Literacy, capacity to communicate using inscribed, printed, or electronic signs or symbols for representing language.
As you can see by this image, literacy is more than our basic three “Rs” of education (reading, writing, & arithmetic). Understanding today’s language requires more than decoding letters on a page. When faced with learning literacy in high school, especially when attempting to integrate technology, educators are faced with many questions ranging from “how much technology integration is too much?” “Can students still see the relevance in learning when ‘all’ the answers are on the internet?” “What will students find engaging in this information age?” While literacy may mean more than reading and writing, these basic skills are still necessary to navigate a society that is relying more and more on technology.
Integrating technology into a high school ELA classroom has subtle implications because much of literary analysis is digging into the text and finding the student’s voice in analysis. With technology, students are tempted to look for other people’s ideas to verify their own before sharing their ideas. Alvermann in her article “Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents” (2002) states that “Perceptions of self-efficacy are central to most theories of motivation, and the research bears out the hypothesized connections” (Alvermann). Without believing they can understand, students will rely on “expert” opinion before they rely on their own interpretation of the text. She “argues that adolescent literacy instruction, if it is to be effective, must address issues of self-efficacy and student engagement with a variety of texts (e.g., textbooks, hypermedia texts, digital texts) in diverse settings” (Alvermann, 2002). Luckily, many of the literature choices educators make are online and with tools such as web.hypothes.is, annotating online is achievable. Yet, even with the online texts and tools, students still need to be able to understand and comprehend the text in order to build the skills necessary to move forward in their education.
Thankfully, experts are also looking at how to improve learning in the secondary English classroom such as McWilliams et.al (2011). McWilliams and her group began their study by researching the question, “What kinds of reading and writing assignments will prepare learners to engage with the vast range of knowledge-building and problem-solving communities that increasingly characterize the educational, vocational, and social experiences of many adults?” (McWilliams et.al). The group met and “developed and refined an approach to literacy instruction that embraces an expanded notion of literacy and supports engagement in new media literacy practices while also helping learners to be successful in the English classroom” (McWilliams et.al). In their findings, they discovered that fan fiction and Twitter(r) were platforms to make The Crucible more palatable to 21st Century high school students (McWilliams et. al). This is the challenge met by educators from any discipline, making learning relevant to today’s students. How do you take what may seems like archaic content and polish to shine as brightly as something students are drawn to on the world wide web?
To address in what are ways in which students can use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions, secondary ELA educators are charged with walking the tight rope of keeping students engaged as well as staying true to the learning standards given by district, state, and federal entities. In my case, I find it very difficult to fulfil the mandates of district standards (required literature and assessments) within their time sequence. To keep up with the calendar, I am forced to stay very surface-level with the content and spend most of my time on the skills necessary for success inside and outside the classroom. To do this, I try to incorporate as much peer collaboration as possible; my students seem to function best when they are paired or grouped. While analyzing literature, writing essays, and learning rhetorical devices in a shared learning environment creates confidence in most students and I as their teacher cannot instill. Integrating technology into this type of classroom is not difficult, but it can become routine and unengaging.
Because of this, I appreciate what West explores in her article, “Using new literacies theory as a lens for analyzing technology-mediated literacy classrooms.” She states that “digital writing has less to do with the medium with which the writer uses to compose and more to do with the ways in which writing is changing in response to new technologies” (West, 2019). It is the new technologies portion of this statement that causes me the most anxiety. I know that my students are more literate in technology than I am, yet, as mentioned before, I am charged with integrating different modes of tech into my daily plans to meet their needs as well as keep them engaged. She gives examples of digital writing which “include, but are not limited to, creating podcasts, creating and modifying wikis, writing and managing blogs, writing fan fiction, writing and digitally illustrating graphic novels, and creating mash-ups of existing audio, video, and texts for novel purposes” (West). I understand, in theory, what most of this means; it is the necessary skills in which to teach with this knowledge that I am falling short.
By looking at my curriculum through the lenses of the ISTE Standards for Students, specifically 1c “Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways” and number 4 which states that “Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions” an educator can breathe a bit easier because what should take place is student centered. But this does not let the teacher off the hook, for students to be able to execute either of these goals, we must instill in them the assurance that they are capable of learning. Circling back to Alvermann, she reiterates that “Adolescents’ perceptions of how competent they are as readers and writers, generally speaking, will affect how motivated they are to learn in their subject area classes (e.g., the sciences, social studies, mathematics, and literature)” (2002). No matter how technology is addressed in the classroom, encouraging our students that they are competent is still most important.
References:
Alvermann, D. E. (2002). Effective literacy instruction for adolescents. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(2), 189-208. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3402_4
McWilliams, J., Hickey, D. T., Hines, M., Conner, J. M., Bishop, S. C. (2011). Using collaborative writing tools for literary analysis: Twitter, fan fiction and The Crucible in the secondary English classroom. The National Association for Media Literacy Education’s Journal of Media Literacy Education 2(3), 238-245. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://scholar.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1046&context=jmle
West, J. A. (2019). Using new literacies theory as a lens for analyzing technology-mediated literacy classrooms. E-Learning and Digital Media, 16(2), 151-173. doi:10.1177/2042753019828355
