Kerry's Posts

Youth Connected with Education? 

A “Vision of Students today” was created  by Michael Wesh in collaboration with 200 university students is an insightful video with a powerful message for teachers about student’s engagement and online connectivity using WEB 2.0 and the disconnect with traditional education approaches.

In the video the students surveyed themselves and putting aside doubts about the students egocentricity and the validity of their data collection and research methodology, their qualitative data cited 8 books read compared to 2300 web pages and 1281 Face Book pages and that they wrote 42 pages in contrast with 500 email pages!  The numbers speak for themselves in that online texts featuring connectivity and participation has much more meaning and relevance for these students then educational hierarchal relationships and paper based texts.  The video portrayed education as being extremely dull, anonymous, redundant or at best primitive in its reliance on teacher talk, blackboard, chalk and traditional texts.

Possibly for me the most fascinating self revelation was following Wesh’s links and reading blogs from around the globe in response to the video.  Is it possible to meta-blog?  I began understanding how blogging develops critical thinking and deepens engagement while scanning other’s comments - it cognitively calls for processing and evaluating their ideas.  

Web 2.0's constructive inclusive pedagogy is very different to the prescriptive, teacher controlled learning experiences outlined in the following video -

It is doubtful this is making the best of available technology. What do you think?  

New ways of teaching Literacy

Presently teachers are in a transition period where we are facing a “textual shift” (Walsh 2009, p. 32).  Terms such as literacy 2.0 (Knobel & Lankshear, 2009) strive to conceptualise this textual evolution and its subsequent impact on literacy learning paradigms in response to Web 2.0. 

We seem a long way to pedagogically understanding on-line processing of text.  This understanding is important because without it how can teachers effectively teach, remediate or enrich instruction within digital literacy?  What teacher action (besides traditional text instructional tools, modelling, scaffolding, think aloud, text deconstruction and so on) are needed to assist students simultaneously process the visual, tactile and auditory modalities of digital texts?  The synchronous functioning of images, colour, media/sound, movement and 3D objects in digital texts elicits different reading and cognitive response resulting in “a literacy that entails non-linear and simultaneous processing” (Walsh, 2009, p. 34).  To date, the most interesting idea I’ve read is “syntaeshesia” (Kress 1997, cited Burke & Rowsell, 2007) whereby individuals experience a holistic, instinctive response and simultaneously synthesise text, images and sounds.

There is a need for language to describe the linguistic, auditory, visual design/textual elements of online discourse. Researchers claim this is necessary to provide feedback to teachers and parents, for accountability purposes and to “legitimise fields of literacy research and practices” (Burke & Rowsell, 2007, p. 329).  Legitimising literacy is an interesting perspective - perhaps the bohemian, organic grassroots emergence of Web 2.0 texts is troubling for some individual's way of thinking.  Nonetheless, established theories of literacy instruction and remediation centred on traditional reading and writing process seem inadequate for a digital environment that allows multi-tasking, participation, creation, production and remixes of text images and sound.  Digital texts are so new, complex and varied in layout that research to guide teacher decision making hasn’t caught up yet.  So the approach appears to be that teachers implement Web 2.0 texts and conceptualising the intricacies of linguistic/cognitive/processing of digital texts will follow.

How do teachers make the textual shift?

Initially this may involve teachers questioning their own beliefs, practices and the education polices maintaining traditional, 1.0 Literacy (Wohlwend, 2010).  Reframing pedagogy calls for converging traditional and digital literacy into a hybridised form while taking into account student’s skill, ability and available technology resources.  It requires reconceptualising literacy by creative, lateral thinking and a willingness to experiment, identifying and transforming traditional literacy practices into digital, interconnected learning experiences to achieve learning outcomes.  Teachers need to recognise technology offers composing spaces and take advantage of youth’s accumulated knowledge and familiarity with portable, multifunctional devices such as smart phones, tablets, digital cameras and voice recorders for greater inclusive, connectivity with student’s out-of-school experiences. Pedagogical changes are necessary.

  Digital literacy and the new R

Ohler (2009) recommends that Art becomes the forth R in literacy instruction because design concepts of colour, space and form are overtaking the centrism of text in digital narratives.  Web 2.0 offers complex non-linguistic, aesthetic, multimodal communication tools which provide opportunities for youth’s creativity, self representation and identity formation (Vasudevan, 2010).  Attending to aesthetics facilitates the composing and design process of multimodal texts and offers a means to anchor pedagogy.  Focussing on space, colour, images, font and style extends the meaning of digital texts beyond ‘semiotics’, the symbols and systems of ‘lettering’ in traditional texts (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007).  The New London Group’s multiliteracy pedagogy situates transforming teaching practise within the “notions of design-available design – and redesign” (Burke & Rowsell, 2007. p. 331).  Students need to be aware of design practices to construct texts and visual images (both physical and mental representations) to increase comprehension while reading. (Gooch & Saine, 2011).  Visual Arts is no longer a separate subject as text and visual design needs to be integrated into Web 2.0 literacy instruction.

Putting Literacy 2.0 into practice

Many schools are benefiting from utilising Web 2.0 technologies.  Web 2.0 offers different modes of communication tools for teacher’s consideration when determining effective, appropriate modes for students, specific writing tasks, subject specialities and for the purposes of remediation or enrichment.

There are a number of Web 2.0 resources personally I would like to explore/ incorporate into practice including:-

Applications such as Jing, to enable students to create video and voice-overs and Shambles to access a range of Web 2.0 tools.

Podcasting using Podomatic, Moviemaker,(PC) iMovie (Mac) and Audacity on edublogs.

Collaborative text construction accessing creative commons, video and music archives to remix modalities as this offers creative and critical literacy learning.

The potential of Wikis to write collaborative online text enabling students to participate and build on each other’s learning.

Using voicethread so students could write multimodal texts to create video and audio interactions and comment on an author’s images or video.

The logic of Web 2.0 technologies is that when teachers and students engage in on-line digital literacy, students learn 21st century literacy skills by entering an “affinity space” (Gee, 2004, cited Knobel, 2009, p. 634) where help from more technically able peers proves invaluable.  Innovative pedagogies harness the distributed intelligence and knowledge of participants as conceptualised in Vygotsky’s Zones of Proximal Development for individual learning is enhanced by guidance from more highly skilled peers (Geyer. 2009).  With this in mind, if teachers concentrate on the quality of student’s literacy expression and experiences rather then being overly concerned about the technology then their pedagogy will fall into place.

References

Burke, A., & Rowsell, J. (2007). Assessing Multimodal Learning Practices. E-Learning, 4(3), 329 – 341.  http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.329

Geyer, R. (2008). Developing the Internet-Savviness (IS) Scale: Investigating the Relationships Between Internet Use and Academically Talented Middle School Youth. RMLE Online, 32(5), 1-20.  Academic Research Library. (Document ID: 1805427871).

Gooch, K., & Saine, P. (2011). Integration of the visual arts and web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. New England Reading Association Journal, 47(1), 92-92-101. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/896616559?accountid=13380

Knobel, M., & Wilber, D. (2009). Let's Talk 2.0. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 20-24. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2009). Wikis, digital literacies, and professional growth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(7), 631-631-634. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216917829?accountid=13380

Ohler, J. (2009). Orchestrating the Media Collage. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 8-13. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Vasudevan, L. (2010). Literacies in a participatory, multimodal world.  The ares and aesthetics of web 2.0. Language Arts. 88(1), 43 - 50. 

Wohlwend, K. E. (2010). A is for avatar. Young children in literacy 2.0 worlds and literacy 1.0 schools. Language Arts, 88(2), 144 - 152. Retreived from http://search.proquest.com.docview.762484205?accountid=1338

Web 2.0 and becoming ‘Literate’

The article “A is for Avatar: Young children in Literacy 2.0 worlds and Literacy 1.0 schools” by K. Wohlwend published in the journal Language Arts, 2010, offers a fascinating discussion on how teachers perceive literacy learning within the context of Web 2.0.  Wohlwend argues convincingly that schools focus on analogous, alphabetic, print and paper based Literacy 1.0 texts which are out of sync and limited.  She believes Literacy 2.0 (Knobel & Wilbur, 2009) is not just simply an upgrade but is a significant paradigm shift that changes what it means to be literate.

Literacy evolution?

Literacy 2.0 practices involves participation from multiple individuals in huge digital networks uploading, downloading, remixing, recording, posting and blogging.  Literacy 2.0 “integrates Web 2.0’s on line interaction, global participation, multiuser collaboration, and distributed resources and knowledge and includes social networking sites…wikis… massive multiplayer on line games and music and video sharing sites such as YouTube” (Wohlwend, 2010, p. 147).  Web 2.0 literacy is non linear, fluid, dynamic and interactive in form.  It is about multiple, interconnected authors engaging in collaborative learning and building upon what has gone before.

Alternatively, literacy 1.0 is about passively consuming a single author’s unique and fixed text by a comparatively limited number of others (Wohlwend, 2010).  Doesn’t literacy 1.0 text sound familiar in schools?  Or more to the point isn't literacy 2.0 yet to become familiar in school settings? This is in spite of the fact that the rest of the world engages in technology!


We need to enlarge the scope of school literacy for a digital world.  If students are asked to make a Power Point presentation after note-taking from Google this is a linear, digital literacy 1.0 task which is hierarchal in the relationship between speaker and audience.  It is the collective, collaborative interconnectivity of Web 2.0 that distinguishes it from former digital learning tasks.


Is Literacy 2.0 incompatable to accountability?

Wohlwend raised concerns about the impact of accountability and national curriculum which challenges teachers upgrading to innovative, Web 2.0 literacy practice.  She believes ‘high stakes testing’ (Wohlwend, 2010, p. 147) feature isolated and narrowly defined literacy skills that makes it too risky for teachers to explore digital literacies in school. 

Possibly teachers are playing it safe with tried-and-true empirically validated methods by adopting literacy 1.0 practices.  Then again teachers are effectively teaching-for-the-test when standardized tests themselves are an exemplar of traditional texts requiring no interaction or collaborative production.  Perhaps literacy 1.0 tasks are more consistent with teachers own literacy learning before a binary age?  But it is paradoxical given how actively students contribute a presence online while organically forming a constructionist culture yet the education system reduces them to a passive, invisible, statistical representation in Naplan testing. 

How can teachers acheive Literacy 2.0?

Teachers can’t assume all families provide the experiences that scaffold and develop children’s technoliteracies (March 2004, cited Wohlwend, 2010, p. 145).  Concepts of reading screens (Merchant, 2005), extends Clay’s (1993) concepts about print.  Reading online texts needs new concepts about keyboarding, curser control, understanding and navigating images, space and text.  So, how do we achieve this new literacy?

 

Young children need to learn complex literacy, visual-spatial and hand-eye coordination skills to enable them to access screen texts and images.  Their visual perception skills, visual acuity and visual learning modality needs to be functioning optimally otherwise computer based learning could potentially handicap their learning progress.  Instead of reluctant, struggling readers of printed text because of visual perception delays we will see students whose poor eye teaming, or low peripheral vision will cause them to struggle scanning and locating screen text or images.  Fortunately the immediacy and playfulness of online texts will help struggling readers stay engaged, motivated and on task: conditions which will help improve their literacy skills.

Somehow schools purpose in promoting literacy has a different interpretation when digital literacy is the textual mode.  Web 2.0 is so significantly different in creating connection amongst users that schools stance is often fearful or protectionist.  Banning social networking sites such as Face Book is a prime example.  But these restrictions limit our ability in understanding how digital tools can contribute to student’s literacy development and narrows the tools to deeply engage and motivate students to develop skills in their preferred naturalistic modes.

The risks and ethics of Literacy 2.0

It is so easy for students to browse the web and in essence it is similar to browsing library bookshelves.  The difference of course is students can start at one website and wander into unmonitored websites.  The concerns here about safety and security are not unjustifiable.  Yet the culture of fear regarding web predators, cyber bullying and online pornography is partly exacerbated by media hype (Jacobson Harris, 2009).  I wonder sometimes if this sensationalism is motivated by self interest.  When media companies promote the viewpoint that traditional media is ‘safe’ they’re effectively ‘holding the line’ to keep their own share or control of the media. 

Ethics, on-line relationships and Literacy 2.0

Yet there are risks of course in enabling student access to open web sites but the potential of what students can learn needs to be measure against these risks.  There are many Web 2.0 tools, password protections, filter settings and management systems such as Moodle ensuring a level of student safety and control.  Safety policies are important as well as explicitly teaching on line safety and responsible on-line relationships.  Nonetheless students can learn these lessons within the context of Web 2.0 literacy practices. Ultimately teachers also need to be ethical in their own online relationships with students to avoid the 'creepy tree-house phenomena' and respect student's space.

Weaving ethical and responsible online behaviour into pedagogy is only one aspect.  Codes of behaviour and consequences need to be specific and enforced.  However while students being the children or teens  will try to test   the rules, this is not sufficient reason justifying not utilising Web 2.0 in literacy instruction.  Students may bend the rules about Youtube ban at school by using it’s Russian equivalent Rutube, which while upsetting school’s authoritarian dignity, shows how curious and resourceful internet savvy students are in finding an alternate back door to seek answers and share digital media with their friends.

Even though online literacy practices are in unchartered waters, we cannot ignore our responsibility to behave ethically and teach the necessary literacy skills to negotiate these vastly growing pools.

References

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2009). Wikis, digital literacies, and professional growth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(7), 631-631-634. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216917829?accountid=13380

Sweeny, S. M. (2010). Writing for the instant messaging and text messaging generation: Using new literacies to support writing instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(2), 121-121-130. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/757809515?accountid=13380

Vasudevan, L. (2010). Literacies in a participatory, multimodal world: The arts and aesthetics of web 2.0. Language Arts, 88(1), 43-43-50. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/748977626?accountid=13380

Wohlwend, K. E. (2010). A is for avatar: Young children in literacy 2.0 worlds and literacy 1.0 schools. Language Arts, 88(2), 144-144-152. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/762484205?accountid=13380

New Conversations are Overcomming

technicaleducaphobia

In the news article, “Stories from a Digital Space" (Sydney Morning Herald, 29/8/11) Lahoud advocates teachers put an end to conservatism and integrate Web 2.0 into their classrooms.  She elaborates the benefits of using blogs and RSS to create a collaborative, student centered learning environment enabling all students to actively participate and deeply engage in learning.

Blogging as an on-line ‘supportive digital space’ gives all students the opportunity to participate free of classroom social dynamics and boundaries of time and school.  Weblogs are ideal for shy students by offering a neutral environment for voicing their ideas enabling them to contribute to knowledge.

To ensure student centered on-line dialogue stays positive  no doubt requires establishing a conduct code of behaviour.  Teachers need to actively moderate comments before they are posted. 

Lahoud’s belief that students are technologically adept and that these skills are under utilised is without doubt true.  Yet I wonder about the presumption that all students are ‘digital natives’ who are fluent on-line.  I can’t see blogging as necessarily natural.  The genre of blogging needs to be taught and given time and experience to develop.

So what is ‘technicalphobia’?

In all honesty I am a technicaleducaphobiaist - a teacher wary of computer technology.  I have mixed reactions to blogging.  Undoubtedly it has tremendous value in being able to differentiate instruction and create constructionist learning.  Yet I’m unsure if weblogs meandering, conversational discourse is a useful pedagogical tool across all subject areas.  Take Maths for instance.  I wonder how to validly embed blogging into pedagogy given all the curriculum demands that need to be addressed.  But certainly blogging tools offer multiple students the opportunities for growth, to talk with one another as equals in an on-line environment.  While somewhat disconcerting, this democratisation of student’s voice, sharing of authority and expertise empowers and motivates students.  This outcome in itself is enough incentive to include weblogs as a learning tool.  The followig video outlines blogs many advantages.

References

Lahoud, M. "Stories from a digital space." Sydney Morning Herald. 2011, August 29: 13. http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/elibweb/australia/do/document?set=search&dictionaryClick=&secondaryNav=&groupid=1&requestid=lib_australia&resultid=1&edition=&ts=1092F05FA09F1D2EE44FBED7EC45E844_1318933006509&start=1&publicationId=&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B196323671