Models of Technology and Literacy in Secondary Ed. Classrooms

In this entry, I will again reference the article by Justine Cassell, “Towards a model of technology and literacy development:  Story listening systems.”  Mostly, I found her thoughts on student collaboration to be most appealing when I was reading the article, so I’ll start there.  Peer involvement for literacy, especially at an early age, is very important.  There are very few, if any at all, instances when we aren’t sharing literacy in order to express something to someone else.  In fact, my favorite quote in the article states literacy “… as the ability to communicate with an audience not in the immediate physical or temporal context.  Literacy, then, is the ability to make meaning for others across space and time” (p. 77). 

Let’s assume that this definition of literacy is accurate (it sure sounds cool).  Who are students communicating with in a traditional secondary education setting?  In traditional prompt-then-essay paper formats, students are traditionally writing for the purpose of getting a grade, with the exemption of peer-reviews.  I remember during student teaching, an essay prompt I assigned asked students to reflect on a day they believe changed their outlook on life forever.  Even though they were hesitant writers, I was confident that they would take to the essay with zeal. I thought I had understood from other classes that if the subject matter was relevant to the student, then the student would take to the assignment without many problems in attention or clarity.  That assumption was half-wrong.

After allowing students to free-write for 15 minutes, I assigned them partners to share their stories.  And boy did the classroom buzz with talk about everyone’s stories, and questions about their partner’s stories.  But as soon as I asked students to separate again to begin formally writing their rough draft, half of the class went back to their seats to scribble on paper.  It was fine with them to collaborate with peers, but to them the writing portion was terrible.  They weren’t writing to a peer, or for a peer.  They were writing for a teacher, and for a grade a majority of them at that time didn’t care about. 

I can imagine telling students that they would be posting their final drafts to a blog, where their peers would then be required to make comments on their finished project (hypothetically of course; there were no computers in the room, or in the computer lab at that point in the semester).  Would the effort have increased?  I believe it possibly could have.  Even if a handful more students became more engaged with the activity, it would have been worth-wile.

“Literacy, after all, is about participating in a community of meaning-makers” (p. 102).   That is the final statement of Cassell’s at the end of the article, and it resonates with what I have written earlier about blogging.  There are many ways to increase student motivation in the classroom, and to me placing meaning behind assignments and activities can prove to be the most challenging.  However, I believe technology can be a useful tool in accessing meaning behind learning.

Cassell also mentions, albeit for ages 4-7, that most technology for literacy promotes an “inside-out” approach, rather than a “more social and functional approach” (p. 81).  In an age where cognitive and collaborative thinking are gaining more emphasis in the workplace, it only makes sense that student writing should be approached from this “outside-in” direction, at least in most circumstances.  Otherwise, there simply isn’t much meaning as to what students are doing in the classroom.  Blogging, and technology in general, can definitely change that.

Cassell, J. (2004). Towards a model of technology and literacy development:  Story listening systems. Applied Developmental Psychology, 25, 75-105. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.iastate.edu:2048/science/article/pii/S0193397303001369

Story Listening Systems: Emergent Literacy without Computer Screens

Kind of let the blog get away from me these past two weeks, but now I am here to present an interesting article by Justine Cassel, titled “Towards a model of technology and literacy development:  Story listening systems.”  In this post, I wish to generalize what “story listening systems” are, and to elaborate on some specific examples which I found interesting in the article (altogether, there are 6).  In the post after this, I want to tie some of the ideas of this article with my own ideas pertaining to literacy in Secondary Education.  For the most part, this article is geared towards literacy for children 4-7 years of age.

The article first sets out to define what Story Listening Systems (SLS) are.  In short, the main goal of using story listening systems is to help foster emergent literacy by:

-asking children to tell a story (orally)

-to share these stories with a partner, or even use a computer as a partner (collaborate)

-to avoid using a desktop or laptop (no conventional computers with keyboards)

-making sure children are coming up with their own stories, and not repeating prompts

                                                                                                                                            (p. 76).

Cassell argues that placing students in front of computers “…makes it difficult both for children to collaborate, and for them to involve their bodies in play” (p. 79).  Without collaboration, children aren’t able to fully access their capacity to share language while appropriately conveying context.  What might be a highly detailed and contextualized story between two peers may potentially be dumbed down into a fragmented and decontextualized story on paper or on keyboard.

This is the last piece of intro text that I’ll include before I go on to explain a few of the SLS, as it sums up the goal of the project nicely:

“Thus, the SLS model relies on two features of childhood and two features of new technology:  children’s inherent ability and desire to tell stories, which may contain within them the skills required for writing; the support that children provide to one another in the narrative play arena, which may be as good as, or even superior to that provided by adults; the ability of new technology to be removed from the old screen-and-desktop context; and its capacity to support children as producers as well as consumers of content” (p. 82).

The SLS, TellTale, is a segmented recording system which uses the segments of a caterpillar as a symbol.  Children are to record their story into 5 segments, using each piece of the caterpillar as a segment of their story.  After two tries (most of the kids recorded their whole story in only 2 segments), the experimenter attempts to prompt them to use all segments of the caterpillar to record different parts of a story.  The article itself points out a child who made short recordings on her third try, and then took the same story and elaborated on it for her fourth try.  She was able to find the structure of her own story, which provided “… an example of metalinguistic awareness of discourse segmentation” (p. 85). 

Same the CastleMate is a computer program where children interact with an androgynous figure projected onto a screen (the reason I state Sam is androgynous is because the article mentions most preschoolers were confused and wanted to know).  This program comes closest to the SLS ideal because it involves collaboration between the child and the program.  The program (Sam) starts out telling a story, and then asks the child to tell their own story, using a toy castle and objects inside as they tell Sam a story.  The main point of the exercise is to utilize computer prompts to tell a story which is more advanced in dialogue.  Cassell concludes that this form of “play” helps put the child into the zone of proximal development, because in it “children learn through their participation in activities that are slightly beyond their competence, with the assistance of adults or more skilled children” (p. 92).  Conversely, when children were left just another child to tell a story to, the stories they told each other were typically unorganized and scatterbrained. 

I will elaborate more in the next blog on the main tenets of the Story Listening Systems, and how I believe they can hold some merit when talking about a Secondary Education setting.  But the main point of this entry was to show how technology can be used in emergent literacy, and the importance of utilizing technology to enhance collaborative play-like activities to promote better overall literacy skills.  In this case, the basis was storytelling. 

Cassell, J. (2004). Towards a model of technology and literacy development:  Story listening systems. Applied Developmental Psychology, 25, 75-105. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.iastate.edu:2048/science/article/pii/S0193397303001369

I_ _ _ _ _ _ ing with Blogging in the Classroom?

This is officially my post about blogging in the classroom.  I've had more than enough time to think about it, and it seems that every time we meet in class, the blogging gets brought up as a viable medium to share videos, collect student writing, and generally engage student interest.  The first and most malleable way I thought of using blogging in the classroom was to establish a multi-genre blog; a blog where students share different genres of writing and media they've made throughout the school year.

The multi-genre project was a concept I initially disliked during my junior year at Iowa State.  After being given the directions to "just go create different genres of works", I was lost in the sea of infinite possibilities of items to create.  So first and foremost, my students would have set examples and options to choose from in their projects to get them started.  After that, they may find a niche where they feel they can excel and gain interest in, which from there they could just clear genre ideas with me, and I could help keep them on track.

Just how many genres could students choose from?  Well, as many as you could think of.  Anything you would see in printed formats would be fair game (a chapter from a book, fan fiction, short story, anything you would see in a newspaper, how-to guide for activities and hobbies, etc).  Also, any media such as a news report, a how-to video, or a film short would be viewed as a creative entry into the blog site.

But let's get to the nitty-gritty:  How can I innovate the curriculum using a blog as the medium for the multi-genre project?  The best current idea I can think of is to use a system similar to what we grad students do here in blogger:  utilize the blogs for peer collaboration in and out of the school.  After they've completed several drafts of different genres, (and after they find their 'niche') I would be able to sort students into like-minded groups, where they could give feedback on their peers' works.

This would also set up student group work for success, as a group of students who are interested in journalism-oriented genres could collectively create a news broadcast together.  I would also keep these student groups in their own separate blog communities, to keep accountability high, and to keep unfocused feedback from outside groups low.   Students interested in short stories could come out with their own short book of collected works.  Much of the collaboration would occur online.  At the end of the year, student blog sites would then open to the public (or just the classroom), where students could then look at what other groups had been doing throughout the course.

I'd like to finish these thoughts on blogging with two items.  First, I'm a proponent of using the classroom to help students attain skills they'll use in the world, and to me this kind of project makes sense.  As an example, one of my friends who writes for the Iowa State Daily, commented that if he didn't have his blog of sports commentaries and summaries, he wouldn't have gotten his job.  Giving students a sense of those real-world perspectives helps them achieve an almost real-world satisfaction, while helping them acquire those skills to showcase later in their lives.

Second:  Is what I've said above really using innovation?  I still have trouble pinpointing what innovation really is, as I find my thoughts generally stray to implementation.  In the very first paragraph of this post, I deferred to the word 'using' in "using blogging in the classroom", which I initially wanted to say implementing blogging the classroom.  Thus the title of this post:  both words start with "i", but a lot of the time I feel lost when I'm trying to identify the difference between implementation and innovation.

Is it possible to innovate with blogging?  Is the multi-genre idea above more implementation than innovation?  I'd like to, by the end of this course, be able to generally pinpoint where blogging falls, when it comes between the two different "i" words.  Please feel free to express your thoughts.  But in the meantime, I'll suffice with saying blogging in the classroom should definitely be done whether it is done with i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ tion or i _ _ _ _ _ tion.

Grockit Answers and MentorMob

I read a post from Kirsten Winkler, on her Disrupt Education blog, where she discussed an emerging tool called Grockit Answers.  The site (still in beta version) allows public instructional videos to be annotated with comments and questions at specific time markers.  It reminds me of soundcloud, but for informational videos.

In the classroom, I could envision asking students to create a video showing how something works, or sharing new insight into a chapter or section they had read.  Students could then share their video, and the teacher could have other students ask questions on that student's Grockit video.

What really interested me was a different link to one of Kirsten's other blog entries, which highlighted a website entitled MentorMob.  MentorMob is a site which seeks to filter out incorrect or bad information regarding popular searches, and condense the best answers into a handy slideshow.  I'm averse to getting a twitter account, but apparently that is the only way for you to request for a MentorMob account (you have to follow them, or tweet about MentorMob to a friend).

I remember during long-term sub job where I led students through a project where they were to identify 5 questions and answers they would include on a powerpoint project.  The students didn't necessarily struggle with coming up with answers/facts, but they did struggle with coming up with proper questions.  Many students moved on to opinion questions, or questions that are currently unanswerable (may favorite was, "Are Ghosts Real?").  Using MentorMob would have been a good tool to help lead students from one of their subject interests into finding those hard-to-reach questions.

Answers aren't hard to get on the internet.  Are the correct questions?  I really like the idea of Grockit Answers, and the way it can show students how to properly ask questions of deeper meaning.  One of my favorite Grockit videos is here.  It shows information about the credit crisis, and the questions and answers annotated to the video make it that much more informative.  Teachers could even post their own informational videos, where they themselves could post annotated questions. Students could then have the choice of giving answers, or asking more questions on the video.

I still have to sign up with twitter and enter MentorMob, but the articles I read about it excites me.  I think it could be a useful tool in the classroom, however I just don't know all the particulars about it yet.  I'll hopefully have more to write about it later.

Gaming Practices in Curriculum/Pedagogy

I’ve still been caught up trying to wrap my head around video games.  From what I’ve gathered, the use of video games in an educational context still mostly revolves around implementing drill and skill games interlaced with traditional teaching practices.  While this may be effective in increasing specific skills, there are many other gaming motifs which are left out of the equation.  After reading James Paul Gee’s article “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”, I was left with some optimistic insights on how to innovate a classroom based around successful gaming mantras.  However, the fact is there haven’t been many attempts to implement a potentially resourceful and educational innovation in a real-life classroom setting.

To sum up the article, Gee first states (after mentioning his book in the first paragraph), “that schools, workplaces, and families can use games and game technologies to enhance learning” (p. 1).  He then cites some references which state that science itself supports this notion, as there is evidence that our brains can excel at learning within a computer/video game interface.  He goes on further to cite how motivation can be increased through the use of these games, and therefore deeper learning can occur.  There is also mention of how video games appropriately scaffold certain skill sets during play, which is what any experienced teacher should eventually try to master.

What has confronted me the most on this article is when Gee states that in these games, “players engage in ‘action at a distance’, much like remotely manipulating a robot, but in a far more fine-grained fashion. Cognitive research suggests that such fine-grained action at a distance actually causes humans to feel as if their bodies and minds have stretched into a new space [Clark 2003]…” (p. 3).

How can an educator produce a classroom where students invest in a sort of ‘avatar’, where they produce deep learning while also being engaged in fantasy?  I normally think back to debate activities certain classrooms would hold, and the act of identifying specific ‘lenses’ to look through  as a character in the debate.  Even if I didn’t agree with the debate team I was on, I enjoyed the challenge of forcing myself to think against my intuition.  This, I felt, eventually led to my understanding of acquiring and mastering perspectives.

But that’s just perspectives.  How can a teacher implement this “action at a distance” when it comes to literacy?  I suspect utilizing group and individual roles would be a start.  In an English program, I could envision sorting students into a microcosm for journalism, for example.  I could assign (and redistribute) roles such as reporters, editor, photographer, editor-in-chief, and so on to create an exciting environment where students somewhat forget that they’re students in a classroom, and ‘pretend’ they’re invested in a hot case. 

That’s exactly what Gee wants to see with computer and video games; to allow students to excel by becoming something they’re not, while acquiring learning that they didn’t have before.  As his last line states:  “the real importance of good computer and video games is that they allow people to re-create themselves in new worlds and achieve recreation and deep learning at one and the same time” (p. 3).

Gee, S. (October 2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Computers in Entertainment- Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment, 1(1), 1-4. Retrieved from: http://dl.acm.org.proxy.lib.iastate.edu:2048/citation.cfm?doid=950566.950595

Confessions of an Ex-Serial Gamer

My friend’s dad came into town the other day.  I told him that my professor had just suggested an article which emphasized how the process of playing a video game could be beneficial when it comes to learning, and also in literacy.  He exclaimed, “That’s right!  I remember when Jordan started playing video games, and when we asked his teacher if she could predict any problems coming from it, she said to let him play.  All-in-all, she said that Jordan was learning problem-solving skills.”

I’m not sure whether I want to do my ‘research blog’ on the link Denise posted for me (on the previous entry), so I’m going to sidestep that and elaborate a bit more on what I think the article’s main message was: Finding a “zone of proximal development”.  I mentioned this in my first introductory blog post, and the content of the article spurred some thoughts on what finding this ‘zone’ had meant to me in the past, and how I can help students find it in the future.   

I remember the first educational video game I played:  Math Blaster.  It was purchased by my mother after I had failed spectacularly at the dreaded ‘times test’.  The after school practice it brought to me transcended simply filling out sheets of multiplication problems.  It challenged me engage in math activities, while at the same time kept me from getting discouraged.  This was my “zone of proximal development”, and from it I began to excel at multiplication, and put into the ‘smart’ math classes.

But that was math:  What about literacy?  How can I develop a curriculum which engages discouraged learners?  Here’s a site which could be implemented, but not necessarily used to innovate.  I remember playing it all the time during keyboarding class.  There is another link below it; a paid site which has similar games.

http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/texttwist.jsp

http://www.what2learn.com/play-a-game/

I suppose this entry really does sidestep the main message of the article I mentioned at the beginning.  I’ll come back to it in another blog, but here’s my brief summary (this article made me think a lot, as a post-video game nerd):  If teachers were to mimic, or incorporate, the fundamentals of video gaming (brings challenges, lets the user transfer his/her self to an avatar, isn’t discouraging) then there would be less student aversion to schooling and learning. I will come back to this article only if I can cohesively join the article’s main tenets with my own thoughts.  Again, though, the article link is below.  If you can’t get to it, sign into the ISU library, then just search for the same title.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=950566.950595

Video and Literacy: Scourge or Solution?

I recently began subscribing to the blog entitled "Disrupt Education", which is written by Kirsten Winkler.  Just yesterday she made a post regarding the broad concept of using video to enhance student learning.  In it, she explains that scientifically students can learn just as well from a video (neurons are activated similarly), but also cites a study which essentially states that there would be some serious downfalls if we were to just replace a lot of instruction with just showing video in class.

Here is the link for her blog:  http://bigthink.com/ideas/40466?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bigthink%2Fblogs%2Fdisrupt-education+%28Disrupt+Education%29

Read the link which connects to "Dr. Derek Muller's findings" to get his description of why showing videos might lead to serious pitfalls.

This video concept led me to reflect on my student teaching experience.  There were definitely times I used video to clarify or strengthen general concepts, such as showing the documentary "God Grew Tired of Us" during a non-fiction reading of Sudanese refugees.  But can video help increase literacy?

It seems it definitely can for students in preschool.  Here's a link which supports that notion:
http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/10/14/study-games-video-improve-preschooler-literacy.aspx

But for grades 6-12, I didn't find anything.  I believe (and this is just my assumption) that once students pass their K-6 reading plateau, video can help student literacy, but not nearly as drastically as it could for younger students.

One connection I drew from student teaching was the use of animated poetry, found on a Billy Collins site (http://www.bcactionpoet.org/).  I remember using these videos as an engagement tool to draw students into the poetry unit.  But that's where I felt the use of video didn't quite improve literacy.  Instead, it was just a tool to produce interest.

So, I guess my short conclusion of the whole matter is that video, in perhaps grades 6-12, may be used to enhance a lesson pertaining to literacy.  But in the long run, it's practice that makes literacy perfect.

What these article really led me to was the use of video games to enhance or teach literacy.  This will be the focus of next week's blog.

P.S.  As an afterthought, "Schoolhouse Rock" anyone?