Questions:
How does a transition from carrying around paper and ink books to digital sources affect student engagement? How does this add to the mix of equity in terms of access to education? What specific skills do students need to work with electronic written work?
Rationale:
Literacy is clearly a thing of two parts: writing and reading. Everybody is extolling the virtues of going green and we hear a lot about paperless classrooms and workplaces. Most of the focus is on producing reports, memos, and data that never see ink. Many of these are probably printed out on local printers rather than printed and then mailed. Certainly paper is saved, but, I suspect, most of the saving is in ease of transporting the documents to the place they will be ultimately printed.
We heard about the reading side of paperless classrooms when Cushing Academy made news last year by announcing that it was replacing its stacks with a cappuccino machine and the books themselves with Kindles. Major text book companies are increasingly offering books online, or on CD. These certainly cut down on textbook loss, but they raise questions of equity of access. Do all students have computers and internet available to them? Is reading online the same as reading paper and ink? What are the issues around annotating digital text?
I agree with people who have commented that we seem to assume that today's youth live and breathe digital communication. It is cliche to say "Ask a teen" if you don't know how to do something with a computer. Kids are pretty good at communicating what they know, but are often pitiful when it comes to inferring information not explicit in instructions. Sometimes they don't even deal with instructions. Experience in the classroom suggests that editing skills are not consistent in terms of acquiring, manipulating, or creating digital text.
I would like to examine the skills and strategies used to deal with finding and reading digital texts. How are they different from those used with paper texts? What do students need to know in order to be successful readers of these texts? How is equity of access to education reflected in this debate?
Susan, this is quite an undertaking! Will all of your classroom texts be digital? What do you need for the next meeting?
ReplyDeleteBailey
Not all of the texts, no. My school isn't springing for digital texts at all this year, but it is clearly coming down the pike.
ReplyDeleteI'll be able to do this with my Non Fiction class since most of the material is available through Marvel! or other online sources. There are opportunities in my AP Lang & Comp class for doing the same thing. I am thinking of comparing texts within classes - one time doing a digital text, then a similar text with print versions only. I think I can also collaborate with the Bio teacher whose texts come in both paper and digital. Right now she issues the students whichever medium they prefer.
As I try to explain this I realize that I clearly need help focusing the scope of this project. One thing I'll need next meeting is some help with annotating and marking up texts. I am familiar with the tools available in NeoOffice / OpenOffice and Word. I've dabbled with Preview. I'd also like help making fill-in forms that would be like graphic organizers.
When I was in the Writing Project (08), someone did their workshop on technological literacy...I am not sure who anymore. I wish I could remember specifics but I bet if I get out my teacher journal from the SI, I could find out. It was so interesting.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very important inquiry. The question of accessibility in digital text brings up the question of how deep a reader can actually "get" digitally.
I look forward to hearing more!
"It is cliche to say "Ask a teen" if you don't know how to do something with a computer. Kids are pretty good at communicating what they know, but are often pitiful when it comes to inferring information not explicit in instructions.'
ReplyDeleteWhile this is the cliche - I find many of my students actually are not good at using computers. They know email, and how to download songs onto an ipod, but if they can't print their paper, they don't know how to problem solve. Likewise, they often don't know how to figure out how to do things that they haven't done before. I just spent two days walking a kid through how to import a dvd clip into imovie - and he's spent his whole middle school career with a laptop. Last year I had a girl who couldn't figure out how to attach documents to her emails. My point is - don't assume anything. My school offers very little computer classes - assuming that kids are all whizzes already. As a result most of them don't know how to use essential features in basic programs - like exporting a power point as a DVD or saving a newer version of word so that it is backwards compatible.
I've often wondered if different skill sets were needed to deal with digital media. I know I prefer to deal with print though I allow kids the option of going paperless on some assignments.
ReplyDeleteOur school district decided to eliminate the computer teacher positions at the middle level. I believe we will see more of a digital divide with this. We have a number of students well versed in using a variety of computer applications while others need a great deal of direction to produce and print a text document.
Susan - I like the idea of engagement, and I'm wondering how you're going to get at that? Your observations are incredibly valuable as the results of an inquiry - even reflected through shared entries of a teacher/researcher journal you might keep, as well as what your students say. I can see how the sub-questions about student skills (and we can help with some mark-up ideas) comes into play, but I am wondering how equity plays into the issue. Is that question, perhaps, more geared toward access - both to materials and non-teacher sources, when digital, especially hyperlinked texts come into play?
ReplyDeleteI asked my college students to go 24 hours WITHOUT using technology and to journal about what they noticed, what they missed and how much it affected their day. It was fascinating..some simply said, "I couldn't do it". Addiction? Another inquiry question? LOL
ReplyDelete