In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Richardson argues that in order for these 'new literacies' to be successful there needs to be a "redefinition of what it means to teach." Teachers must first be connectors, where they are connecting students to each other, to content, and others in the world. We must also be content creators, in which we 'ourselves' are working in and creating these mediums such as blogs, podcasts, videos, wikis, etc... Next, teachers must be collaborators. We need to collaborate with other teachers, with our students, and get our students to collaborate with each other. Another important attribute is that we as teachers need to be coaches. We should be demonstrating all of these new literacies for our students, thereby motivating them to want to do the same. There should not be a 45 minute long traditional lesson and lecture. That's the fastest way to get kids to do the opposite of what you want them to do. The final piece to this important puzzle is that teachers need to be change agents, and truly move away from the traditional forms of teaching and literacy. (Richardson, 2010) Beginning to move in this direction, during this project, was exciting and not as difficult as I thought it would be. All of theses elements are alive and well in the reading and writing workshops, which have been alive and well in my classroom the last few years.
The Three Questions
There are three questions Carrington and Robinson believe teachers should continuously ask themselves to make sure they are being effective teachers of digital literacy in their classrooms. "What styles of learning can be identified? What are the participants’ motivations for learning? How do they critique and seek to improve their own work ?" (Carrington & Robinson, 2009)
What styles of learning can be identified?
As the students and I progressed through this project together, I began to see how these 'new literacies' meet all learning styles and the different multiple intelligences. The multimodal texts that digital literacy provides hits the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners all at the same time. I saw, first hand, how students who were stronger auditory learners tapped into digital content that contained audio clips, such as podcasts, YouTube, documentaries, etc... It was also interesting to see these auditory learners rely on the collaboration and discussion with their peers. Working with the keyboard and mouse as they constantly interact and construct within this digital realm made the kinesthetic learners feel comfortable and highly confident. For the visual learners, the possibilities with these 'new literacies' are endless.
Working with digital literacy hits all of the multiple intelligences, and fairly consistently. Just to touch upon several of them, visual/spatial intelligence is needed in order to navigate websites, create blogs and wikis, design various digital literacy presentations. For instance, when the students were creating their wiki pages they first needed to analyze websites to see how web designers created their spaces visually, then they began to plan their wiki pages spatially. Interpersonal and intrapersonal skills were crucial in theses digital literacy processes because the students had to first get an understanding for how others did things, and then collaborate with each other on all aspects of there work. It was also important for the students to be able to reflect about themselves, their work, and collaboration in all parts of the process. Being aware of the learning styles and multiple intelligences that digital literacy uses and enables, proves how important it is to incorporate digital literacy into all aspects of our everyday teaching.
What are the participants' motivations for learning?
Gauging the students' motivations for learning was easily visible within these 'new literacies.' There wasn't a single moment during this entire process where students weren't excited about what they were doing, or what they were going to be doing. When students are blogging, they are passionate about their topic and their perspective about their particular topic. The student bloggers are then highly motivated to get their point of view across, and post their blog so they can get a communication going through commenting. Working with and creating their own multimodal texts is within itself engaging because students are constantly being stimulated by all of their senses. Motivations for learning is never going to be a problem for participants of digital literacy, especially if the teacher models his/her passion and successes with the medium as well.
How do they critique and seek to improve their own work?
Analyzing and reflecting on their work in digital literacy was not something that necessarily came naturally for the students. I needed to model effective ways I critiqued and improved my own work in these mediums. It was also helpful to uses student samples of critique in order for students to see how they really could be successful with this. "When you celebrate good work, or students' unique ideas to drive further discussion, it goes a long way toward creating a community of learners." (Richardson, 2010) And isn't this at the heart of good workshop teaching as well? Once enough modeling and structures were put into place, the students really begaTn to critique and improve their work based on their reflection and analysis. The collaborative and social processes that digital literacy allow gave students an effective support system that helped critique become more comfortable for them, and gave students many opportunities to learn from each other. We were even able to bring many of our revision strategies and structures from writing workshop into play. Critiquing their work and seeking improvements is still an area where the students need to improve upon greatly, and I need to improve my coaching and collaboration with them. Change is constant in the digital realm, and improving our work through self and collaborative critique is essential for success.
Next Steps
This project has only begun to scratch the surface of working with digital literacy in my classroom, and making it a core part of my teaching and pedagogy. The next steps are boundless and infinite, just like digital literacy itself. The following are just a few examples of next steps I plan on taking with these students and future students; getting students to explore power relationships, creating collaborative stories on a wiki where global participants work on and create a story together, doing an investigation and case study with Wikipedia, etc... As I said the possibilities are endless, but teachers don't forget, you need to be versed in the technology before presenting it to your students. So, the professional development implications for teachers are vast and exciting, and make collaboration crucial. You don't need to do this alone.
I think Richardson sums up the direction of our world and education the best. "More and more content both new and old will continue to come online…the internet will continue to explode as the most comprehensive source of information in history…the trend is that the creation of that content is collaborative…students will be asked to work with others from around the globe collaboratively to create content for diverse and wide-ranging audiences….Compare that to an educational system that, by and large, asks those same students to work independently on paper for a very narrow audience, and the disconnect becomes painfully clear." (Richardson, 2010)
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