For this week’s post I uploaded a word document and a prezi describing common Web 2.0 tools I’ve used in the past year. I learned about most of these tools from MET courses and fellow METers. It took less time for me to write the document than do the prezi because I never used prezi before. I found I kept having to simplify the prezi over and over so it would be concise and easy to follow. I’d like to know if you think the document and the prezi convey the same message.

I agree with Bolter (2002) and Kress (2005) that we are witnessing a decline in textual modes of representation due to a rise of visual mode of representation. I like to think that visual media complements text instead of controls it.

Visual media can be used in school to engage students in what they’re learning. Generally, I think teachers don’t make enough use of other media. It seems like students become competent using visual media long before most teachers even consider using them in their classes. Teachers should be leading the way. I agree with Kress (2005) that educators tend to be set in their ways and see the move away from traditional writing and reading as negative. I think teachers need to be told that it is ok to embrace the visual and use it to motivate our students to write. For example, my students often write double the amount of sentences using storybird.com compared to writing in their journals. I hope that more sites like this will be created in the future to spark more interest in writing.

Kress (2005) suggests that the online user brings meaning to web pages he/she is reading because he/she can choose different paths afforded by the site. In the classroom, teachers using these sites would be planning more project-based, open ended lessons because every student would be making sense of the information in a unique way. Typical worksheets that a teacher might use for a text book lesson won’t work with this type of medium because not everyone would be reading the same information at the same time. Assessment would also have to change to suit the learning task.

Bolter. J.D. (2001). Writing Spaces. Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Routledge: New York.

Kress, G. (2005). Gains And Lossess: New forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition, 22, 5-22.

Do the conceptions of digital literacy or multiliteracies offered in the two articles you read this week provide you with specific insights into the ways in which educators should work with new media with their students?

Even though students in schools today are digital natives, they still need just as much guidance through using tech as they did with print.  All students need to be taught how to think critically about what they are reading especially in an online environment where anyone can write almost anything.  “To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed, and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (ALA as cited by Dobson and Willinksy, 2009).

Dobson and Willinksy note research on print texts which shows that students with low content knowledge benefit more from using well-structured and coherent resources.  I think the same could be applied to learning with hypermedia.  I believe concepts or tools that are just being introduced to students should be done with more overt instruction before they attempt situated practice learning tasks.

In regards to teaching with technology in my class, I would like to try blogging which allows students to “readily see and comment on each other’s work” which Bruce, Micheals and Watson-Gegeo (as cited by Dobson & Willinsky, 2009) said improved student writing.  I’d also like to introduce more lessons based in situated practice like reaching out to experts when engaging in authentic tasks.  For example, we could contact native French speakers with Skype to practise oral French.  This experience would also raise student awareness of another culture, preparing my students to work in a diverse online world when they’re older.

I found it interesting that Dobson and Willinksy cited research by Luke and Luke that showed that “adolescents competence with new technologies—is often inappropriately reconstrued as incompetence with print-based literacies.”  From my experience in the MET program, many secondary teachers have said that teen’s writing skills have declined in recent years.  Perhaps this observation isn’t only because of an increase in digital literacy but other factors as well.

Dobson, T. M.,& Willinsky, J. (2009) Digital literacy. Draft chapter for the Cambridge Handbook on Literacy.

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), pp. 60-92.