Teaching (Digital) Literacy: Driving Students to the Intersection of Reading, Writing, & Discussion

Part of my job as an English teacher is to teach students how to read, analyze, talk, and write about texts in both paper-based and digital formats. According to the American Psychological Association (APA) in article published in August of 2018, "In recent years, less than 20 percent of U.S. teens report reading a book, magazine or newspaper daily for pleasure, while more than 80 percent say they use social media every day." Furthermore, “Compared with previous generations, teens in the 2010s spent more time online and less time with traditional media, such as books, magazines and television,” said lead author Jean M. Twenge, PhD, author of the book iGen and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, “Time on digital media has displaced time once spent enjoying a book or watching TV.” While students are reading plenty of digital texts, I wonder how well they are able to analyze, talk, and write about them.  By integrating such edtech tools as Edpuzzle, Formative, Actively Learn, and the G Suite for Education in to teaching practices, we can drive students to the intersection of reading, writing, and discussion so that they can practice skills that they can use both in and out of the classroom.

I had the opportunity to collaborate with the venerable and uber-intelligent Natalie S., the senior researcher from Actively Learn on a workshop session that we gave at CUE and NCTE-CEL in 2017. The above linked article from APA reinforces the importance of teaching digital literacy skills to my students. We cannot assume that student are proficient digital natives.  The activities showcased in the slides provide teachers with lesson examples that cover a range of assignments:

• Quick, Do Now annotation of an image with Formative

• Flipped Learning style audiobooks that include checks for understanding with Edpuzzle

• Daily reading lessons that include checks for understanding and opportunities for annotation and digital discussion with Actively Learn

• Extended writing tasks that integrate annotated texts with Google Docs

Check out our slides and learn how you, too, can drive learners to the intersection of reading, writing, and discussion.

How to Flip Back to School Night

In a previous post I shared about the results of flipping Back to School Night. Today, I'm going to show you step by step how I used blended learning to achieve those results.

The first few days of school:  (Nothing crazy here)  Have your Class Expectations typed up on either a Gdoc or Word document, photocopied and distributed to the students.  I also include an area on the document for student and parent signatures.  Give your students a few days to obtain the parent signatures.

I do not read the expectations document to the students in class because all teachers in all other classes are doing the same thing and my expectations will get lost in the shuffle.  I do tell the students that they are to read the document carefully before signing.

So what do students do instead of passively sitting listing to me drone on about the course expectations? We are jumping right in to learning activities: icebreakers, group work, problem solving,  etc.  For the 2017-18 school year, I'm going to start with an editable Escape Room / Break Out activity created by Nouvelle ELA. I don't normally purchase items from Teachers Pay Teachers, but not being experienced in creating my own breakouts yet, I thought this was a worthy investment, and at less than $6, a real deal!

Recording & Delivering the Video:
There are a few simple steps for recording your video and making it interactive for parents and students.

1. Prepare your recording space by adjusting the lightning, background props, and alerting others that you don't want to be interrupted. Since you are providing an overview of your course, it is important to record your video in your classroom space. I put a sign on the door stating that I'm recording and do not want to be disturbed. 
2. Create a title slide for your video using Google Slides or PowerPoint. Keep it open on your desktop.
3. Have open your Course Expectations document.
4. Open Screencastomatic or Camtasia, and select recording a portion of your screen and have the picture in picture on. You want folks to see and hear you. So don't be camera shy! You will size the frame so that it captures the slide first. Tip: you don't need to put your slide in present mode, simply have the recording frame capture the area of the slide.   
   
5. Record a quick introduction stating your name and the course. Hit PAUSE on the recording. 
6. Switch to your course expectations document, resize the recording frame, and hit record.
7. As you talk through the expectations, you will slowly scroll through the document. Try not to read from the document verbatim, and do not ramble!  This video must be kept under 15 minutes. 
   
8. If you plan on importing the video into EDpuzzle or another interactive video tool, strategically pause after important moments so that you will have spaces to insert the questions which will check for understanding while watching the video.
9. After you have finished talking through your course expectations, pause the recording, switch back to the title slide or create a slide that includes your contact information, resize the recording frame, and record a brief closing message. This will give your video a more polished feel by capping the ends with an opening and closing slide.
10. Create a handout of questions to accompany the video. If using an interactive video tools such as EDpuzzle, insert the questions to check for understanding. 
11. At least two weeks prior to Back to School Night, assign the video lesson as homework, the student and parent must watch it together! The two week time frame allows parents to work around their schedules.
12. So as to prevent tech issues from occurring, provide multiple avenues with which parents and students can access the video and reinforce that all answers are to be written on the question handout page. No matter the hardware, EDpuzzle allows for folks to view either by signing in to their account or through Guest Mode, so parents can experience the tool along side their student, but you don't have to worry about the student not completing the assignment if they have trouble logging in to their account at home. 
13. As students turn in the questions page, review the responses and make note of any patterns: if many got the same question incorrect, then you need to address the issue on Back to School Night and follow up with the parent individually in an email.

After the Video: Following up with parents after the video is important for community building and creating an open dialogue with parents.  All parents should be sent an email thanking them for their completion of this task and inviting them to Back to School Night.

If your Back to School Night is anything like mine (9 minutes per class with 5 minutes between each), it is impossible to do a deep dive and convey all of the information about your course to parents. Also, due to work schedules and such, not all parents attend Back to School Night, so rather than thinking of this event in terms of information delivery, focus on how to let the parents in the room experience your class with a short learning activity. Let the video be the information delivery mechanism, as you can ensure all parents and students take the time to view it and answer the corresponding questions.

Blending Active Reading & Conversations with EDpuzzle

As I integrate technology into my classroom, I want to make sure that my students do not have their faces in a screen all the time. Also, I want to capitalize on creating opportunities for my students to practice listening and self-pacing skills. Blending paper with digital media and face to face interactions with digital learning, I created checkpoints in an EDpuzzle video lesson that would encourage students to close read a text and "Turn and Talk" to answer text-based questions accurately.


Building on previous teacher-centered lessons from our reading of Richard Peck's “Priscilla and the Wimps” and Richard Connell's “The Most Dangerous Game” in which we actively read texts together, students encountered a text for the first time in such as a way as to practice self-pacing skills during an in-class flipped lesson. In an effort to flip my reading instruction and to encourage students to actively read, I edited a preexisting audiobook video on YouTube to include the text of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber. I then uploaded the new version to EDpuzzle and embedded the checkpoint questions, tagging each with a NJ Learning Standard for ELA 9th grade (formerly known as Common Core Curriculum Standards).


Each student logged in to EDpuzzle on his/her class Chromebook, and then synchronizing with a partner, hit play and listened with personal headphones to the audiobook while reading along with a paper copy of the story.


As you can see from the EDpuzzle lesson below (go ahead, try!), at various points in the story, the video would pause and students were directed to mark up their paper copy of the text so that they could better understand the narrative structure, as well as answer comprehension questions. Students would turn and talk to their partner to discuss the directions and questions. I navigated around the room, listening to the partner conversations and seeing what students marked on their paper copy. It was immediately apparent if a student recognized the ellipsis or not, and I was able to quickly confirm or redirect as needed.


After marking up the paper text, students submitted their answers to the questions in EDpuzzle and were given immediate feedback on their accuracy, including an explanation as to why each answer was correct or wrong. I also tracked student progress in EDpuzzle and mark typed-in responses as correct/incorrect while students work through the video.


Despite the video being under 12 minutes, student conversations extended the lesson time. Those who talked too long or got off topic soon realized the consequence of not staying on task: Students who did not finish the lesson in class were instructed to complete the lesson prior to the next class meeting.






Even though the visual design of EDpuzzle’s site is different from PARCC or other online tests, the digital literacy skills students are using to answer standards-based questions will help prepare students for future digital standardized assessments. And by having students work synchronously with a partner, they are able to practice interpersonal, conversational skills.

Evolution of the Lecture: Trojan War Stories

My freshmen students have begun learning about the background information for our study of Homer's Odyssey.  In years past, I would give a two day lecture to the entire freshmen class on the Trojan War, repeating the stories during seven 43 minute periods per day.  It was an epic task-- I had to keep my pace and remembered the tales as I channeled the muses, but I enjoyed every minute of it, modeling age old oral storytelling techniques: pacing, repetition, voice variation, etc.

Years later due to scheduling constraints and other curricular demands, the other freshmen teachers and I decided not to continue with the live lecture. I still would tell the stories to my students in class. But when I started to give the tales last week, something changed.  My enthusiasm waned as it became an epic task to keep my freshmen students focused for the lecture.  I tried. I really did, but when they constantly wanted to interrupt and needed to be redirected back to listening, I realized I didn't have the strength of Hercules to continue.

Not wanting to face defeat, I decided to take a different approach.  Saturday morning, I wrote up a 10 page script to go with my Trojan War Stories slides and I recorded a screencast of the tales.  Using TechSmith's Camtasia to record and edit, my 90 minute lecture became a 54 minute video that still made students focus on listening skills.

Anticipating that playing the video for the whole class would still result in me having to redirect student behavior, I pulled it into EDpuzzle today and spent about 30 minutes putting in questions in the video to check for student understanding.  I purposely chose where to insert the questions, chunking the material.

Tomorrow students will wear headphones, watch my lecture in EDpuzzle, complete the questions, and submit a reflective writing task in Edmodo on the process and comparing/contrast the live lecture to the recorded one. I am looking forward to the formative data and reading what the students write, and I anticipate that most will state that they enjoyed the video more than the live lecture.  I will share screenshots of the data and student feedback later.

For now, you can check out the Stories of the Trojan War as told by me, Mrs. Baker.....