Literacy instruction in the brave new world of technology

Integration of technology in language arts instruction has been slow and tentative even as information technologies have evolved with frightening speed.

In a famous episode of “The Office,” Dwight Schrute defends the paper industry by arguing that the Internet is a fad that will soon run its course. By 2006, when the episode aired, viewers realized that this contention was absurd. The Internet, together with a host of related digital environments, isn’t going anywhere. Instead, information technologies have caused literacy to evolve with frightening speed in directions that can at times be jarring and unpredictable.

This is why a themed issue of Kappan is so important to educators attempting to gain their bearings amid the welter of change. The contributors offer specific guidance not only in how to weather the flurry of developments but also in how to take advantage of them. They actually continue a discussion that began in earnest in the 1980s with the advent of microcomputers in classrooms. This discussion has never reached closure, nor is it likely to, simply because the ground is continually shifting under the feet of teachers as new applications emerge almost daily.

In some areas, the STEM subjects in particular, tech applications have been warmly welcomed. Indeed, they’ve always presented an overtly good fit, dating back to the 1970s, when inexpensive handheld calculators became widely available. In the language arts, however, the appropriateness of technology is less obvious, and teacher resistance has been higher from the outset, as Melody Zoch and colleagues (p. 32 this issue) has clearly documented. For teachers steeped in the print tradition, digital environments have been viewed by many with suspicion (Leander, 2009), and it is hardly surprising that the integration of technology in the language arts has been slow and tentative. Indeed, at least where schools are concerned, eulogies for the death of the printed page, so commonplace two decades ago (e.g., Birkerts, 1994), seem to have been premature. Print remains the go-to medium for literacy instruction. To an extent, this may still be justifiable in terms of cost, convenience, and availability, but the fact that many teachers continue to prefer print gives one pause.

In consequence, acquainting language arts teachers with ways in which technology can be integrated into their instruction often requires persuasion. I am hopeful that the following insights will serve this purpose.

Print remains the go-to medium for literacy instruction but the fact that many teachers continue to prefer print gives one pause.

#1. Technology is now indispensable to literacy development.

Although this claim may seem exaggerated, it rests on a simple fact. The world we are preparing students to enter, at home and at work, will involve less and less reliance on print. The Common Core State Standards make it clear that college- or career-ready students must be able to function in digital environments. Though there isn’t a separate strand of the English language arts standards devoted to technology, expectations that students thoughtfully use and take advantage of it are woven throughout.

Is it possible to meet the standards without making technology a mainstay of literacy instruction? Shouldn’t our instructional practices reflect the reality of a digital world? It is true, of course, that we can’t anticipate every development yet to come, but we can at least try to keep pace. The alternative of remaining anchored in a receding world of print is simply impossible to defend.

#2. Technology requires new skills and strategies.

At first blush, it is tempting to conclude that reading is reading, whether text appears in print or on a device. And this is true, as far as it goes. Tablets, in fact, make a point of displaying text on virtual pages that can be “turned” just as those in a print book. But digital environments differ in important ways. The new literacies require a host of strategies that have few analogues in the world of print. Students must learn to navigate strategically within and between web sites. They must learn a burgeoning system of icons, color codes, and other conventions superimposed on the actual language of text. And they must be able to integrate information across multimodal sources. These proficiencies are reflected in the Common Core (not to mention the standards of nonadopting states). Contributors to this issue of Kappan discuss these proficiencies in detail and offer practical strategies for helping students acquire them.

#3. Technology can support those who struggle.

Conventional texts are often equipped with built-in supports in the form of glossaries, marginalia, footnotes, figures, and the like, but digital environments expand the range of these supports in breathtaking ways. The availability, on a touch-screen basis, of pronunciations, simplified wordings, second language translations, and even American Sign Language pop-ups are advancing beyond the prototype stage. Bridget Dalton (p. 38 this issue) borrows the term universal access from architecture to refer to these supports collectively. Just as a ramp permits those in wheelchairs to enter a building, supports available on demand can make it possible for poor readers to “enter” a text.

As the prevalence of supported text increases, it will challenge the ways in which texts are leveled, and it will inevitably undermine the conventional notion of the independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels. With adequate digital scaffolding, a student may be able to independently read a text that he or she would have found frustrating in print form. I made this argument, more or less in theory, 16 years ago (McKenna, 1998), but it now pertains to developments that appear imminent.

Depending on a student’s deficit, a digital support can act either as a prosthesis or a temporary scaffold (McKenna & Walpole, 2007). For example, a visually impaired individual may always benefit from a text-to-speech function. A student with limited English proficiency, on the other hand, may take advantage of a translation function less and less often as proficiency builds over time.

Supporting struggling readers need not await the arrival of digital scaffolds, however. Teachers can take steps to provide the support that students need by linking challenging text with multimedia sources. Our work with quad text sets, for example, examines an approach to building the background needed to comprehend a target text (Lewis, Walpole, & McKenna, 2014). Students are first exposed to an easy nonfiction text, typically read online; then to a young adult text, to show relevance; and finally to one or more multimedia sources. We find that secondary teachers who privilege the reading of challenging canonical texts are happy to use technology to prepare their students. Applications can be quite simple and serve as a first step toward more extensive use of technology. One teacher, for example, coupled a World War I poem by Wilfred Owen with a YouTube video of Kenneth Branagh reading it aloud and clips from movies about the war.

Teachers can take steps to provide the support that students need by linking challenging text with multimedia sources.

#4. Technology can transform writing.

Our concept of what counts as writing is being stretched considerably. From the print tradition of composing linear text, we are moving swiftly toward multimodal writing, through which prose is linked to visual and auditory sources that extend meaning in ways that prose simply cannot. Given that students are now reading in multimodal environments, Dalton (p. 38 this issue) argues that their writing should reflect this broadened perspective. There is no shortage of ideas for encouraging multimodal composing, and Zoch and colleagues (p. 32 this issue) has explored one that appears especially promising — a digital writing camp.

This expanded view of writing does not mean that prose composition is unimportant. Far from it. Prose texts will anchor most of the multimodal writing that students do, just as they anchor nearly any web site or interactive e-book. But the need for conventional writing proficiency has led to concerns that social media may pose a threat to its attainment. There is simply no evidence that this threat is real, however. When teachers adhere to a clear distinction between formal and informal writing, and then focus their efforts on the former, technology becomes a formidable tool, one that “has transformed all stages of the writing process” (Lassonde & Richards, 2013, p. 209). Writing in digital environments supports planning, guides editing, promotes revising, and helps students focus on content and expression. Students are perfectly capable of shifting between formal and informal writing, just as they are able to alter their levels of spoken usage in accordance with context.

This is not to say that technology applications to writing are entirely positive. The ease of plagiarism has long been apparent to many teachers, for example, and new issues have arisen as well. Samina Hadi-Tabassum (p. 26 this issue) describes the risks involved with using algorithms in grading, a practice now entrenched in high-stakes testing. On balance, however, technology is more boon than bane, and students stand to benefit from its thoughtful use.

#5. Technology offers a means of motivating students.

Digital technology, like television before it, occasions the fear that literate activity will be displaced in favor of gaming, social media, and the like. However, teachers are well positioned to exploit the prevalence of technology in the lives of their students as a means of promoting reading and writing. Doing so, however, requires some insights into how motivation works in a digital world.

Kristin Conradi (p. 54 this issue) delineates the broad concept of motivation into components that are easy for educators to conceptualize and use. For example, when texts are equipped with digital supports, struggling students are more likely to see themselves as readers — to include reading as part of their self-concept. Yet even the success they experience in supported environments may require a boost before this can happen. This is because students tend not to view reading in digital settings as “real” reading, a clear consequence of privileging print over digital sources. Conradi argues that teachers must counter this misconception before reading self-concept is likely to improve.

Other factors include value, interests, and attitudes. When students are afforded the opportunity to explore existing interests through online projects, she argues, the value they ascribe to reading increases and their attitudes toward reading grow more positive. Likewise, Diane Carver Sekeres and her colleagues (p. 44 this issue) illustrate how collaboration can be the social engine that motivates students as they engage in structured online inquiry tasks.

There are cautions involved in using technology to motivate as well. Conradi points out that the appeal of technology is not universal. Teachers who assume that tech applications are an automatic means of motivating students may be in for a surprise. She also warns that heavy-handed attempts to tap the energy of social media can have an unintended consequence. Students sometimes view such attempts as an invasion of their privacy.

#6. Waiting for research is a losing strategy.

The goal of best practice, defined in terms of evidence-based instructional approaches, is particularly elusive where technology is concerned. On the threshold of the new millennium, Stahl (1998) lamented that researchers typically follow in the footsteps of teachers by placing the latest fads in the crucible of scientific inquiry. By the time their findings are available, the profession has moved on to the next enthusiasm. Stahl was speaking about shifts in pedagogy within print environments. But his observation is strikingly appropriate to technology use, and it highlights an unfortunate quandary: If we await definitive findings about the efficacy of a particular program or approach, the question may well be moot by the time they become available. But if we choose to implement without research evidence, we risk limiting our effectiveness. To be sure, research sometimes arrives in time to challenge well-established commercial programs (e.g., Paterson et al., 2003; Slavin, 1990), but these are exceptions.

This quandary does not mean, however, that research cannot inform technology use. The fact that a particular approach or program may not have been investigated does not necessarily mean that research offers no guidance. For example, it is well-established that when students write using word-processing software, the length and quality of their compositions tend to exceed what they would have produced using pencil and paper (MacArthur, 2006). Consequently, even though the use of dictation software has yet to be closely studied, its roots in word-processing help justify such an application. In short, the very speed of change makes reliance on a broad but relevant research base essential. It is unrealistic to await findings that are precisely on point and that will almost surely have been superseded by advances in technology by the time they appear.

The way forward

Christopher Harris (p. 20 this issue) outlines the issues involved in moving to a digital norm in schools. These range from the availability of electronic versions of books to limited access to the devices needed to read them. These problems are not insoluble, however, and steady progress is underway as school libraries transition from “book warehouses to information and learning commons,” he says. A library without bookshelves, you ask? Yes. It’s all part of the brave new world of literacy instruction. The handwriting is on the screen.

References

Birkerts, S. (1994). The Gutenburg elegies. New York, NY: Faber & Faber.

Lassonde, C. & Richards, J.C. (2013). Best practices in teaching planning for writing. In S. Graham, C.A. MacArthur, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Best practices in writing instruction (2nd ed.) (pp. 193-214).  New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Leander, K. (2009). Composing with old and new media: Toward a parallel pedagogy. In V. Carrington & M. Robinson (Eds.), Digital literacies: Social learning and classroom practices (pp. 147-164).  London, UK: Sage Publishing, Ltd.

Lewis, W., Walpole, S., & McKenna, M.C. (2014). Cracking the Common Core: Choosing and using texts in grades 6-12. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

MacArthur, C.A. (2006). The effects of new technologies on writing and writing processes. In C.A. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (pp. 248-262). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

McKenna, M.C. (1998). Electronic texts and the transformation of beginning reading.  In D. Reinking, M.C. McKenna, L.D. Labbo, & R.D. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of literacy and technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 45-59). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

McKenna, M.C. & Walpole, S. (2007). Assistive technology in the reading clinic: Its emerging potential. Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 140-145.

Paterson, W.A., Henry, J.J., O’Quin, K., Ceprano, M.A., & Blue, E.V. (2003, April/May/June). Investigating the effectiveness of an integrated learning system on early emergent readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 38 (2) 172-207.

Slavin, R.E. (1990, November). IBM’s Writing to Read: Is it right for reading? Phi Delta Kappan, 72 (3), 214-216.

Stahl, S.A. (1998). Understanding shifts in reading and its instruction. Peabody Journal of Education, 73 (3 & 4), 31-67.

CITATION: McKenna, M.C. (2014). Literacy instruction in the brave new world of technology. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (3), 8-13.