Using Structure to Break it

Many students found comfort in our classroom. They learned what to expect and settled in nicely. Now, things are quite different. As much as possible, I want to carry over the norms set from the physical classroom.

Five Pillars For My Online Classroom

A short list of considerations for online learning. This quote from the section “Carry over norms, when possible, from the physical classroom” is good advice.

For one, online there are technical and literacy considerations that will cause enough difference and discomfort to navigate, especially for the first few weeks. Keep routines and habits to create some continuity so students don’t drop.

For another, routines are important because they give me the power to break routine, to make an impact where and when it is needed. I don’t want to lose this with the transition to online. I’ll also need ways to engage students when they get too inactive online.

Emergent Literacy

“For 3- to 5-year-olds, the imagery and default mode networks mature late, and take practice to integrate with the rest of the brain,” Hutton explains. “With animation you may be missing an opportunity to develop them.”

When we read to our children, they are doing more work than meets the eye. “It’s that muscle they’re developing bringing the images to life in their minds.”

Hutton’s concern is that in the longer term, “kids who are exposed to too much animation are going to be at risk for developing not enough integration.”

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/pas-nsm042618.php

The other day I posted about “emergent propaganda” in which the idea of propaganda that emerges from a particular environment. Now, this about “emergent literacies” in which skills to read and write technology emerges from the environments that we provide for kids.

As an educator, this makes me think of scaffolding, yet there seems to be a difference – in the example here, kids are going to grow and advance regardless of the scaffolding present or not. There’s a larger context here apart from any given learning goal.

Anyway, the takeaways in this paper, for me at least, is that books (especially children’s books) will never go away completely, and that in rushing kids too much into digital environments at a young age parents might miss opportunities to develop robust literacy skills in their children.

Literacy Ataxia: Overwhelmed by the demands of processing language, without enough practice, they may also be less skilled at forming mental pictures based on what they read, much less reflecting on the content of a story.

 

The story about this paper is worth a read (via the Katexic newsletter):

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/05/24/611609366/whats-going-on-in-your-childs-brain-when-you-read-them-a-story

 

The Trade-offs When Making from Scratch

There is something that happens the busier we are with things. Yes, there is value in learning to do things from scratch. But, I myself notice I get lazy. I can do it in other ways and I can probably make it look much better if I just used photoshop vs using a generator.

And that’s the tension, that’s the trade-off.

http://www.edutalk.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/llearn-ep8.mp3

Here’s an older episode of Loose Learners, where Mariana and John talk about technology and education in a slow, calm way.

There’s a good discussion that follows this quote about the trade-offs, about what we learn when we do the work and what we might not have time or need for.

As they note, the decision always depends on situation. But, the difference is a level of competency in the ability to read and write for that particular process. In doing from scratch (or, leaning that way when possible) I better know about my competency, what I could have done, were I can improve my skill, when it is worth it to do this particular task on my own or not – in all, my use of the skill becomes more explicit.

Then there’s the matter of style (mentioned around 26:50 in the audio). Learning to recognize, tweak, and create a style is a major component in the literacy of any medium. Commanding an intentional style adds power to any communication.

Thinking of a similar situation, in cooking, making things from scratch is not only fun and helps to save money, it gets me thinking about nutrition and what I put into my body. Is there any better way to teach my kids about nutrition and health than to cook and bake with them?

Is there any better way to teach my kids about media and digital literacy than by making digital assets with them from scratch?

Long Tail Literacy

“English teachers need to understand that skill in English is based on knowledge. The ability to read is composed of many thousands of individual pieces of knowledge which organise into schemas which allow us to automatise a hugely complex process. As reading becomes increasingly automatic it becomes effortless, and children are likely to read more. The more they read the more they learn about the world. The more they learn about the world the easier it is to connect new ideas to things we already know about and so inferences are made and analysis becomes possible.”

http://www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/why-english-is-not-a-skills-based-subject/

I love this description of reading, and all its complexity, and its application at the control center of our ability to connect ideas.

The article itself creates an unnecessary dichotomy, skills or knowledge, when there’s no reason not to cultivate both.

But the more remarkable part of this article is how it illustrates the breadth of literacy to include a grandeur application of reading and writing. I read and write not only words on a paper, but I read and write the world around me. Especially now, because the world around me is often a digital environment that affords so much of my own control.

The concept of literacy has expanded over the past few decades. I think what educators need to comes to term with is that (expanded) literacy is also still one of the basics of education. Long tail literacy development never stops.

 

More: Literacy and Fluency

Literacy and Fluency

“My concern with Clark’s argument is that she puts ‘digital literacy’ to the sword, replacing it with ‘fluency’. This is problematic on two fronts. Firstly, the concept of literacy is not fixed. Secondly, we are better considering the plurality of digital literacies.”

https://readwriterespond.com/2018/04/digital-literacies/

Literacy is one of those words that has changed meaning during my lifetime. Or, to be more exact, it has taken on new meanings and even a dominant new meaning in Western culture.

Literacy is not fixed, but it does originate with being able to understand and use language. For language learning, fluency is one of the skills (along with developing language inputs, outputs, and things like vocabulary, grammar, syntax) that make up what it means to be literate. Nation calls it one of the four strands.

I probably wouldn’t replace literacy with fluency either, as literacy encases fluency. In it’s very basic sense, fluency is about speed.

The plurality of literacies is happening based on how the word is used all over the place. And with Belshaw’s list, I still wonder if this is a list of literacies, elements, incidences, competencies, skills, themes, or something else.

It’s worth thinking if there’s now very specific literacties, such as Adobe CC literacy, LMS Literacy, Browser Literacy, Media Literacy, Riding the Train in Tokyo Literacy. All of these are systems that require knowledge of meaning inputs and outputs, elements of function and position, and at a certain speed.

Is this what literacy means now? To understand, know and be able to use a specific culture or system?

If this is the case, the idea of fluency become very interesting. Fluency may be desired within one literacy (except when it’s too big of a system, see facebook), and between literacies it may not be desired. We need perplexity to learn, to apply knowledge in ways that are not conventional, not prescriptive, and below the surface of fluency.

More: Dana Boyd on Media Literacy

An Elementary School Teacher Telling Students that Wikipedia is a Bad Website

I’m hoping to get some advice from anyone who happens to read this. Just as the title states, my daughter’s 4th grade teacher told her class last week that Wikipedia is a bad website, that the information on there is mostly wrong, and that they should not use it.

More specifically, the students were doing an in class exercise on computers – they were supposed to look up something they were interested in, and write about it. One of my daughter’s friends searched for “Morse Code” and navigated to a wikipedia page on the subject. The teacher saw, and gave the speech about how wikipedia sites are bad and strongly suggested they use google or other websites instead.

I’m not sure how to handle this, what to do or if I should do anything. We’re pretty active in teaching our daughter at home (based on past experiences with the school here, I realized we need to talk on most of her education herself), and I work in technology and digital literacy so I have no problem teaching her about such things (we got her a tablet about half a year ago, and I slowly introduce her to various websites and digilit concepts – wikipedia was one of the fist we added). What I do worry about is what else is her teacher telling her?

Or am I seeing this wrong? I realize that maybe I’m out to lunch on this one. Is Wikipedia seen as a bad website now? I use it often throughout the week, in professional settings, though not usually as a final resource in itself – like any other source of information, it needs to be verified when the situation calls for it, right?

Are these the types of opinions teachers should be telling kids at this age? Shouldn’t they rather be teaching them to discern information more objectively?

Language Natives – It’s Complicated

I recently read “It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens” by Danah Boyd, a book I sought out because I have two children of my own who will become teenagers a lot earlier than I want and will be prepared to deal with. The book is excellent, Boyd succeeds in providing exploration and explanation of the subject from the teenager perspective. This perspective creates understanding more than critique. I recommend it, even if you don’t have kids.

In one of the final chapters, she tackles the concepts of digital natives and digital immigrants. These two terms were popular a decade ago, but haven’t really stuck around since the initial meaning for these concepts haven’t really held up. From the book:

It has become popular in public discourse to promote the idea that natives have singular technical powers and skills. The suggestion that many take from Barlow’s proclamation is that adults should fear children’s supposedly natural born knowledge.

Boyd spends time dispelling but also exploring this idea, and almost shifts the discussion from natives and immigrants to a discussion of literacy. Which I wish she would have. Another quote brings up language and language learning, only to focus back on the native vs immigrant divide:

He [Rushkoff] metaphorically describes the differences in linguistic development between older immigrants and children who grow up in a society who’s dominant language is different than their parents native tongue. He uses the concepts of immigrants and natives to celebrate children’s’ development in the digital age.

The word ‘literacy’ has probably evolved in meaning during my lifetime, and this is where the real distinction lies when we think of how children develop in the digital age – there’s a certain degree or culture of digital literacy that many youth are born into. However, similar to how children learn language incidentally, ‘literacy’ is something that must be learned intentionally. Even still, ‘being literate’ says nothing about the degree to which that literate person can use language.

People learn mother tongues in daily life, starting from before birth. But does this mean for these ‘language natives’ that literacy development will take care of itself? No, because not everyone can write like a novelist or a journalist, and not everyone can give speeches like a sports team coach. People need to learn these skills. The same could be said for digital literacy.

It’s probably true that the concept of digital natives doesn’t offer very much. Digital literates and degrees/specializations of digital literacy might be a better concept to explore.