.     Do you think teachers believe that new literacies are essential for thinking, learning, and knowledge construction?

5.     What do you believe? Do you think the use of online images, photos, and videos are tools for creating meaning? Why or why not?

6.     What would assessment in a Literacy 2.0 environment look like?

7.     How would you rate the importance of digital technologies that “encourage student creativity and personal expression” as an important element in schooling?

8.     If you were to focus on one or two important reasons to foster the implementation of new literacies in our classrooms, what would they be and why?

9.     How do you envision the gap between the “have” and “have-nots” regarding digital environments and access to its tools?

     I look forward to your responses and input.  Sorry for the confusion on posting last week.  Apparently, it isn’t only the new literacies that are affecting my communication understandings.  Try to respond by Sunday for this blog post, and then again by Thursday for John’s posting.  We will then be current.  Happy Labor Day everybody!