Literate Online: Reading and Writing are Different on the Web

[Learning 2.008 Conference]

What it means to be literate is changing. Electronic text is very different from print text. Teaching students how to read and write in these new forms can be complex . This session will also examine how the easy to use technology of RSS has the power to change your classroom. Information on a daily basis from leading experts around the world personalized for every student in your classroom at absolutely no cost. What are some of your options for setting up RSS feeds for use in your classroom?

Presenter: Clarence Fisher
Room: MS203

[Jay Reimer]

Absolutely! I have a web page, I blog (sporadically), I wiki... but I would love to find some streamlining tools as a teacher. How can RSS streamline my acitivities? How can I use "feeds" to collect and track student progress so kids can work individually and I can monitor and assess them remotely?

[Clarence Fisher]

You bet! That is exactly what this session is all about. How is literacy different online? What are some of the things we need to be aware of, how do we look at all of the "traditional" puzzle pieces and put them together?

Hope to see you there!

[Tod Baker]

Literacy has always been evolving.

Electronic literacy makes literacy social like never before.

How do we help students deal with these changes?

Where are the changes leading us? What do we embrace?

How do corporations effect our literacy practices?

No difference between digital literacy and literacy. It's all literacy. Maybe we shouldn't refer to literacy as digital literacy. I don't do it.

Info overload caused by filter failure.

[Paul Harrington]

That is very true and what is happening now seems absolutely revolutionary - but just think back to that YouTube video about The Book (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek) and think just how revolutionary that seemed - digital storytelling and what is yet to come is evolution not revolution :-)

[Dennis Harter]

Great line: Information Overload is actually "Filter Failure."

[Jay Reimer]

In the past literacy was about "text." It is not only about text now; now it is about information which can be couched in many forms: video, audio, writing.
Literacy is social today like never before; kids can write and be read-and even be responded to!
Literacy is a metacategory that includes "digital literacy."

New Issues in literacy:
1-access
a) "filter failure" - students have to learn to identify what is valuable and determine what to keep and what to jettison-it also
2. evaluation
3. comprehension

[Jennifer Nelson]

Def. of literacy has changed. Literacy is in constant flux, changing...we help students find the "in." Everything is literacy.
Static text (pages) vs. electronic text (complex and social)...need to teach students how to evaluate electronic text?

Aurora.

Corporations are effecting literacy.

Access to literacy. How teach to access information? "Getting info. off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant."
Don't need everything, learn to access what they need...filter info.

The fourth screen (youtube)

so you're connected...so what? Need to do with a purpose in mind.

RSS accounts...what kind of info. are you seeking....finding? (If the news is that important, it will find me.)

Evaluate: diff. btwn. first sources and final sources. How do you validate? Wikipedia mentality...publish first, then edit. (give urls to fake websites....tree octupus, velcro field....what's real, what's not? How do you decide?) Teach to be wary/critical of info. out there...what strategies are taught to evaluate info?

Comprehend: complex task. Photocopy text page and highlight directions for readers. Do same thing on-line to find all directions.

Remote Access (Fisher's blog)

Share: copyright issues. Legal sharing. Given common people back our voice. ("normal" people have always been publishing...)

Want community for kids not always audience (avoid sensationalism...outrageous). "Drive-by vs. stop in and chat."
Book: Here comes everybody

Safety: Be aware!

[Prufrock]

We don't know where it is going. We have more choices. Print text is important but it is changing. Bump talk: what computers might be going to: all files open on desktop, more of a natural feel. Mozilla has a project out: Aurora: the future of browser. How do we know what it the next step? How do we deal with it?

History is being made because corporations, for the first time, are having an impact on our literacy. What is the corporate affect? Static text in a book verses Electronic text. Electronic text is complex. Electronic literacy is social--audiences you never dreamed of are at your fingertips. Some students are not interested in digital world. The appeals are for some not for others. Q: does digital literacy mislead us? Broader question is what does it mean to be literate? This encompasses all. Access skills are changing from card index to digital.

I. Access is important: Filter failure, not information overload: students have to learn to filter what they need at that time. We used to give students info, now they can access it themselves; teaching them to be choosy.

Fourth Screen: we used to be a community--CKY television, we all talked about the same thing. Now we have mobile devices, the 4th screen. You can now access video, audio text where ever you are. Where does that take us? The big question: what is the purpose? Overload gently with information. What do you need right now? Filtering...

II. Evaluation: published first, then edit--this almost seems the way things are going now. Alan November lists 10-12 websites where you can get info and it is not true. Give these URLS to a kid and say, what is real and what is not? They argue for days and they determine, evaluate, whether it is real. Whatever you trust, is what will be real to them. Teach them to be wary of some of what they see out there: think critically.

III. Comprehend: a complex act--hypertext, links, finding their own paths. We have to lead. Where do you even start reading this page? Show them a page: where does it point readers, can you highlight these? Kids have to figure out what it an ad, what is an actual text. Research shows 16% of people can find the ad on a page: shows you it is difficult to comprehend. "They are not really looking for you."

IV Share your stuff: what about copyright? Where do you begin teaching children about this? They are more complex now with kids publishing videos online by borrowing texts from multiple sources. Anyone can have a voice. The quote from his student: "You don't have to be a rich old guy from New York to have a voice anymore." It has given us our voice back; kids now have a global audience. Sometimes audience leads to showing off, making funny jokes. We want kids to work with others but not become the class clown. Community is richer than audience (drive by) and community will stay. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (?)

V Safety: Making sure blogging is safe for your kids. All the issues we have about safety are over-blown for the most part. Teach safety, but don't let this scare you or keep you from getting them out there.

[Dianne Salminen]

literacy - about text but a lot of different forms- publishing anything
help kids to find these access points
aurora - future of the browser
corporation influence on our literacy
static text - versus electronic text- busy- video or animation, hyperlink, social
access - skills - , filter failure
utube- fourth screen (mobile devices) - need to be for a purpose for learning
all have rss feeds- give 5 blogs- 10 more- find too many posts- what did you really need
evaluate- is it true
wikipedia- first source- published first and then edited - evaluation skills important
alan november- fake web sites
comprehend - -find directions on web page- use drawing tool and find reading comprehension cues
share-copyright- teaching
getting our voice again-
Clay Shirky-
Safety

[Paul Fradale]

Literacy in the past was text-based, video is now as valid to get your message across. Literacy is related to communication. Being able to publish whatever you want to say, to whomever you want to say it, will fundamentally change communication.

Text, even, always changes and has always changed.

Aurora (mozilla) browser of future, virtual desktops are coming down the pipe.
Corporations now have direct impact on our literacy (think Apple changing iTunes interface).

Electronic "texts" feature hypertext links, video, and massive social connections (literacy is now social, think blogger in the middle of nowhere with thousands of subscribers).

CF does not agree with digital natives and immigrants; it seems to him to be more interest-related; further, he does not see "digital literacy" as a separate entity to "literacy"--it is all literacy with regards to information.

*Access: How do we teach information access? "Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire-hydrant".

"Information-overload" is actually filter failure. The filter should change with the learners' needs.

"The fourth screen" (look for it on youtube) = mobile devices

Giving kids RSS feeds or other tools to connect to the web is useless without giving them the skills to filter the information that will result from that.

*Evaluation: be critical, check for validity, cross-check, is a commercial source such as CNN necessarily more trustworthy than an eye-witness account by a blogger? How do you know one is more accurate than the other?

*Comprehension: comprehension of text alone is challenging; adding links and other media increases the complexity of the task. Use a screen capture, for example, to look for "reader cues". What is an ad? What is sponsored information? What is the author's intent in terms of flow?

*Share: teach the children copyright, creative commons, publishing, the various ways to share information and content. "You don't have to be a rich old guy from New York anymore" to have a voice.

Technology has given us old "rights" back to create and share. Walmart decides what music is sold but now you can put it out on the web. Back in the day, people often wrote and published their own work but the barrier became prohibitively expensive over time. This has changed, taking us back, in a way, to that earlier time.

Authentic audience is a great motivator. Audience drives by, community stays through good times and bad. Before, people gathered and shared but now people share and then gather. Literacy is social.

*Safety: yes, we need to be careful, but CF thinks the issues are overblown. In four years of blogging with his kids he's only had two negative events and only one of them was from outside the school. Some IP sleuthing uncovered a child in Guam who posted it and he was disciplined. Don't be scared to get the kids out there. "The problem with common sense is that it is not all that common". Use your common sense, trust your gut, approach critically.

[Jenny Luca]

Literacy- what does it look like in the 21st century?

I'm doing what you want Clarence!!

Distance from others requires connection - today's tools allow for things to be on an even footing.

Kids today can publish and get their voice out there.

Stuck thinking that literacy is one way- it is evolving. It is a many faceted thing now. In fact literacy has always been evolving. In the past pictures told stories.
We need to help kids find access points.

Aurora -the possible future of the browser.

Corporations are having an effect on our literacy - Clarence not so sure of that. What is the corporate efect of literary practices?

Kids need skills to interpret electronic text. Electronic literacy is very social.

Access -how do we teach our kids how to access the vast amount of info that is out there?

"Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant'.

Filter failure - kids have to learn how to filter properly to cope with the plethora that is out there. Have to figure out what do they need right now.

The fourth screen - find it on YouTube. About mobile devices.

Set up RSS feeds with kids- they will work out what they need.

"If the news is that important it will find me"

Evaluation of resources. Very important.

Alan November - site with 10 fake websites.

They need to be critical thinkers.

Comprehension is a complex act. Online readers can compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. How do you read a webpage?

Students need to be actively taught about copyright and creative commons. Responsible online use is important.

We want community for kids, not necessarily audience -not a huge audience anyway.

Audiences drive by, communities stop to help.

Literacy is social -we interact with other people.

Safety - Clarence's experience has been a good one. Only two negative experiences.

"The problem with common sense is that it's not very common" Albert Fisher (Clarence's Dad)

Great job Clarence - you are so entertaining- a really honest engaging speaker.

[Jonathan Chambers]

(Slides of the presentation are available online)

"Growing up assuming you can publish whatever you want to say, to whoever you want to say it, is going to make people different" - Russell Davies.

Kids can publish anything - whether positive or negative. Old concepts of 'passing notes' that had a definitive end/destination don't really apply anymore.

Has literacy always looked one way? Not really. Literacy is under a constant state of change. Clarence used the example of the evolution of the western alphabet. An example of medieval text was also displayed in order to demonstrate significant shifts in literacy.

How do we help children into these changes in literacy?

"Bump Top" as an example of how computers or OSs might evolve.
Look for YouTube video: "Aurora" as an example of the future of the browser.
Is this where we're going - we're not even sure!

This is one of the first times in history that corporations have had an effect on literacy, eg. billions of people updating an interface because Apple or Microsoft mandate it... what is the corporate effect on literacy practices?

Ask students to make a T-chart: What is static text like in a book? What is electronic text like? Kids say, "Electronic text is complex." How do you know what you need and what you don't need - this is a skill we need to teach kids. Hyperlinks have a massive effect on text.

Electronic literacy is very social - now it's social like never before - we have audiences we never dreamed of.

Clarence rejected the digital natives/immigrants argument. Some students just aren't into it!
However, digital literacy is not distinct from literacy. Digital literacy is not an add-on. It shouldn't be something that teachers can choose to opt-out of.

1. ACCESS. We used to teach kids how to use a card catalogue, but now we have different skills and sources of information. "Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant." We took about information overload, but it's really "filter failure!" You don't need everything - you need to learn to access just the things you need - when you need to use them.
Video: "The 4th Screen" (find on YouTube).

Letting students start easily at the start of the year ("swimming") until things start to become a little overwhelming. At this point we can have meaningful discussions about filtering and eliminating the information that we don't need: "What kind of information do you really need?"
"If the news is that important it will find me."

2. EVALUATE: Just because it's online doesn't mean it's true - this didn't apply to textbooks (or did it? ;-) We trusted textbooks, we trusted newspapers, but should we really. "Wikipedia is a perfect 1st source - not a last source." Clarence commented on sighting an error on Wikipedia that was corrected within 5 minutes - the argument and the moderation are constant. "Publish first then edit?" Kids need to really learn to evaluate things.

Alan November has a list of 10-12 'fake websites' eg. "Velcro Crop" (a page from 'the department of agriculture' about a velcro crop). Give students fake pages on purpose in order to evaluate. Also "The Tree Octopus." We need to teach our students to be critical, and to be wary of the information that they'll stumble across.

Do students know how to read a URL? Do they know to check it against at least several other sites?

3. COMPREHEND: Allow kids to find their own path. "Online, readers can compose their own beginnings, middles, and ends." How do you comprehend this material?
eg. give students a photocopied textbook page and highlight directions for readers, ie. captions and titles, etc.... then get them to go through the same process with a web page.
About 16% given a random page can identify the ad on it.

4. SHARE: It's much easier to share your stuff now, and to remix things that are already out there. Copyright/fight issues are ubiquitous, and the complexity of teaching students how to navigate have increased.

"You don't have to be a rich old guy from New York to have a voice anymore."

It's not always about audience with kids - it can tend to lead kids toward being more sensational. We don't always want audience with kids - we want community. Audience is great encouragement, but once they get into it we want them to go deeper.
"Audiences drive by - communities stop in."

"We used to gather, then share - now we tend to share, then gather." - participant comment.

Analysis of blog posts and comments graph - literacy is social. We need to consciously teach kids about this.

5. SAFETY: Any time there's a comment there's an IP address. Track the IP address, then contact, for example, the tech director in the district in order to look into any problems.
"I can getcha even if you live in Guam."

A lot of the safety issues are overblown. We need to teach kids to be safe.
"The problem with common sense it that it's not very common."

Clarence Fisher: [e-mail]
remoteaccess.typepad.com