gail dyer

Literacy for a brave new world

gaildyer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:13:06 +0000

What does it mean to be a reader or even a literate person in the 21st century? What challenges face teachers as they explore the complexities of new literacies in literacy instruction? What role does the learner have to play in developing his or her literacy skills?
In working with students from diverse backgrounds, students who use new technologies; including blogs, wikis, playing and making digital games it has been a puzzle as to why their BST/NAPLAN (Basic Skills Test/National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) writing results have been consistently above state average while they achieve below the state average in their reading results. Working with them on a personal level it becomes obvious they are not lacking literacy skills. It is just that their skills are different.
It was re-assuring to read the study by Leu et al (New Literacies for new times: preparing students for the 21st century, 2005) which found no statistical correlation between online comprehension and reading comprehension scores on the Connecticut Mastery Tests. Equally reassuring are Green and Hannon (Demos Report, 2007) who in their research have found “Children are establishing a relationship to knowledge gathering which is alien to their parents and to their teachers”.
WHY was it reassuring?
The new technologies centred on the internet including social networking and digital games are not a passing fad. By 2006 more than one billion people were reading on the internet and since the uptake of the new technologies is exponential, by 2011 more than half the world’s population will be reading online.
In the history of literacy there has been no other technology for reading, writing and communicating that has been embraced so rapidly by so many people in so many geographical places. Consequently, there are wide ranging implications for literacy.
The linear way of reading fiction books and the rigid content of textbooks are losing their relevance in the growing online context. Books are never going to be irrelevant because there always has been and always will be people who love the comfort and emotional attachment to the printed book. However, the speed, the amount of knowledge and diversity of interests are better catered for by the internet and new technologies.
Jakob Nielsen, dubbed “the guru of web page usability” by The New York Times, has spent the past 15 years gauging habits and screen experiences of computer users. He charts people’s online navigations using eye-tracking tools with the aim of mapping how vision moves and rests.
Mr Nielsen’s research reveals people scan hundreds of pages using a pattern vastly different from any learned at school. They read in an F pattern … extremely fast and only one in six reads a web page linearly.
Educators would do well to open their minds to findings from Nielsen’s research and incorporate some of his web usability ideas into the teaching practice, particularly in light of research such as that from The Rand Reading Study Group (2002). The study concludes that “accessing the internet makes large demands on individual’s literacy skills; in some cases, this new technology requires readers to have novel literacy skills, and little is known about how to analyse or teach those skills”.
Recent studies by Coiro et al (Handbook of Research on New Literacies, 2007) and Leu et al (Teaching with the Internet K to 12: New Literacies for New Times, 2004) also conclude:
• Reading online is more complex than reading offline.
• New skills and strategies are needed to read online.
According to Kinzer et al (Theoretical models and processes of reading, 2004) “new literacies are continually new literacies. Increasingly, the task of a literacy learner will be to learn how to learn, not simply to master a fixed set of skills that remain static”.
The new technologies demand new forms of critical literacy, critical thinking and analysis of information. Fortunately students currently in Years K to 12 have been completely sensitised to digital technologies, and are receptive to that new literacy. Technologies are fully incorporated into their lives. Many students in this group are using new media and new technologies to create in new ways, to learn in new ways and to communicate in new ways with new people. Moreover, research is showing that using new technologies in education “improves both comprehension of the lesson material and student’s interest in the topic” (Brady, More than just fun and games, Applied Clinical Trials Nov. 2004). Klopfler et al (Using the technology of today in the classroom today, 2009) believe there is enough evidence to conclude that new technologies have the capacity to “facilitate and leverage deep learning”.
Educators must adapt to the 21st century … almost 10 per cent of the century has passed us by and still there is resistance to this concept.
In The Horizons Report (Educause, 2009), there is a “call for formal instruction in the key new skills including information literacy, visual literacy and technological literacy”.
But what are they? How and what then do we teach to cater for the fluidity and constant updating of content that occurs on the world wide web?

The answer is actually quite simple. We have great tools at our fingertips. It is simply a matter of thinking outside the box and drawing upon the wealth of resources that are available online to engage, motivate and inspire our digitally savvy students. As a start point Web 2.0 meets Reading 2.0 is an amazing collection of Web 2.0 applications collected and collated by esessions an educator out of Alabama. It is a good site for teachers to go to start exploring Web 2.0 applications and reading.
The other resource is the taxonomy of reading capabilities developed by Luke and Freebody (1990). The Four Resources Model was developed as a means of responding to the complexity of reading and the changing and challenging demands in order to be a successful reader in today’s world. Whatever developmental point students are at, all four roles need to be taught systematically and explicitly. The roles are not a linear progression nor are they developmentally based. They are actually a set of skills that are interlinked, interdependent and necessary to be fully and functionally literate. The roles are just as appropriate when applied to multiple digital contexts as to the print context.

Students want to be part of the online conversation in an online world it gives meaning and purpose to their learning. We have a responsibility to engage our students as well as to develop discerning, critical users of the new technologies as both consumers and creators.

Four Roles/Resources of the Successful Reader
Roles/Resources What successful readers know and do
Code breaker
decoding the codes and conventions of written, spoken and visual text Understand
• the relationship between spoken sounds and written symbols
• the grammar of texts
• the structural conventions of texts
Text user
understanding the purposes of different written, spoken and visual texts for different cultural and social functions Know that
• different types of texts have different purposes
• these purposes shape the way texts are structured and formed
Apply this knowledge in using (eg comprehending, creating, transforming) text
Text participant
comprehending written, spoken and visual texts Make meaning by drawing on
• own experiences and prior knowledge
• knowledge of similar texts
Text analyst
understanding how texts position readers, viewers and listeners Is aware and can identify how
• texts are not ideologically natural or neutral but are crafted to represent the views and interests of the writer
• information, ideas and language in texts influence reader perceptions
• texts empower or disempower certain

Reading obsesses me . . .

gaildyer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:09:22 +0000

Our students read, they are taught to read using the Four Resources. They are read to, they discuss books, the storyline, the characters, the structures, the language used. They are scaffolded through modelled, guided and independent stages of learning.

They write extremely well!!! We provide them with scaffolding, experiences and the opportunity to play with words and structure. By Year 5 they have been achieving above State Average results in their writing.

They read to access information in print and on computers. They can read fast but they don’t read like we do. They rely very heavily on the visuals, the images are where they gain most meaning.

Our students are from cultural backgrounds where the normal way of conveying stories is by oral means.

Recently I was sitting in a workshop and the professor said. (People from) “oral cultures don’t see the point in logic / literacy games. They do not get it as they take language at a literal level and do not make inferences from the written word.” Example First Nation people in southern Canada only know bears to be black or brown. They have never seen white bears, therefore white bears do not exist.

Always we lament our students inability to draw inferences in this passage or that . . . how do we work on this one if it is hardwired in?

Lingering reflections on NECC 2009

gaildyer — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:32:11 +0000

Reviewing NECC 2009, if you haven’t already watched, listened and learned check out www.istevision.org. It was a conference where just so much happened, so many professional lives were changed and the potential of technology was recognised as a positive not as something that needs to be harnessed and controlled.

Four weeks on and thoughts of NECC 2009 keep percolating through my head. What has stayed with me? What will I be acting upon? What will be the next move into the classroom? Who will be enlisted to try new stuff? What characteristics do they need to . . . just give it a go in an educationally sound context!

What has stuck?

Think as far ahead as you can. I am limited by what I don’t know. The more I know the more I know I don’t know!

I know we need to be engaging our students and I know technology can support that. Things are moving so fast as soon as I imagine things they are passe.

We have the opportunity to create powerful and meaningful learning environments. Environments where;

Feedback is timely, targeted and valued;
Adversity is used to grow learning;
Exploration and experimentation are the norm; and
Learning is recognised as being non-linear.

It’s not the where of learning that matters it is the how.

Every student should have a computing device in their pocket and be taught how to use it effectively and responsibly. (APPs be they for google or ipod/iphone are powerful and a growing number have amazing educational potential.)
Mobile devices provide opportunities for students to be online and to have access to information and be learning anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
Are schools and classrooms as we know them appropriate learning spaces for today’s students?

Knowledge needs to be deep rather than broad and once you have explored a concept in depth only then do you realise fully how little you really know.

Being able to do a Boolean Search is an amazing thing and the Google advanced search capability makes it so easy to fine tune the information being gathered.

Digital text is challenging because:

Potentially overwhelming with amount of content available.
Where do we start?
How do we determine what is relevant?
Forces us to look for significance by using primary sources as much as possible.
Analyse and hypothesise about . . . Am I being manipulated?
What’s worth reading?
Read deeply and develop the skill of synthesis

Realise and understand that originality is NOT derivative.

Web 2.0 tools are powerful motivators and provide novel opportunities for student learning, constructing and creating knowledge as well as making available effective and exciting self assessment tools.

Teachers need to let go of their need to control students and student learning, they need to use their understanding of pedagogy and knowledge of curriculum outcomes to become co-learners, co-constructors and co-creators of knowledge along with their students. They need to develop with their students a purpose for learning; authentic tasks, problem or project based learning opportunities where they see what they are doing is relevant and worthwhile.

Parents in the digital age should be in their kids’ faces and in their spaces.

Mobility, ubiquity, online all the time.

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:28:03 +0000

NECC 2009 Birds of a feather gathered around the common cause of iphones and the exploration of educational uses of APPs and more.

What I learned . . .

kids want to be online all the time and given the choice of an ordinary handheld and an iphone or ipod the majority will choose the iproduct

many apps can be used for educational purposes, by end of July Classroom 2.0 will publish a list of about 300 Apps they’ve reviewed.
educators are now writing Apps specifically for educational purposes
qr code is really powerful and has exciting potential in the educational context

We won!

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:03:48 +0000

On Monday morning we went to the NECC 2009 Exhibitor’s Hall. It was huge, vast, expansive . . . so American.

We were on a mission to get a Promethean and SMART t-shirt.

They made it so hard fill in forms, show a magazine bit of a hassle really!!!! Never did get the SMART shirt probably a Freudian moment.

We were caught in the rush of the crowd, jostled along, not sure where we were going.

Suddenly an arm appeared out of nowhere, a blue t-shirt was thrust into our hands . . . a BIG sloppy PEARSON shirt.

People looked at us as if we weird when we got on the bus this morning. “What’s with the t-shirt?”

Well you know what we’re not so stupid.

Standing in the endless snaking Starbuck’s line this afternoon a hysterical woman ran up to us offering congratulations and these two cute little ipod shuffles . . .

for wearing our PEARSON’s t-shirt.

Cameras flashed, celebrities for a minute, congratulated by our fellow coffee addicts . . . what a buzz!

A taxi ride to literacy

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:57:06 +0000

We had intended to walk from dinner to the hotel in the cool of the evening. The evening turned out to be a hot, wet and stormy night in Washington DC. After dinner we caught a cab.

We were chattering away in the back about the Conference and things we’d been doing.

The Cabbie was a middle aged Afro-American. Part way through the trip he asked “is there a teacher conference or something happening?” We told him of the NECC 2009.

He became really chatty. He believes technology is really powerful and proceeded to tell us that the ipod shuffle had totally changed his life. How so?

He discovered you could listen to books and they were freely available from a variety of resources to be downloaded to an ipod shuffle. He has “read” 200 books in the past year. He had never read anything before then. His spoken language and vocabulary indicated he was a deep thinker. His voice was light and proud when he spoke of his books.

How many more people like him are there out there?

An educated, articulate, intelligent and informed “illiterate”.

When are we going to look beyond testing and statistics as a measure of our students literacy?

Writing then and now. . . words from Kathleen Blake Yancy

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:56:02 +0000

Human impulse is to write (21st Century Writing).

Kathleen Blake Yancey believes writing has been affected by the context of history from 1940’s to present

war and distance created need for people to write letters
school writing disciplined and punishment oriented
freedom of graffitti writing, letters of freedom of gaol
writing process, moves that lead to final product, process became very linear and unlike process real writers use. Energy and using steps in the way they need to be used not as a prescription.
process became digitised, formatting and publication possible
writing for connection – visual display powerful in writing
connection is new and exciting and part of process who for, which medium and why.

Writing is about connection. What does that look like now?

1. Blogging from school to the world – responses are important and a measure of success, teaches respectful reply. Students like the environment.

2. Take on the personna of characters creating back stories in poetry, drama, blog that represents the author, historical character, scientist

3. Information Ecology, past information owned by experts.

Create a concept map to answer question, search of blogosphere to answer the questions. Found not possible so had to go further into other forms of information: academic, mainstream and alternative. How do we know we can trust resources? Need to be explicit in posing questions.

Go to Time Magazine and see top 100 list of blogs.

4. Blogging as learning in action.

Give an explcit task to pursue and share on communal blog. Where is poetry seen in culture? Students can see poetry almost anywhere but how is it poetic?

Signs project all signs are about what you can’t do. Used to be words alone. Became mixed and now all pictures. Need to participate not be a voyeur. (Blog Projects done at Virginia Beach Schools)

Three types of participation

1. Experts and laypersons are composing knowledge eg citizen scientist,

2. Citizens composing news, when people help each other information seems to be more reliable. Not just crisis driven but stories of people are being told and their stories are part of History.

3. Citizens have composing power in form of facebook, twitter, blogs etc. This means we need to develop understanding and control of these tools. Need to know which tools are to be used and when to support effective and appropriate connection

Promethean Winners realise potential

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:54:40 +0000

Walking through the Exhibit Hall the other day we met these two teachers from Chicago. They were really excited because the girl on the right had just won a Promethean Classroom.

She was over the moon! She was so enthusiastic about winning Promethean because she was aware of the company’s all encompassing philosophy of sharing knowledge and creating rather than controlling knowledge and shutting the world out.

NECC 2009 Exhibits open

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:50:14 +0000

What an amazing site.

500 exhibitors with 50 new ones this year. It takes a day to walk and talk with even just a fraction of the exhibitors whose product is of interest.

The Conference Centre is vast here are some stats for NECC 2009 (courtesy ISTE Daily Leader).

10 000 particpants from 60 countries across the world.
62 New Zealanders are here and they have the largest contingent of International visitors.
6 000 danishes were served in one hour at the continental breakfast.
5 300 unique users are on the wireless network at any one time.
90 mb of bandwith is being used consistently.
102 wireless internet access points.
31 buses are running every hour between 6.30 am and 7.45 pm.
1 cat inhabits the exhibit hall.

Creating powerful and meaningful learning environments

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:53:27 +0000

Gladwell’s keynote addressed THREE BIG IDEAS he wanted all attending NECC 2009 to understand it is important for students and teachers to understand them.

1. WORK HARD

Put in the effort and success will come your way.

2. RESILIENCE / PERSEVERANCE

It’s okay to make mistakes so long as you learn from them.

Trying harder brings greater reward and develops in the individual a respect for things that are difficult and require perseverance to achieve.

3. EXPERIMENTATION / EXPLORATION

Learning is not linear. There are many paths to the same place. Gladwell quoted Gayleson who believes there are two kinds of visionaries / innnovators / geniuses.

a. Conceptual – those who have bold ideas and change the world view quickly eg Picasso.

b. Experimental – The innovator who explores through trial and error, makes mistakes and through perseverance finds a way to genius and innovation, eg Cezanne

Key to learning from mistakes is the quality of feedback given. The feedback MUST be

- Timely

- Targetted

Technoogy is a wonderful facilitator for feedback eg. twitter, facebook, SMS etc.

It’s not the “where ” of learning it is the “how”. Students need teachers who are energetic, enthusiastic, and creative. Teachers who promote learning and make it meaningful.

The video clip is from an excerpt where Gladwell is saying the American Education System is great for the top and the bottom.