Okay. Apologies first.

This is my first podcast and the audio quality is not at all the best (and I am a fast talker) that being said, I hope you enjoy it:

https://vocaroo.com/1STXQHoctDg1

(Sorry, that should work better)

This course has been a crash course for me on technology and its application in the classroom. To be honest, I am still mostly overwhelmed.

This feels strange to say as I don’t have a problem with technology (I enjoy it, in fact) and use it in my class and life in so many ways. The biggest areas, of course, in the area of supporting students research and writing skills and I can see that continuing along with sorting and prepping new resources for students and teachers as a teacher-librarian.

I also have been open to students using any number of digital tools to create projects.

At the same time, I have seen the problems with being on the bleeding edge when students work doesn’t run as hoped or everything starts taking a long time.

What I am taking away from this course is a new respect for the range of possibilities and a bit more openness to new ideas but, still, with a healthy respect for balancing the costs (primarily in time) of investing in new approaches with how much they really add.  

Hello folks,

I have a feeling this is a flawed way to do this as a podcast should stand on its own but I have just included a few pages so that listeners can see some visual references to what I am talking about.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

https://redgoldsparkspress.com/projects/6926504

Turning Japanese by Marinaomi

Displacement by Lucy Knisley

Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Now that I have established that I am going to do a podcast (Yikes,,,), I need a topic.

In my case, that is pretty easy. I have been a graphic novel fan since I was a kid in the 1970s and have been privileged to watch it grow up as a form. In the last 15-20 years, they have, much to my delight, begun to sneak into our classrooms and school library learning commons but I have seen a turn in the last few years that I have found disturbing as a lover of the form.

Most of the research I have found tends to reflect on graphic novels in a school setting as a way to encourage reluctant or struggling readers. I know that that isn’t the sole readership. There is plenty of data telling us all sorts of students like them and that they encourage other reading (Someone smarter than me talking about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/gene_luen_yang_comics_belong_in_the_classroom?language=en#t-558282) but teachers, at least in the literature tend this way (Gonzalez, J. (2016). Graphic Novels in the Classroom: A Teacher Roundtable, Knutsun, S.  (n.d.). How Graphic Novels Help Students Develop Critical Skills and Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Graphic Novels for Kids: Classroom Ideas, Booklists, and More. are some good examples of this).

It has prompted a response in the industry and graphic novels aimed at middle school readers and more educationally “usable” graphic novels like ones based on history or biographies are being produced in massive numbers.

There is NOTHING wrong with this. They can be great tools for struggling readers (For example, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo has never failed me in getting reluctant Grade 8-9 boys reading. https://www.usagiyojimbo.com/ and, of course, I love it, too!)  and the publishing of middle school targeted graphic novels and biographies are keeping some amazing smaller companies alive (and the do a good job with these types of books as well)

Well, maybe there is one thing wrong with this… It reverses the trend graphic novel fans have been trying to reverse for the existence if the form – that of seeing the form primarily for children.

I have no interest in running down the kinds of graphic novels mentioned above. They are important and do an amazing job ushering in new readers and helping out others but I feel that this has meant a real lack of resources for teachers and teacher-librarians about graphic novels that are not a substitute for the “real” reading but a true form on their own.

My intent with my podcast is to frame this idea and then introduce five works that may be of interest to teachers or teacher-librarians. None of these works is aimed at a school aged audience (and some can problematic depending on your community). They have been produced for an adult literate audience and, therefore, their focuses are different and there is, generally, more of an emphasis on play and experimentation with the artform itself.

The works being:

The genre of all the works is the same, autobiography, as the form lends itself well to the intimacy of telling your own story and it is a form well represented in all of the world’s great comic cultures (English, Japanese and French/European). It is also a genre in graphic novels that is more representative of gender and race. This to me made it seem like a good place to start.

I have decided against using some texts as they are already well-represented in school libraries and in general readerships. The ones I might have chosen but didn’t for this reason are: Maus, Fun Home and Persepolis. All three of these are brilliant and must reads if you are curious about the form. My thinking is that if you are a fan of the form, you have likely already run across them (If you are just curious about the form and have never heard of them – run out to your library or bookstore – they are all brilliant examples in their own way).

So that’s my pre-thinking about the direction of my final assignment. Time to record!

References

Bechdel, A. (). Fun Home. (2007). Mariner Books.

Gonzalez, J. (2016). Graphic Novels in the Classroom: A Teacher Roundtable. Cult of Pedagogy website. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/teaching-graphic-novels/

Knisley, L. (2015). Displacement: A Travelogue. Fantagraphics Books.

Knutsun, S.  (n.d.). How Graphic Novels Help Students Develop Critical Skills. Resilient Educator website. https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/graphic-novels-visual-literacy/

Kobaba, M. (2019). Gender Queer. Lion Forge.

Marinaomi. (2016). Turning Japanese. 2dcloud.

Mizuki, S. (2011). Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths. Drawn & Quarterly.

Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Graphic Novels for Kids: Classroom Ideas, Booklists, and More. Reading Rockets website. https://www.readingrockets.org/article/graphic-novels-kids-classroom-ideas-booklists-and-more

Satrapi, M. (2004). Persepolis. Random House.

Spiegelman, A. (1996). The Complete Maus. Pantheon Books.

Thompson, C. (2003). Blankets. Top Shelf Productions.

Yang, G. L. (2016). Comics Belong in the Classroom. TED Talks.

I can’t lie.

This assignment has filled me with dread.

I am not a luddite but I do find my self apprehensive (and, as mentioned previously on my blog, ambivalent) about using the on-line tool as as major focus in my teacher-librarian plans (outside the usual research and composition issues).

When reading the list of possibilities, one really stood out and that was the idea of doing a podcast. I am, like many I am finding, absolutely addicted to this new form and have been since discovering NPR’s Planet Money back during the financial crisis (still an amazing podcast – https://www.npr.org/sections/money/).

Despite it clear possibilities as a form to help educate and inform, I thought before I jumped in, it might be best to do a bit of a survey exploration about what others have thought about this form being used expressly as a teaching tool and, perhaps, some hints about how to do so.

The first thing I discovered is that there is an IMMENSE amount of material on this subject. When searching the UBC library’s holdings using the search terms ‘podcast as education’, I was surprised to see that most of the first page of links was taken up with articles about using podcasts as a form of medical training (Young (2020). Eyes for Ears – A Medical Education Podcast Feasibility Study, Abirmai (2021) RE: Development of A Medical Education Podcast in Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Berk (2020) Twelve Tips for Creating a Medical Education Podcast are some samples for anyone really needing to see what’s happening in this field). Who knew this was a priority? Surely if they are being used to train those who keep us alive, they would serve my humble aims.

The upshot of more germane sites to my plans ranged but all mirrored my experience as a podcast listener. They are a flexible delivery system that can be experienced on your own time and in many environments (dishes, driving on my own and running being my regular times for podcast listening). They also emphasized the creative possibilities  and ability of podcasts to jump over common issues for some students – students who struggle with reading have a new medium through which to experience classroom material and ELL students can listen a number of times and even slow down the podcast. Most of the post were also quick to point out that podcast are an excellent way to add informational sidebars to your class.

Sites I found accessible and interesting:

https://www.emergingedtech.com/2017/08/how-teachers-can-leverage-podcasts-as-a-learning-tool/

Podcasting in Education: What Are the Benefits?

https://www.podcast.co/reach/podcasts-in-education

https://www.comparethecloud.net/articles/9-ways-to-use-podcast-as-a-learning-tool/

All of them cover similar ground but do a wonderful job of laying out the value of this form as a way to educate.

For my podcast, my intention is to create a resource for teachers and teacher-librarians dealing with graphic novels. More on that in my next blog.

References

n.a. (n.d.). Podcasting in Education: What Are the Benefits? The Podcast Host. https://www.thepodcasthost.com/niche-case-study/podcasting-in-education/

Abirmai, K. (2021). RE: Development of A Medical Education Podcast in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Canadian Medical Education Journal, (12)2, pp.  e126-e126 (Really just a brief response piece).

Berk, J. (2020). Twelve Tips for Creating a Medical Education Podcast. Medical Teacher, (42)11, pp. 1221-1227.

Buckler, L. (2017). 8 Ways Teachers Can Leverage Podcasts as a Learning Tool. Emerging Ed Tech. https://www.emergingedtech.com/2017/08/how-teachers-can-leverage-podcasts-as-a-learning-tool/

Douse, S. (n.d.). 9 Ways to Use Podcasts as Learning Tools. comparethecloud.net. https://www.comparethecloud.net/articles/9-ways-to-use-podcast-as-a-learning-tool/

Logue, A. (2020). 7 Reasons to Use Podcasts in Education, podcast.co. https://www.podcast.co/reach/podcasts-in-education

Young, B. (2020). Eyes for Ears – A Medical Education Podcast Feasibility Study. Journal of Surgical Education, (78)1, pp. 342-345.

I have always been interested in languages having been exposed to them all my life. My grandparents and parents went between French and English, my Uncle Gary, who rudely interrupted 400 years of French-Canadian inbreeding, spoke Ukrainian at home and it was common when spending summer with my father’s parents on their farm in Manitoba to hear friends and neighbours slip off into Michif on occasion. (I shouldn’t be too hard on my uncle as truthfully, our inbreeding had been interrupted a number of times earlier on as our family also identifies as Metis)

As a kid growing up in a rough area of Winnipeg (Slurpee and murder capital of the world at the time – Was there a connection?), I was also exposed to the languages of the big immigrant communities beginning to shape the city at that time, Vietnamese and Tagalog, along with the Cree and Ojibwe of many of my neighbours. I wouldn’t wish the poverty and violence I grew up with on anyone but living in that community gave me an exposure and curiosity about how other people lived and spoke that as lasted until this day and an exposure not likely available anywhere else in the 1970s Manitoba of my childhood.

When thinking back to my childhood and reflecting on the place of languages in the world today, especially the smaller and therefore, almost always, shrinking ones, my mind turns to the way technology can facilitate the preservation and development of languages that are either so small there is little support for them or where, as in the case of immigration, any significant educational resources or hardcopy texts are far away.

(picture from the amazing children’s kabuki festival in Komatsu, Japan)

Even as recently as when I began teaching Japanese a few years ago, I would prize any Japanese book or manga I could find as you didn’t get many chances to pick them up even in a diverse city like Vancouver. With the internet and digital resources, I can now open up any number of resources. My wife and I, regularly watch Japanese TV and as a theatre buff I can access an app that allows me to watch Japanese theatre on demand (I am a huge shin kabuki – New Kabuki – fan). On top of it, my three-year old daughter can access educational programs in English, French and Japanese and we can source worksheets and supporting materials for all three languages as well. In fact, most streaming services let you to toggle between a number of global languages when watching much of their content. For major global languages, the on-line world has become a rich source of support regardless of where you actually live.

In terms of this blog, my focus is on those smaller (but not lesser) languages and the impact that digital technology can have in supporting them. There are a few ways that come to mind and that are discussed in the literature.

Sample of Ojibwe syllabary

1. Character Sets – While not all languages initially had written forms, most do now (thank you missionaries?). This means that there are ways to record, retain and communicate in these languages using characters. If we were still bound by print conventions, this is a difficult challenge to overcome. If you wanted to establish a textbook or other resource in the target language, you would have to set up a printing press or word processor to accommodate the language and then print up whatever resources you need. If the language has only a few thousand or hundred speakers, the work may not be worth the effort and print runs of a few hundred might be quite costly. It would be naïve to say it is easy, but it is more possible to do this in a digital format. Digital character sets have already been designed now even for languages with few speakers (but not all and that can lead to other challenges with languages with an exclusively oral tradition – Ebadi, 2018) and by using a digital format, even an interface can be designed to make writing in the language fairly accessible (Li, Brar & Roihan, 2021, Williams, 2018).

2. Resources – As mentioned above, the likelihood of producing many hardcopy resources of smaller language resources is limited by the cost of small print runs. Printing out work sheets might be fine but how do you justify the equivalent of novels or longer technical documents. By focusing on developing on-line or digital resources, as long as there are devices available (sometimes a big ‘if` but less and less so (Li, Brar & Roihan, 2021; Williams, 2018)), people can access these resources without ever having to go through the arduous process of having a printed copy made. There is also the benefit of texts accumulating over time. An on-line library could, essentially, be an ever expanding one; whereas, equipping each speaker of a language with hardcopies of each new book or other resource that comes out seems a bit unlikely and wasteful.

Maori Social Media terms

3. Multimedia – The other advantage of digital and on-line resources is that they allow for the preservation and dissemination of languages using a range of media. Films, TV shows, tutorials and all manner of audio or video material can be made available in a way that would be hard to duplicate in another manner. There is also the possibility of using social media (Ibaraki, 2018) and hosting on-line discussions and classes. With smaller languages, especially ones whose communities have been widely dispersed, this seems like one of the best ways to help sustain their communities as well as their languages (Williams, 2018).

Digital and on-line materials are not, by any length of the imagination, a panacea for languages that are shrinking but they do hold a tremendous amount of promise. One of the challenges besides the availability of technology, would be the access to cross-over expertise in those languages as well as the technological skills to make the best use of digital resources. In trying to learn michif, I have found resources but most are at the amateurish enthusiasm level or are not well maintained (Case in point: http://www.louisrielinstitute.ca/146-michif-language-lessons-now-available-online.php whose videos run on Flash which no longer exists…). I am, of course, unbelievably thankful for the resources that do exist but by virtue of these languages having few speakers, the support is, correspondingly thin for the most part.

Another caveat would be that the on-line world is leading to the strengthening of the power of the dominant global languages and, therefore, adding to the pressure on smaller languages (Williams, 2018).

Regardless, it does seem like the digital world could offer a tremendous support to language learners of all types but might be particularly useful in the urgent matter or preserving and propagating endangered languages.

References

Li, J., Brar, A. and Roihan, N. (2021). The use of digital technology to enhance language and literacy skills for Indigenous people: A systematic literature review. Computers and Education Open, (2). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666557321000069

Ebadi, B. (2018). Technology Alone Can’t Preserve Endangered Languages. Centre for International Governance Innovation. https://www.cigionline.org/articles/technology-alone-cant-preserve-endangered-languages/

Ibaraki, S. (2018). Turning To AI To Save Endangered Languages. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/11/23/turning-to-ai-to-save-endangered-languages/?sh=217da5976f45

Louis Riel Institute. (n.d.) How to use `Speaking Michif` at home and in the classroom. Louis Riel Institute. http://www.louisrielinstitute.ca/speaking-michif-language-lessons.php

Williams, D. (2018). How Technology Is Used to Preserve Endangered Languages. Translate Media. https://www.translatemedia.com/translation-blog/technology-preserve-endangered-languages/

Much like my feelings about ICT in terms of my own growth, I feel ambivalent about the need to make this area a primary aspect of my work either, as a classroom teacher of teacher-librarian. That being said, I know that a sizable part of my job in terms of supporting classroom work will involve research and tools from the technological world and that there is a definite need for someone to act as a reservoir of knowledge and tools about how to best use ICT in the service of my school’s staff and students.

My ideas for how to support my school’s teaching community with their ICT needs, are fairly straight forward.

1. Consult – As part of a go-around to all departments, I would ask departments if they have any departmental or specific needs that I could help with. These needs could really be anything but I imagine many will be about accessing specific information or tools for their students, training resources for their own professional development and, perhaps, mini lessons about what ICT tools are available to us through our district or elsewhere in the on-line universe.

2. Dig – As I explore on-line resources myself (see previous blog), I will keep an eye put for tools that are useful for me and my colleagues but also for tools that I can see would be helpful for my colleagues or students that don’t have a utility to me.

3. Share – I would then note which discoveries that would be of use to either my co-workers or students and then make them part of my supporting work. I can imagine reserving 5-10 minutes per staff meeting to introduce a new tool or ICT-based idea to help inform my staff of the possibilities. I would also look for opportunities to work with any of my colleagues on ICT related projects.

4. Resource – I would also continue our current teacher-librarian’s policy of support resources by sponsoring book clubs for teachers and maintaining a virtual and hard copy library of resources for the staff of our school.

As I look over my blogs on this subject, I feel a bit embarrassed in that my ambitions, at least at this point, are pretty humble. I have tried, in the past, to keep up with and use a variety of social media and other internet resources to augment my teaching but have, largely, found that the amount of time it takes to master and maintain these formats, often made them quite expensive in terms of time in relation to their true usefulness. Key to my exploration of ICT is the idea of being conscious about how much of my practice becomes subsumed by these tools and which aspects of the ICT world are really are worth the effort to bring them to a larger audience.

The truth is that my journey along the path of integrating ICT into my practice has been one of very mixed success. I can recognize that power of ICT in creating opportunities to share materials and communities that allow for opportunities that just weren’t there before but I also see limits.

I can see its impact on my teaching in my English classes. In my Literature 12 class (now Literary Studies 12), when discussing the Bayeux Tapestry (See the whole thing: VERY COOL! https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/) , I can now summon it up from on-line and project parts of it on my wall so that we can examine it while discussion the impact of William the Conqueror’s impact on England.

My Japanese classes are also well-supported by on-line resources and projects like exploring culture, history (Language warning but brilliant and hilarious history of Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o), geography or food are render far more easily than a pre-internet world would have ever allowed and the richness of possibility is growing.

I can also link my lessons to countless supporting documents and videos to help feed those students that are curious. I can organize discussions on Microsoft TEAMs (my district’s chosen platform).

All incredibly useful and fun.

My curiosity and confidence lessens, however, when the demands grow to keep up with the infinite array of platforms and resources available in the ICT world. I think it is not only fair but important to be realistic about what I can do and what I feel comfortable doing. At the end of the day, my main responsibility is to my classroom (currently) and my school library learning commons (in the future). It would be easy, I suspect, to become swept up in a vortex of on-line and digital materials and ignore your true purpose. I feel a deep need to return to the question, am I using ICT or is it using me? (Someone is making money every time you are on-line).

Now that that preamble is over, here are the things that I want to work on, in terms of ICT, in the near future.

1. Look at learning how to create an interface that would make our district resources more accessible. This is a straightforwardly practical desire of my part. Currently, our district provides many excellent resources (along with our public library) but getting to those materials is not intuitive in anyway. I suspect this will involve some level of webpage design but am still not sure. (The current page – not my work – is very humble in its ambitions: https://sctlibrary.wordpress.com/). Almost a metaphor for the whole internet, our district resources promise unbelievable access but getting there means wading through a lot of nonsense.

2. Develop an understanding of some of the main social media platforms to at least have a handle on how they work. This would mean building a list of the key ones students use (my list includes Facebook, Instagram and Twitter but all of these are already being abandoned by our students for newer tools. Discord and Tik Tok being a few newer ones) and making a plan for how to keep up with new ones. After that I would have to give some thought to whether any of these platforms have utility either in my work with students or for my own support.

3. Explore the blogosphere as well as more academic on-line resources for voices in this field that can help with inspiration and comradeship on this journey. This one takes time but I can already see the benefit of having a set of strong blogs to draw upon.

Beyond this, I am open to new ideas and suggestions as they come up but definitely feel the need to be clear to set limits around how much of my time will be spent immersed in an on-line world as part of my job.

Our school has drifted away from a school-wide reading program. In the past, we had a 20-minute period each day for silent reading and for an English teacher it was great. Over time there were complaints that the program was being implemented in a haphazard way with some teachers allowing students to do homework instead or simply jumping into content for their classes citing a shortage of time to cover their curriculum.

As a result, most of the ways reading is encouraged in our school are through our English classes. In my own class, I try to encourage reading in my English classes in a number of ways.

(https://www.tomgauld.com/)

Motivation: Choice and Modeling
There is ample evidence (Ambe, 2007; Venegas 2017) that choice is a key tool in encouraging students to become stronger readers. Ideally, those choices should be in that Goldilocks range where they are within the students current reading level but pushing them a bit further as well. It is also important that the modelling of enthusiasm for reading be present in a student’s life if nowhere else through their teacher (Lesesne, T. S., 2017).

The first is to offer independent reading projects with lots of choice and I support students by doing lots of brief book talks on a variety of books (variety in all senses – genre, length, special focus, gender/race of author, etc.). I also try and get a sense of what types of stories resonate with students (through a survey on the types of books, movies and TV they like at the beginning of the course) and try and slip a few choices in specifically to target the students I know to be reluctant readers. The idea is to jump start their motivation by letting them choose where to start.

With my younger students (Grade 8s and 9s), I introduce them to a fairly sizable pile of books because choice paralysis is one of the problems for reluctant readers. If you don’t read, how in the world do you unpack the choice given to you by the thousands of books in the library. I try to be equally effusive in my book talks about the books I am introducing regardless of the length, genre or reading level so that no one feels shortchanged by choosing a book I introduced.

I do alter this for two categories of books. For horror, I always tell students how much I dislike the horror genre as it scares me and is, therefore, wrong. This, oddly, gets students who like horror MORE excited by the horror options (A comment like, “This one is really horrible. I couldn’t sleep for two nights afterwards. I don’t think anyone should read it.” will usually get quite a line up). I also choose a few more difficult books and say, “You may want to read this if you want a challenge, but it is probably a bit difficult for your age and deals with serious issues”. This approach also seems to attract readers. Of course, I use other strategies with my older readers (Grades 11 and 12) but this works for 8s and 9s pretty well. (Here’s a great blog about book talks focused on reluctant readers including a few examples from children’s book authors: https://ontarianlibrarian.com/2020/08/02/engaging-reluctant-readers-during-book-talks/)

I don’t do formal conferencing around their independent reading, but I do talk with them informally about what they are reading to get a sense of what they enjoy about a book (particular, if I see or suspect that a student is struggling. Sometimes having them explore their thoughts with you reassures them that they are doing fine) and will usually have 4-5 classes during an independent unit, when students will group up and share about their books so far (best scene so far, most interesting character, biggest reveal, etc. – low barrier/high interest types of discussions).

All of this is to get students engines going so they get comfortable about the idea of reading.

Relevance
It is always helpful for students to have a personal connection to the narratives we explore. This can be direct, as in stories set in milieus that the students are familiar with or with topics that are tied up in the issues affecting the students’ world (Grasso, M., 2016). In the case of a classroom in a large multicultural city like Vancouver that means a diversity of perspectives and experiences.

I also like to have at least one literature circle unit each year to create a bridge between independent reading and a class wide study. Students are given a series of choices but from a limited set of novels and after a brief book talk, we go through a process of deciding who reads what with student choice being the main deciding factor.

The books are usually similar in some fashion. In the past year, my English 11s chose between Indian Horse (about residential schools and hockey), The book of Negroes (about the African-American/Canadian experience of going through slavery) and The Jade Peony (about growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s). Each book was quite different and offered a range of difficulty in reading (Indian Horse being the shortest and The Book of Negroes almost 2-3 times as long) but they all explored the trauma of racism in Canada and finding oneself despite that trauma. They also happen to all be fantastic and eminently readable books. This set of books are always available in our bookroom and often used but, certainly, part of the choice this year had to do with the need to talk about issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.

In their groups, each person tackled a different role each session and the roles were designed to help students explore the book in different ways and support their reading. Because of shared themes, it also allowed for the groups to talk to each other about the novels they were reading in the context of what they were hearing from other groups. In this way, the literary circles were built to scaffold students’ abilities to explore not just their novels but their novels in a context of other stories which gets them used to the idea they are not just readers but that they are a valid part of a bigger world of ideas.

Benefits of non-prescriptive approach to developing reading skills
I don’t, generally, have students do pull out or targeted skills-based reading work at the high school level. I would rather have the students experience the joys of being involved in real discussions about literature that should help fill in some of the comprehension gaps while using other mediums to also help support their understanding of text. This seems key to students developing their sense of self-efficacy especially once they enter adolescence which is key to developing their motivation to read further and if they begin to read on their own, much of the battle is won (Venegas, 2018).  

Beyond this are full on novel studies. With those I try and frontload as much context as I can or develop a series of small projects that help students do that for themselves. I also try and bring in other works from different forms to help develop that context. For a study of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (a novel about the experience of being a regular soldier in World War I on the German side), I use the film Joyeux Noel and sections of Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel, It Was The War of The Trenches to give students other ways of understanding the context and visualizing the world of the novel (both works are excellent and students tend to find them quite powerful). Both those works also took the view of regular soldiers on different sides of the conflict to help students compare the differences in experiences for everyday soldiers on all sides (not much difference). We then look at themes through the three works. This helps as with the literature circles to connect the world of the book to a larger world of literature and by using a variety of types of narrative, it allows students who are struggling a bit as readers to lean a bit more of their analysis on a visual medium.

References

Ambe, E. B., Inviting Reluctant Adolescent Readers into the Literacy Club: Some Comprehension Strategies to Tutor Individuals or Small Groups of Reluctant Readers. Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literature, 50(8), p. 632-639.

Fast, K. (n.d.). Engaging Reluctant Readers During Book Talks. Ontarian Librarian. https://ontarianlibrarian.com/2020/08/02/engaging-reluctant-readers-during-book-talks/

Grasso, M. (2016). The Importance of Multicultural Literature. Schools Catalogue Information Service, 96. https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-96/the-importance-of-multicultural-literature/

Lesesne, T. S. (2017). Chapter 2: Listening to their voices: what research tells us about readers. Reading by Right. Facet Publishing.

Hanks, S. (2017). Why we have to pay for the internet. Forbes.com. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/10/17/why-we-have-to-pay-for-the-internet/?sh=76386103591

This is a short article and I am likely to replace it as it doesn’t really take the reader all the way to the present but gives a nice historical overview of how the internet was paid for in the past and establishes a framework for the idea that the internet is actually funded by users and then details where that user funding has come from over time..

no author. (2019). How the Biggest Internet Companies Make Money. Internet Health Report. https://internethealthreport.org/2019/how-the-biggest-internet-companies-make-money/

Explores revenue sources for the larger global technology companies. The initial section, The Attention Merchants: Facebook, Google and Baidu, is the one that is most germane to my exploration. IN the cases of the three companies mentioned in this section, it is clear that most internet-based tech companies (unlike Microsoft and Apple that sell actual products) derive most of their money from targeting ads to the viewer.

Mindsea Team. (n.d.). How Do Free Apps Make Money? mindsea.com. https://mindsea.com/how-free-apps-make-money/

An excellent overview of the different paths that free apps (as opposed to the big players) use to generate income. The more upfront approaches like the freemium model, wherein games let you play for free but your experience would clearly be better if you paid or the apps that charge a straightforward fee for a great product are less interesting than the sneakier ways like using multipoint data (data pooled from different apps) to assemble advertising for you. Regardless, a great overview of the approaches these smaller companies are using and possible thoughts on future revenue sources.

Cleary, G. (2018). Mobile Privacy: What Do Your Apps Know About You? Symantec Threat Intelligence Blog. https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/mobile-privacy-apps

This resource is similar in focus to the one above but hones in on the amount of data your apps are keeping on you and the section where they explore the amount of access you commit to when you download the free apps, Zodiac Signs 101 – 12 Zodiac Signs & Astrology and rightest Flashlight LED – Super Bright Torch, is shocking.

Turow, J. (2017). The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy and Define Your Power. Yale University Press.

This is a follow up to his other work that appears in our course’s “Course Resource” section and is a startlingly brilliant exploration of how our personal devices and on-line behaviour are generating monstrous amounts of data and how that data is being used to sell us products.

White, S. (2018). Digital Addiction: How Technology Keeps Us Hooked. theconversation.com https://theconversation.com/digital-addiction-how-technology-keeps-us-hooked-97499

A brief but informative piece that helps to tie all of these other pieces together by examining some of the techniques used to keep us on our devices and apps so that the companies who own the apps can better collect data on us and monetize our attention. Compulsive checking, one of the behavioural aspect of their approach is certainly familiar to me.

My interest in this initial reading review is to explore the idea in my initial posting about creating some kind of tool (a series of mini units, an on-line resources, etc.) that would help students gain a sense of how the internet operates and, in doing so, give them a bit more power in understanding how that affects our user experience – essentially an internet self-defense course, My initial exploration has been about helping me understand the issues.

My search terms to start have been “internet literacy” and “Search engine bias”. Below are a number of articles found using the UBC Library’s search engine that I found most relevant and helpful, organized by search terms.

“Internet Literacy”

Vijayalakshmi, A., Lin, M-H, Laczniak. (2020). Evaluating Adolescents’ Responses to Internet Ads: Role of Ad Skepticism, Internet Literacy, and Parental Mediation. Journal of Advertising, 49(3), p. 292-308.

Kim, E. M. & Yang, S. (2015). Internet literacy and digital natives’ civic engagement: Internet skill literacy or Internet information literacy? Journal of Youth Studies, 19(4), p. 438-456.

“Search Engine Bias”

Vaughan, L. and Thelwall, M. (2004). Search engine coverage bias: evidence and possible causes. Information Processing and Management, 40(4), p. 693-707.

Burguet, R., Caminal, R., & Ellman, M. (2015). In Google We Trust? International Journal of Industrial Organization, 39, p. 44-55.

Here are some similar resources found through a search on Google:

“Internet Literacy”

What Will We Do about Internet Literacy?

What is digital literacy and why does it matter?

“Search Engine Bias”

https://time.com/5318918/search-results-engine-google-bias-trusted-sources/

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/26/3299/meet-the-woman-who-searches-out-search-engines-bias-against-women-and-minorities/