Developing Digital Literacies

Developing Digital Literacies: Teachers in Transition

My third conference was "Developing Digital Literacies: Teachers in Transition," hosted by Dr. Kristen Turner.  Dr. Turner worked with four teachers from NYC to create a Digital Literacy Collaborative, in which the teachers worked outside of their comfort level to change traditional writing lessons to digital activities. The session goal was to show the results of the professional learning community that focused on developing digital literacies.

The conference began with this video, explaining the mission and expectations of the DLC:

The purpose of the DLC is to bring together teachers who are interested in developing their own digital literacy in an effort to improve literacy instruction in K-12 schools. The group of teachers worked together to become digital writers themselves, which they believe is essential to teaching digital literacy.  The DLC created a Twitter account, a Wiki, and a blog where they could share their success and activities with one another.

Dr. Turner discussed the importance of moving from a "Yes, but..." mindset to a "Yes, and..." one. It is important to not think about what is preventing us from incorporating technology in our classrooms, but instead to think about what we can do to overcome these obstacles. One thing said by many teachers is "Yes, but my students don't heave access to the internet at home." After looking into this, Dr. Turner realized that most students actually do have access to the internet in one place or another. She created this infographic to show her findings:

The conference then went in to the stories and findings of four teachers who were part of the DLC, all of which teach at urban schools in New York: Emilie Jones, Lauren King, Ivelisse Brannon, and Rebekah Shoaf.

Emilie's Story

Emilie's main concern was that her students don't have the newest and best technology. She had always thought that "good writing" was just following the writing process: brainstorm, prewrite, rough draft, edit, final draft. She believed that writing was either done as a narrative or an essay, and once you're done, you're done - she would grade the papers, and them back, and they would never be touched again.

After participating in this project, she learned that good writing can take many forms, that the audience of a piece of writing can change, and that after you write something and think you're done, you can always go back and add more!

Emilie had her middle school students create podcasts on the topic, "What do you think high school will be like?" The students interviewed others and created videos, and Emilie and her students learned the many benefits of podcasts:

• Can be done on a cell phone or computer
• Can be used cross-curricular
• Multigenre - narratives, informative, argument
• Teaches students real-life skills

Emilie concluded her segment by challenging teachers to change something in their curriculum, by asking, "Where can you control-alt-delete in your classroom?"

 Lauren's Story

Lauren decided to help her 7th grade students create visual arguments using just the technology in their pockets - their cell phones. Her students were required to choose a social justice issue, create a storyboard explaining the issue and their opinion, and record their argument. Lauren saw her students become independent digital learners. They were now excited to use their phones for more than just texting, and they now had ownership over emailing and sharing information using professional information.

Ivelisse's Story

Ivelisse read "Pride and Prejudice" with her junior and senior language arts classes, and wanted to incorporate digital literacy into her instruction by helping her students become creators of media. Instead of giving her students a traditional writing assessment (an essay analyzing the book), she incorporated digital writing components into the assessments. The students were each responsible for creating a lesson to teach part of the book, along with blogging their analysis, and completing a reflection of the project. The activity was self-directed and made the students' learning public. Ivelisse stated that her students came up with dynamic and creative projects as they became more familiar with digital literacy.

Rebekah's Story 

Rebekah wanted her students to collaborate with one another outside of the school day, so she created a historical research wiki and independent reading blog for her students to participate in. Some of her students posted inappropriate comments on these public forums, but Rebekah saw the rest of her class hold each other accountable, ask questions, and make connections. They had mature discussions that would have never taken place, and her students learned what to do in all situations. She learned to trust her students, and learned that she should have a plan in place before starting assignments, where she thinks about the worst-case scenario and what she can do to if any problems arise.

Implications and My Classroom

After watching this conference, I've definitely been thinking about moving outside of my comfort zone. I am very comfortable with Kahoot, Padlet, and Google docs, and use those pretty regularly in my classroom. But there are still many activities that I've been doing for years on paper, that could easily be change to use more technology. Some examples include:

Current Paper-and-Pencil	New Technology-Infused Lesson
Reading logs where students write a 2-3 sentence summary of what they've read	Write the summary on a blog, and respond to one anther's summaries and opinions of the stories
Go over math homework on the board or around the room	Each student becomes an "expert" at one problem and presents it in a podcast or Google Slides
Traditional 5-paragraph analysis on an independent reading book	Blog post that includes a book recommendation
Traditional 5-paragrpah informative or argument essay	Create a wiki or podcast that includes links, interviews, pictures, and other resources that help students support their ideas and opinions

I'm definitely going to be busy updating my lesson plans for the next few weeks!