Moving from We Can't to We Must

Something wonderful happened today. I was speaking at the Connecticut Association of Administrator Mentor program and came to a realization:

For the first time I was able to hear a chorus of "We Must" instead of "We Can't" when discussion technology and literacy integration. There were no calls of not enough machines or students too far behind grade level to worry about technology. It seems the critical mass of administrators in Connecticut understand the challenges students face in a multimodal world.

This is a monumental shift that I do not take lightly. I usually hear calls of overwhelmed budgets, resistant staff, cyberbullying. Not this time. It was great to work with a group of such committed folks.

After the talk we gathered to discuss some key strategies that administrators could use to implement literacy and technology in their district. I will do my best to summarize the issues, but I am sure I am missing some key issues. If you attended the talk please feel free to leave your ideas below in the comments.

Encourage Teacher/Classroom Websites

It was agreed that building a classroom presence is the first step teachers should take. As one participant commented, "Having a classroom website meets the needs of special education pre-teaching requirements and lets gifted and talented students work at their own pace." It meets your differentiation needs."

Building a class website frees education from the time and space constraints of schools, increases accountability, and provides a home-school connection.

We discussed the (minimum) types of elements that should be included: notes and objectives from lessons, homework and assignment calendar, a place to publish student work, and links to outside resources.

Encourage Teachers to build their PLN

Professional Learning Networks have greatly improved what I teach. We agreed that administrators must encourage teachers to seek out their peers on online spaces such as Twitter, Facebook, ISTE, NCTE Connected Community English Companion Ning, SMART and Mimeo networks, etc.

I shared some common hashtags for Twitter such as #edchat, #BlackEdu, #cpchat, and #edtech that teachers could use.

Require Hybrid Lessons

If educators are not teaching some part of their lesson online it is impossible to say school systems are graduating college ready studnets. According to recent Sloan Consortium Reports the majority of students enrolled in K-12 will take an online class in college. How can students be college ready if they did not take an online class in K-12.

We also discussed the benefits hybrid teaching approaches have for empowering students who do not always participate in class.

These learning spaces can range from gDocs to wikispaces to discussion boards. The point is students have an opportunity to build their digital footprints with faculty pointing the way.

Create schoolwide email systems

Much of the discussion focused on technology solutions. It was agreed that schools should adopt a schoolwide email system. There are many options out there such as Google Apps for Educators or epals.

We all shared a laugh about how many times an email we wrote is misconstrued. These discussions highlighted the need to include email writing in the curriculum.

We also discussed how email can help alleviate communication issues with students and parents

Have a published filter/unfilter policy

There is nothing more frustrating to a teacher who works all weekend long on a lesson plan who then comes in to find safe sites they need are blocked by a filter. We discussed how important it is for school systems to have a published filter policy that teachers understand.

The unblocking requests teachers file must also be returned in a timely manner with a clear explanation of why the site was or was not unblocked.

Invest more in PD than technology

We spent some time discussing funding issues and agreed that professional development was more important than capital purchases of equipment. You can have the latest and greatest technology but if your staff does not knwo how to use the tchnology to enhance their pedagogical goal the computers will gather dust or just be used to migrate worksheets into electronic forms.

We agreed that a good bench mark would be 50% of the technology budget should be spent on professional development and 50% shoudl go to purchasing.

One strategy shared by a participant was to give out limited resources to teachers who attend professional development or show promise in integrating technology into their classroom.

Have long term 1-1 computing strategy

Another issue we discussed was the choice between laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones. I do not think the technology matters. What is important, and participants agree, that schools should have a plan and place to reduce the computing to student ratio with a long-term 1-1 goal.

We discussed how publishers may start to underwrite tablets with the purchase of textbooks or allowing to access the Internet using smartphones.

Either way everyone agreed access is key.

Encourage and assess students' digital footprints

This was the most critical step. I call it the end of milk crate grading. In fact cafetria staff across the country can rest assured that teachers will no longer need to "liberate" milk crates in order to lug binders and notebooks home. By teaching in online environments students can build a history of where they have been an point to where they are going. Teachers can then look for growth in content knowledge and skills not in final products but over time..all the while providing responsive feedback. To me that is the real power of technology.

Digital Residence and Affinity Spaces

Digital Residents of Affinity Spaces

A recent #edchat discussion centered on Prensky's idea of the digital native/digital immigrant (see transcript). I have never been fond of the metaphor. It is like assuming everyone born during the agricultural revolution produced bushels of wheat. Coming to age during these monumental changes to literacy and social practices does not automatically equate to participation in a digital landscape.

Instead I was drawn to @tomwhitby's idea of digital residence. To me it harped back to James Gee's idea (2004) of affinity spaces. These communities have low barriers of access, offer support for N00bs, and social connections. Unlike the idea of a digital native, howver, digital residency doesn't assume involvement. Affinity spaces, IMHO, require some involvement of the individual as they express their agency through increased participation.

This got me thinking about what kinds of skills and dispositions would be required to increase participation in affinity spaces, or in other words to become an active digital resident. The answer actually came to me not through the readings of scholarly articles or participation in class. Instead it was image driven and the thinking distributed across the folks I interact with in one particular affinity space: Twitter. I came to see that digital residency in affinity spaces required three components: online collaborative inquiry, online content creation, and online reading comprehension.

I chose to represent this with the Zelda Tri-force. Why? Well first it is a homage to a classic video game that created moved a way from scrolling into a world of choices. Next, the trinagle, as the mathematical symbol of change, is a perfect metaphor for the upheaval in the world of literacy that we are currently witnessing.

My Journey to find the Tri-Force

It is not the image I settled on that really matters. Like Link, who had to find the missing pieces of the tri-force, it is the journey that mattered.

It began with a request by @DrAshCasey that was retweeted by someone I follow, and fellow UCONN Grad Student, @DrGarcia. Dr. Casey was looking for an image that would work for the idea of the teacher as a researcher.

In this little exchange I came to realize the power of distributed cogntion over affinity spaces. I also saw the power of thinking in non-verbocentric ways. I began our online collaborative inquiry not with words but with images.

I first started with Flickr. I love being able to search through images marked Creative Commons license (got the idea from another person I follow @mbteach). This also represented an important online reading comprehension skill: locating information.

I started with "teacher as researcher" as a search term. This just brought up iamges of TED talks from around the world. I then kept tweaking my search terms until I picked an image of Pedro Pnce de Leon, one of the founders of deaf education.

I thought this might serve as a perfect metaphor for the teacher as a researcher. As inventing in alphabet for the deaf to use was in fact research. It was also research for a greater social good rather than our current infatuation of chasing effect sizes. I thought it would work perfectly for the classroom.

That idea brought me back to Reinking and Bradley's ideas (2009) on formative design experiments. Reinking often uses an engineer as a metaphor. I thought this was perfect. Instead of Flickr I thought I would try deviantart (a site I can spend countless hours on).

I began with the search term "teacher." The results were not for the faint of heart. Deviantart has a strong anime following and many of the images, were..well...not appropriate for the school audience.

Yet at the other end of the spectrum the images of teachers i could use also reinforced negative stereotypes. It was the classic: A teacher with a button collared, glasses, her hair in a dun, and a scowl across her face. Neither image represented the teachers I know.

So I switched terms, again a key online reading comprehension skill, and used engineer. I settled on an image.

While it was still racy, it is PG in terms of the anime images of teacher I found on deviantart. I also thought it was important to show engineering not as a boring male-dominated career. Especially as a mataphor for teacher as a researcher. First a teacher/research needs a toolbox with many tricks. Second any research endeavor by a teacher is not a neat activity. You are going to make a little mess. That is the joy of teaching.

So I sent these images along to @DrAshCasey. I am not sure if they wer ever used. That wasn't the point. It was an activity in online collaborative inquiry, online reading comprehension, and online content creation.

This realization brought me back to the discussion of affinity spaces and digital residency. I needed some image to represent the skills I thought @tomwhitby's digital residents would need. I thought of change, I thought of the traingle. Then like, Link, I searched for the Tri-Force.

Yet I did not stop there. Online content creation isn't a matter of jsut sharing links or content consumption. There has to be an act of re-design, a transformation of available signs into something new (New Londong Group, 1996). So using Gimp, a free image editor almost on par with Photoshop) I added in some simple text to share my ideas.

In Conclusion

Involvement in affinity spaces, at least increased participation, requires all three elements of digital residency: online collaborative inquiry, online reading comprehension, and online content creation.

I can not take credit for these ideas. It only came about because of my involvement in different affinity spaces and because of colleagues like Ian (who helped coin the term online content creation). What strikes the greatest resonance with me is how image driven my thinking has become. The writing process has in many ways broken the verbo-centric shackles we have thrown on it in the last few hundred years.

To me that is the power of digital media. Connecting new neighbors to the links of the past through affinity spaces.

I always feel so revitalized when I get back from NCTE. It is great to be around a group of teachers who truly get the paradigm shifts involved in new literacies.

I was struck by a question from an audience member during our presentation on supporting striving writers through non-traditional narratives. He asked if our work in digital narratives supported traditional writing.

I went through the normal caveats (well most measures of writing our single item assessments, what exactly is good writing, etc). I then concluded by saying instruction in digital writing has to improve traditional tools for communication but simply providing writing instruction using paper-based tools ca not improve important new compositional skills.

You see I am a true believer that real meaning is found in the negative space and not copy. Unfortunately most writing instruction makes learning about meaning making a negative space instead of learning to make meaning with negative space.

I came to this conclusion rather serendipitously. It was actually at my first NCTE conference in NYC. I was sharing a room with Doug Hartman, whose command of literacy theory always blows me away. We were looking to kill a few hours and shield ourselves from a blustery October wind. I read that the local school of design (not sure which one) was hosting a museum exhibit to honor Steven Heller, a man who has touched everyone of our lives with his art.

I realized before new literacies were on the radar those in the field of graphic arts had come to many of the same conclusion literacy theorists are still lumbering towards. I picked up his book Design Literacy. Heller writes:

True design literacy requires a practical and theoretical understanding of how design is made and how it functions as a marketplace tool as well as a cultural signpost, which takes years of learning and experience to acquire.

I came to realize exactly what the New London Grup was going for in terms of design and (re)design. We had to recognize that digital writing in terms of making meaning on the world is a process. We also have to stress the importance of design in digital composition.

That's why I view Heller's book as a must own for all ELA educators. It is not a how-to. It doesn't go over different design no-no's. Instead it is a collection of essays on important works of graphic art that have had an impact on history. Its a great read in the classroom or the porcelain library.

It is time to teach students about negative space and instead of making writing a negative space for learning.

My Research Path and New Literacies: Following Digital Footprints

The Wikipedia article for New Literacies casts research into two separate, and often incompatible, camps of thought. I would tend to disagree. Different lines of inquiry while rooted in varying traditions, are not as dichotomous in nature such as the debates of Locke and Hobbs. Nor are they as different as humanistic traditions that grew from Kantian empiricism versus schools of Critical Theory that emerged from Heidegger and Hegel.

I tend to view “the different camps” as combined efforts in an “open-source approach to theory development” (Leu, O’Bryne, Zawilinski, McVerry, and Everett-Cacopardo, p. 265) as we try to “account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multi-media technologies” (The New London Group, 1996, p. 11).

Yes, the questions asked and thus, the research methods chosen are influenced by philosophical differences in views of learning, but general agreement exists that technology is reshaping the “stuff” and “space” of learning (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). What questions we ask simply depend on the spaces and stuff we study.

At the lab we study the digital literacy practices that are favored in both schools and the workplace. Thus an emphasis is placed on the teaching and measuring of more discrete skills. While these are connected, for better or worse, to “specific social, cultural, institutional, and political practices” (Gee, 1999, p. 356) I feel being able to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information is central to participation in a global economy.

Studying this “stuff” of learning leads us to methods that involve positivist methods of assessment models and verbal protocol analysis (Afflerbach, 1995). This does not mean other methods or questions are not as important. For example, in studying the contexts that support learning of new literacies of online reading comprehension a participant-observer ethnography maybe the only option.

Other work in the broader field of New Literacies research, which often takes a more participatory view of learning (Gee, 1999, Greeno,1989), study different “stuff” and “spaces” for learning. These theories look to assess not discrete skills but involvement in “affinity spaces” (Gee, 2004) by examining both participation and proficiency through ethnographies (Black , 2008) or through design based measures (Hickey,Honeyford, Clinton, & McWilliams, 2010).

I, however, do not agree that positivist methods cannot be used to investigate learning through participation. Socio-cultural views (Smagorisnky, 1999) and cultural-historical (Cole, 1989) views of literacyshare common roots in Vygotsky (1978) (similar to constructivist learning theories). If learning and language development are rooted in social practices through mediated tool use, can’t this tool use be counted? The idea that we can’t build our knowledge base by counting things just seems silly.

I also agree that positivist methods of measuring learning do not capture the entire picture of the mediating affects that culture has on learning and development. Instead I would argue, using Wittgenstien’s (1980) metaphor of learning as an “immense landscape,” that measures of observable skill and strategy use are like samples on flora and fauna. Its not the entire landscape but this information sure helps put the picture in focus.

This is why I am drawn to the concept of open-source theory development. This is why I ask questions that require me to draw on both cognitive and learning as doing models of learning.

Most importantly however, wherever you stand both constructivist and situated visions of learning seem to promote the same type of inquiry based collaborative pedagogy. The theories may have different methods for measuring and observing but as educators we all want to have kids leave their digital footprints as they transverse the “immense landscape” of learning.

Teaching Online Reading Comprehension using the World Cup

As I sat and watched the USA robbed of their victory I realized the World Cup can be a powerful teaching tool. Students, in many of the interviews I conducted, commented that they love using the Internet in the classroom becuase they can learn about "stuff happening now, while our textbooks are filled with old stuff."



During the match I wondered how the groups are determined. So I Googled it...then it hit me. The World Cup is a perfect venue for teaching online reading comprehension. There are international perspectives, thousands of websites, and plenty of motivation around soccer...I mean Football.


Questioning
Give or have the students develop some questions. Determine which are more restricted or unrestricted.

In other words how open are the questions. For example: "How are the World Cup groups determined?" is a very restricted question. The answer is concrete.On the other hand, "Should there be video review of goals?" is more open ended and open to interpretation.


Locating
Locating is an easy skill to teach but hard to master. I would take a restricted and unrestricted question from the class and Google it. Then print out the search results and analyze the results with the students.

I also think the classic Internet scavenger hunt is unapproachable in its ability to build searching skills. As a teacher, though, why do all the work? Put students in groups, create a Google Doc, and have each group create a World Cup scavenger hunt.


Evaluating
As my readers know (all two of you) I define critical evaluation as a contextual process of examining, adopting, and changing perspectives in order to judge the relevancy and credibility of a website. There are many opportunities with the World Cup to encourage what Lankshear calls, "developing perspectives on perspectives."

For example it would be interesting to read what different bloggers from opposing countries say about a game. Another idea would be to investigate the question chosen by class and examine the author of each site to determine the level of expertise.
You could also look at these websites and identify markers of reliability that the authors use.

You could also give students a list of four websites and have them consider how perspectives influence the way authors shape information.Julie Coiro, who I differ to all matters of critical evaluation, developed a set of questions that works well with this activity:

Understanding Perspectives

1.Who (individual and/or organization) created this source?
2.What motivated the author to create this source?
3.What techniques does the author use to make you understand the topic in a particular way?

Reading Across Perspectives

4.How does this author’s perspective compare to other sources you have read?
5.Where do YOU sit on the issue of ___________, in relation to the set of perspectives you have read?


Synthesis
Synthesis is probably the hardest of all skills to assess and teach. It happens almost unnoticeably as students interact with other people, discourses, and learning artifacts. Yet it is probably the most critical of all skills as it is important for all learning.

Once the students have investigated the authors and their perspectives have them choose the four best websites on their World Cup question. Then use the following form to scaffold their synthesis:

I adapted from my former colleagues at the New Literacies Research Lab and created a gForm. If you make your own gForm your students information will be loaded to a spreadsheet to allow you to quickly track their growth.


Communication
I am one of those folks who thinks their is a clear line between composition and communication. Although Web 2.0 tools are blurring the differences. As a teacher decide if you you want to focus on digital composition or just have students communicate the answer to their original question. There are many numerous tools out there for communication and/or composition. As you choose one make sure to focus on the unique discourses associated with that tool.

In Conclusion, Fire that ref, Go USA.

First (and Maybe) Last Reoccuring Column: Challenges of Assessing Online Reading Comprehension

Many of my twitter followers have been very interested in the work we are doing the New Literacies Research Lab here in Connecticut. Currently we are working on an IES grant to develop valid and reliable measures of online reading comprehension. So I have been asked to document a few of the challenges and obstacles we face.

Synthesis
I am sure by now most of you are familiar with Leu's model of online reading comprehension: Question, Evaluate, Synthesize, and Communicate. Of these skills synthesis has always been the hardest for us to measure. This plays out in both anecdotal evidence and our data. First how do you make evident something that happens in the head (for you cognitive folks) or in the act of doing ( for those more situativley inclined)? Second in all of our factor analytic patterns we have not developed a model that separates synthesis from communication. As we begin our cognitive labs of our items we are determined to get a measure of synthesis.

A Little Background
I figure we can start with Bloom. When in doubt with assessments its a great place to start. Bloom and his crew (1956) placed synthesis among the higher order thinking skills.It had to do with the assembly of knowledge: putting parts into whole. When Krathwol revised the taxonomy his team renamed synthesis create and moved it to the top of the pile.

I like that it where it belongs. Nothing makes me cringe more when teachers equate synthesis to citations. It is an act of creation. You take multiple streams of information and combine them into something new (Thanks NCTE definition of 21st century literacies I really enjoy that phrase. For us this has been especially hard to capture in a comprehension assessment.

I recently sat in our Scientific Advisory Board meeting and got to listen in as Spiro, Pearson, Kirtsch, and Klienman had a lively debate on synthesis. They all agreed it wasn't simply finding detail A and detail B to make summary statement AB. That was way too old Bloom. The SAB wanted synthesis to look more like A says this B says this so therefore the answer is C.

Thus the act of creation. Of course what isn't accounted for in this model is prior knowledge and unique experiences people brind to knowledge assesmbly. Rand Spiro kept reminding us of this point. So many times new knoweldge comes from such non-linear paths. What we know is often out of happenstance. Once again how do you measure this in an assessment of online reading comprehension.

Preliminary Results
In our first round of cognitive labs we immediately noticed the difficulty of measuring synthesis. We started with one screen in surveymonkey that had students take notes on all the websites they found and then combine them into one summary sentence. Kids hated it. They wanted to take notes as they searched for info or judged websites.

So we encouraged notetaking throughout the task and just made synthesis a final statement. The problem this time was brevity. Their summary statements were short, but their final communication showed evidence of them integrating many details they read. Also if we scored synthesis in the final communication some students who could combine ideas, and make them their own ,might lost points for not being able to use a blog, wiki, email or discussion board (our communication tools). Also what about prior knowledge? Should students not get a scorepoint for using what they already knew? So we needed to change the model again.

Our Latest Iteration
The scientific advisory board also suggested we needed to push the social aspect of our assessment and make it an authentic web experience (I would argue taking notes and using that information is authentic, but that's for another time). So we tried to accomplish two things at once: increase authentic task and embed synthesis. In our next round of cognitive labs we are trying three new ideas: a testlet embedded in instant message, a testlet that uses both surveymonkey but uses instant message for synthesis, and then a third version with your standard Word Document for taking notes. It will br interesting to see how these three versions play out.

Future Iterations
I know many of you are suggesting that instant messages is so 2000 and late.I guess that is the nature of the beast we are trying to study. The instant message interface is just a way to simulate a two way communication embedded within our assessments. We have a talented group of programmers working on a response capture object. The latest idea is to make the assessment look like a social network. I am excited about this idea. I do worry that in chasing temporal and chique validity we may threaten actual validity. Have you ever used Facebook to solve a common problem or investigate an issue? I would still argue that discussion boards (for groups) or popular editorial blogs are where the debate around issues is centered. I guess there are specific fan pages out there that could serve as launching pads. It will be a wonderful line of investigation. If we go this route there will be wonderful opportunities to capture synthesis, even if it is still an incomplete model.

Online Content Creation: Digital Writing and Digital Storytelling

I am excited by all of the interest in digital storytelling. Many wonderful colleagues are pushing the field forward. I finished Troy Hicks's book The Digital Writing Workshop and just ordered Dana Wilber's book Iwrite. These recent efforts are meeting the needs of teachers who all want to use multimodal composition to meet the needs of digital learners. These are exciting times.



I am a little worried, however, that we also need a pedagogy for teaching digital expository and persuasive texts to join such a strong emphasis on narrative storytelling.

Digital Texts
In almost every field students will need to create digital texts to inform and persuade. I recently read that IBM uses thousands of wikis for technical guides. Journalism is quickly shifting to online environments. Finally entreprenuers have to build a web presence using social media tools.

At the same time, however, I see very few schools preparing students for a world where they have to communicate information using digital tools. My hypothesis is simple. You can teach students traditional writing skills in online environments, but you can not teach digital writing skills in pen and paper environments.


During our Internet Reciprocal Teaching lesson many of our lessons were embedded in the persuasive writing curriculum (CT is one of the few states that actually cares about writing on state assessments, we came across many of the differences between offline and online reading. Our students were working on both their critical evaluation skills and persuasive techniques. We started with Mumia Abul-Jamal, a Philadelphia man whop has been convicted of murder. Some contest this claim. We started with the Wikipedia article and other expository texts. We looked at the text structure and design options. Next we looked at websites from both perspectives-guilty and not guilty. The students quickly noted the design issues such as image, font, and color the authors made.

We repeated the same lessons usings zoo's. The students had to decide if zoos were cool or cruel. You would be amazed at how fast a picture of a sad monkey can persuade a student. They had to learn to read the images and understand design choice. There is no way these skills can be taught with paper and pencil!

Classroom Ideas
Having students research an issue and look for articles from a variety of perspectives is an importatn start. I wish we continued and had students use different writing tools such as websites, wikis, and blogs to create persuasive texts. The focus of the study, however, was on comprehension and not composition.

There are classroom ideas teachers can use. One of the most exciting ideas has turned into Ian's dissertation study. He is having students create hoax websites (think the fake product lessons we have done for decades). First the students look at webites and develop a list of markers of reliability. Then using Iweb the students create their own websites with different levels of sincerity.

Another easy lesson, similar to our Mumia Abul-Jamal lesson, is to have students choose an issue and create a website to persuade. The final phase III lessons we did were similar to this approach. We had students choose an issue to make the world a better place. Sure many students focused on dress code and bad school lunches, but others addressed issues such as dating violence, drugs, and crime. The students had to create a website or online presentation on the topic. We began by storyboarding the websites and focusing on design issues. Only then did we actually begin to write copy.

Will it work?
Is my hypothesis correct? Does instruction in digital writing improve measures in offline writing? There is no evidence out there and it is a line of inquiry that interests me. Connecticut would be a unique testing ground. Persuasive writing eighth grade could be used as dependent variables in an ANCOVA model with 7th grade scores as a covariate. CAPT scores in tenth grade could be used for group differences. Of course I would have to make a measure of argumentative web design.

An important element to teaching critical stances necessary for deep comprehension is to have students develop “perspectives on perspectives” (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993 p. 33). One method to developing critical literacy online is to have students learn about the design of websites (Burbules, 1995). Having students select materials for a page, linking to websites, and using the affordances of web design to formulate arguments may teach both argumentative writing and online reading comprehension. The more someone knows how credible arguments are designed the more they are aware when it is done and when it could be done (Burbules, 1995).

As stated I would hypothesize that instruction in traditional argumentative writing (Fulkerson, 1996) would not lead to an increase on scores of a measure of argumentative web design or online reading comprehension, but instruction in argumentative web design may increase scores on measures of both online reading comprehension and measures of argumentative writing.

Conclusion
I do not want to downplay the importance of narrative writing as we discuss digital storytelling. I firmly believe that creative writing is key to improving technical, expository, and persuasive writing. In fact my favorite educational authors blend their genres. That said I am worried that a strong research agenda in digital writing is not developing as quickly as the research surronding digital storytelling.