CMU – Page 6 – Digital Writing, Digital Teaching

Second Post from SDRC “Hack and Yack” Series

This post was originally published on the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative blog on January 17, 2014.

As mentioned in our introduction to this series of blog posts, we are heading into the world of e-reading for the next few days, considering what it might mean for us as digital writers and rhetors. Today, I want to explore the first type functionality made available to typical ebooks.

eBook Features

These books can be as simple as a PDF document, or they can be comprised of “flowable” text that allows for font size adjustment. Probably the most common formats for ebooks are the Kindle and iBooks formats as well as the more ubiquitous ePub. Some of the essential features for ebooks in these formats include:

Basic search and annotation: users can search for particular words or phrases using an integrated search function. Additionally, users can “highlight” selected passages that can be collected by the ebook software as a set of notes.
Readability features: because of the digital nature of the text itself as an XML or HTML5 format, Michael Wesch reminds us that the content and form are separate. Thus, flowable and adjustable texts have become the norm. No longer do we need to tell students to turn to page X. Instead, we can have them search for words and passages.
Use of external computing functions: another useful feature of eBooks is the connection to the dictionary and web browsing functions. Finding a definition or more information about a word or phrase is, quite literally, at one’s fingertips by simply pressing and holding a word and launching these additional features.

These features — while not nearly as snazzy as some of the ones we will explore in our next two posts on enhanced and interactive ebooks — are nonetheless quite useful for readers. Moreover, they are important for us to remember as writers, too. Are there ways that we can use images within our digital writing, for instance, to maintain the exact size, shape, and color of a particular font? Might we use certain words, alone or in combination, together to signal certain sections or transitions in the texts (without necessarily using sub headings, bold or italics)? Are there ways to hide other “Easter eggs” in our very basic ebooks that would reward a savvy user?

Basic eBook Examples

Project Gutenberg is probably the widest known site, providing tons of texts that exist in the public domain and available in a variety of ebook formats. Additional sources for public domain ebooks include Amazon, Feedbooks, and your local library’s ebook service. As noted above, there aren’t too many features that these texts have, but the one specific advantage to getting the book in an ebook format — as compared to a straight up PDF — is that the book will have flowable text. For instance, here are two screenshots of from the Kindle App showing some of the features noted above.

Kindle Viewing Options — The Kindle app allows users to change default font sizes, as well as text and background color.

Kindle Highlighting Options — Also, the app allows users to highlight text and provides quick access to the dictionary and web resources.

Tools for Creating Basic eBooks

Finally, what tools can we use to create ebooks — in the flexible, flowable ebook format? As I explore software packages and web-based solutions over the next few blog posts, I am sticking to free, open source options. So, please know that there are other programs out there for creating ebooks, and I suggest using Alternativeto.net as a resource for finding them.

So, given the free and open source requirement, for standalone software there are a few options. A standalone program such as Sigil or eCub, both ePub editors, as well as the Mobipocket Creator, could do the trick. For the iPad, there is Storykit, which is simple yet quite useful for younger students. A search of the iTunes store also yielded Quark DesignPad, though it looks from the reviews that an upgrade to the pro version might be necessary to get the types of features that would make it truly useful. Finally, you could use the open source Scribus and then share it as a PDF.

Conclusion: Pushing eBooks into New Territories

Again, I wonder how we can remediate and use text in innovative ways, perhaps speaking directly to the reader in a basic ebook format? Of the tools listed above, are there ones that you have experience using and would you recommend it to others?

Before my next post, we will have a guest post from someone who has done a great deal of thinking about e-reading: Heidi Perry of Subtext. This is a very useful e-reading app for the iPad, allowing teachers and students the ability to communicate during the reading process. As always, I appreciate your comments and questions so we can keep the conversation going!

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First Post from SDRC “Hack and Yack” Series

For the next two weeks, I will be blogging over at the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative’s blog for their “Hack and Yack” series (and cross posting here). This is my first entry that went live on January 14, 2014.

By now — in fact, right now — there is a very good chance that you are reading text on something smaller than a typical computer screen, perhaps your smartphone, tablet, or e-reader. And, that means that the opportunity to interact with this text has, quite literally, come straight to your fingertips. While scholars of digital writing and rhetoric have long been interested in what this means for us as writers, it is in this existing world of e-reading where our blog posts for the next few days will take us.

So, let me introduce myself first. I’m Troy Hicks, an associate professor of English from Central Michigan University, and your guest blogger for the next few weeks for the Hack and Yack series. I have been working on a study of adolescents’ digital reading habits with my colleague Dr. Kristen Turner from Fordham University, and they have collected nearly 1000 responses to a survey that asks teens to reflect on both what and how they read, in school and out. We are writing a book for NCTE as a follow-up to their policy research brief, “Reading Instruction for All Students.” Part of our work is to identify how to help students read. Equally important, for those of us interested in digital literacies, we are trying to identify when, where, and how students read, too.

We begin with the understanding that many teachers are, rightly, concerned about their students access outside of school to digital devices and the Internet. Thus, part of our work has been to confirm a great deal of the existing data about device ownership and access to the Internet as reported by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And, we are finding very similar percentages in terms of the number of teens who have devices and access to the Internet from our rural, suburban, and urban samples of students. In short, most kids have devices and access. This is not to say we are completely over the hump of the digital divide, because we are not. Yet, knowing that well over half and upwards of 80% of our students are reading on digital devices, we really do need to start teaching reading and writing as if every student has a device in her pocket because, most likely, she does.

In particular, Turner and I have also been interested in how students are using these devices as readers. While some teens do report being distracted by digital media, just as many adults are, a number of them are also reporting strategic uses of smart phones and tablets as reading devices. Using a variety of techniques to select books, skim the news, and engage deeply in various forms of online reading, the teens are not, as some would argue, “too dumb for complex texts.” This, however, does not mean that we can’t teach are digital natives some new tricks. While many of them know about social networking and photo sharing, fewer of them know about tools like Feedly or Pocket. Thus, we are very interested in teaching them about how these tools can enrich their (digital) reading lives.

Over the next two weeks and four blog posts, I would like to share some of my current thinking about what it means to be a digital reader, and what implications that might carry for us, too, as digital writers. To begin, I would encourage you to review Avi Itzkovitch’s “Interactive eBook Apps: The Reinvention of Reading and Interactivity.” In this thorough post about different types of interactive ebooks, Itzkovitch describes three types including basic ebooks, which essentially mimic paper, enhanced e-books which may include multimedia components, and interactive ebooks which demand a level of participation from the user. I’ve also recently seen the terms “fixed format,” “enhanced,” and “flowable” used as terms to describe digital books, too. Here is a visual way of thinking about it that I have shared in some workshops.

Since so many people are talking about how e-books work, as well as how they work for us (or not) as readers, the next three posts will explore each of Itzkovitch’s categories in more detail, as well as provide examples. By mid-month, I will look at a variety of the basic e-book formats such as ePub and Kindle. Then, during the week of January 20, we will explore what happens when print is re-mediated in the digital environment, adding some measure of interactivity. Also that week, we will look at some multimedia publications and how they make different demands on the reader. Finally, toward the end of the month, I will wrap up the series in reply to any questions or comments as well as provide a list of various e-publishing resources.

As digital writers, we need to become increasingly aware of why and how our readers find our work, click on our links, examine our images, and then share what they have read. A few questions for you to consider (since this is meant to be a “yack” session, after all):

As a digital reader, how would you describe your experience with ebooks? Hypertexts? RSS feeds? Other forms of digital reading?
As a digital writer (and rhetorician), what are some of the considerations that you need to make for your audience? What are the affordances and constraints of various digital reading platforms (web-based, ebooks, tablet vs PC)?

I hope to shed some insights on this process over the next few weeks and look forward to the conversation with all of you.

Credits:

eReader Image from Flickr user smjbk
Comparison of eBook Functionality Image created by Troy Hicks based on Avi Itzkovitch’s article “Interactive eBook Apps: The Reinvention of Reading and Interactivity“

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Literacy Research Association Webinar

Literacy Research Association

This afternoon at 2:00 PM EST, I will be participating in the Literacy Research Association’s webinar series. Today’s topic is Writing and Multimodality and I am looking forward to the conversation. Here are the slides and handout that I will be sharing:

Hicks LRA Webinar Slides (PDF)
Hicks and Perrin – Writing Dimensions Chart (PDF)

Please join in the conversation via Twitter, too: #LRAShow

Update (1/14/14): Here is the archived recording of the webcast.

[iframe]<iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/0XzZdQ8TNDk?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>[/iframe]

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Power, Powerless, and Powerlessness

As 2013 comes to a close, I wasn’t quite sure that I would have time to get one more blog post out .

As it happens, the mid-Michigan area where I live was slammed with an ice storm a week ago and my family just recently (that is, six hours ago) moved from being in the “thousands without power” to having our lights (and wifi) back on. FWIW, here is a picture of the tree that we lost in our backyard.

So, I have found myself with lots of time to think about the technologies that I use in my life, even if I haven’t been using them nearly as much. Couple the power outage with the holidays (when work is, thankfully, slower for me) and it has been an interesting week of thinking. Let me elaborate a bit…

First, I have found that my thinking is informed by and integrated with the digital tools that I rely on (almost exclusively) as a way to get work done. I’ve been reading Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think, and I definitely find myself aligned with the arguments that he makes in his book. While some might argue that being offline is a good thing (And, I can agree, to an extent; for instance, I have been pleased to finish off a few books during this break that may have otherwise been left on my nightstand), I also have found that I am much, much less productive.

In short, I feel that digital writing tools enhance the thinking that I am able to do. Rather than falling down the rabbit hole when I get online, I feel that I am generally very focused (about 90 to 95%) of the time. Sure, I use that 5% for random websurfing and catching up on the latest memes, but I use time online efficiently, mostly for work. When I don’t have that connection, my productivity basically falls to zero. For instance, I have been working on a grant proposal with two colleagues and while I could write (or, more likely dictate) lengthy responses with my iPhone to be sent via email, I have struggled to compose big ideas on small screens. The process of writing, for me, has become so embedded with the practice of keyboarding — and being connected to the internet — that I have had trouble getting any “real” writing done this past week.

Second, I am acutely reminded of the digital divide and the fact that I am very fortunate to have access to the types of technologies I am able to use on a day-to-day basis. As a part of my sabbatical, I wanted to focus on these issues, to help get more people connected through outreach programs and opportunities to get affordable technologies. Sadly, I haven’t spent quite as much time on these efforts as I wanted to this fall. So, with the new year upon us, it is a good time for me to renew those efforts, especially in light of my last point, which is this…

Finally — as one of the customers without power for eight days — I can understand why many of my neighbors are feeling frustrated and want their power back. Sadly, I also find the idea that people are protesting our local utility to be a moment where I simply want to scream about “first world problems.”

Seriously, people?

I can understand that some residents — most likely the elderly who would suffer terrible effects on their health and the impoverished who are systematically disadvantaged in ways that prevent them from attending such a protest — might have some legitimate complaints.

But, aren’t there a variety of other problems facing the world that we could spend our time and energy working to eliminate? Say, like the hunger, homelessness, and abject poverty that face citizens in mid-Michigan, let alone helping those people without the technology or funding available to access these technologies that the rest of you were protesting to have turned back on?

Really, people.

Get some priorities. You lost power. It was inconvenient. But, you still have a house and all your gadgets from Christmas. Most people in the world aren’t that lucky.

That’s enough for tonight, and for 2013. It’s been an interesting year, and I am looking forward to starting 2014 with a Spartan victory in the Rose Bowl, then refocusing for the second half of my sabbatical.

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Updates from Recent Collegial Conversations

Over the past few months, I’ve continue to have wonderful opportunities to speak at conferences and workshops, publish my work, and then share in conversations with fellow teachers. Two conversations in particular stand out as we had for the end of the calendar year.

First, Kristen Turner and I were contacted earlier this fall by Brian Newman, a high school teacher from Joliet, Illinois. He had read our English Journal piece, “No longer a luxury: Digital literacy can’t wait,” and wanted to ask us our opinions about blogging and how to engage students as writers. After recommending Youth Voices as a tremendous resource, I offered some specific advice about having students respond to one another:

Over time, as they post — and respond — I would encourage you to pursue some self-evaluation strategies. Ask them to go back and review their best blog post, and why they think it is so. Ask them, too, to review the best blog post from someone else that they have read. Then compare those posts. In that process of writing and responding, talk with them about the power of peer response and specific praise and constructive criticism.

Recently, Brian wrote us back and told us about the work that he and Sean Hackney has shared on their blog, Ancient Geeks. In this post, he discusses the end of semester writing conferences that he had with his student bloggers. He outlines 13 steps to take in order to become a better blogger and teacher of blogging:

Make the posts occur regularly.
Give them choices.
Use the blogs as formative writing practice for summative writing assignments.
Check in with them regularly.
Get testimonials from previous students about the positives and drawbacks of the various blog platforms.
Make them read each others’ blogs.
Use technorati.com, the blog search engine, to get them reading blogs.
Conference with them.
Grade them with care, because they care about being assessed on how they feel.
Identify your tech wizards in class and empower them to help others.
Create opportunities for kids to teach each other how to do make posts more interesting.
Help them expand the audience: email the links to parents, other teachers, or other classes.
Oh yeah, and write along with them. That’s what got Hackney and I writing this blog in the first place.

I appreciate the work that Brian and Sean are doing with their high school writers, and hope that they continue to find success in the new year.

Image courtesy of Katharine Hale (http://teachitivity.wordpress.com/)

The second teacher with whom I’ve been communicating this semester is Katharine Hale, a fifth-grade teacher from Arlington, Virginia, who is working diligently to integrate digital writing into her traditional writing workshop. She blogs at Teachitivity and in her recent post, “A Fresh Approach to Fostering Digital Writers,” Katharine describes the multiple goals that she had for integrating technology and making her classroom workshop time more efficient.

The entire post is worth reading, as she has numerous lesson ideas and examples. She concludes that:

As I said in the beginning, this was my first attempt at truly integrating technology, specifically the iPad, into the writing experience. It was incredible to finish the unit ON TIME with not one, but two published texts. I especially loved the interactive flipped lesson. I felt I had gained a whole class period of instruction because I did not need to use class time to assess students and determine small groups. If you read their digital literary essays, you may even notice that many of my students’ conclusion paragraphs are the strongest part of their essay!

Katharine worked critically and creatively to both integrate the use of WordFoto and Thinglink, allowing her students the opportunity to go from brainstorming to publication on both a traditional essay and multiple pieces of digital writing. As with Brian and Sean, I wish Katharine luck in the new year as well.

Thanks to all of my colleagues who have shared their work — and their students’ work — with me over this past year. There are more books, blog posts, chapters, presentations, workshops, and other pieces of writing on their way in the new year. I will try to blog some more over the holidays, but if I don’t get to it then I thank you now for another year of reading my work and invite you to stay in touch.

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Notes from Michelle Hagerman’s “Disruptive Promise” Dissertation Defense

As the fall semester nears its end, I am planning one more round of classroom visits to work on our “Reading in a Digital World” book project. So far, Kristen Turner and I have collected nearly 1000 surveys and 20 interviews. We are still doing lots of thinking on all of this. Thus, I wanted to hear more about what research is showing us in terms of how students read online.

So, earlier today I was able to attend a colleague’s dissertation defense. Michelle Hagerman presented on “Disruptive Promise,” a study where she worked with 16 ninth grade students to discover how they used the open web, including multiple and multimodal texts, as they worked to find evidence and build an argument. She asked them to use multiple internet sources (of any type) to write an essay on radiation treatment (a type of integrative task is one that is indicative of the types of tasks students will be required to do for new science standards). Her method was interesting, as she used screencasting and a webcam recording to capture both what happened as the students were searching as well as their conversation (and facial expressions) while searching.

She introduced her “LINKS” strategies for working with students as they evaluate online materials, including purpose, source, trustworthiness, connections between and among texts, and other scaffolds to help them work while reading online. Hagerman coded “strategic episodes” in her data where she observed what students were doing during their reading and searching process. With her first research question, she was looking at frequency of strategies. In her control and experimental group, she saw no statistically significant difference in the amount or frequency of strategies that students used during their research process. She did, however, as a part of her treatment, see that those students would use pre-existing knowledge while searching. Using the strategy instruction did have an effect over time. Identifying important information was the primary strategy, and they would spend more time searching for information.

With her second research question, she developed an “integrativeness rubric,” where she looked at how students would combine resources in the effort to make an argument in their writing. Between the control and experimental group, there was no statistically significant differences in how students constructed their writing. She also looked at a case study of two students, and discussed the amount of time that they spent on different strategies. By the end of the study, the two engaged in a broader set of strategies overall; they used more strategies and had slightly more integrative writing. She noted some “disruptive promise” in the LINKS strategies, and demonstrates how difficult it is to teach these strategies; still even a nudge from teachers toward a more active stance in internet research would be helpful for students.

Hagerman’s work demonstrates the immense complexity of teaching students how to choose, comprehend, evaluate, and synthesize the many components of digital reading. It reminds me that — despite years of good work from the New Literacies Research Team at UConn — I am not sure that we are any closer, at least in K12 instruction, to really teaching the (digital) reading strategies that students need today. It also shows me how important it will be to teach students to use tools like Evernote or Citelighter as a key component of their own searching and reading because, as Hagerman notes, even if they use strategies it may not have an effect on their writing. In short, we have to teach students to use strategies and document their work along the way. Also interesting, in the Q/A, she also noted that students did not use multimodal resources, and that — in school at least — they are often discouraged from using anything other than text on a web page as evidence.

Finally, her suggestions for teachers are helpful, and remind me that we, as teacher educators, need to model this work for K12 teachers, too. First, Hagerman suggests that teachers think about complexity of the online reading process and do some think aloud modeling, just as we would do with other reading comprehension strategies. She also suggests that we use screencasting for brief clips demonstrating these strategies, possibly a good resource for flipped classrooms, too. Lastly, of course, equipping students with a set of online reading strategies can be helpful, and reminding them of those strategies before, during, and after the process of reading.

All of us interested in digital literacy should appreciate the work that she has done in her dissertation. I want to get my hands on the “LINKS” framework that Hagerman has presented and see if there are some connections to what Turner and I are trying to document in our book. Our students need a great deal of support as they learn how to read digital texts, and my hope is that the book can provide teachers with some specific ideas. Hagerman’s dissertation will surely be one resource that we cite.

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Reflections on “From Ranganathan to Read/Write”

Today was a blur of activity at the Harrington School’s “From Ranganathan to Read/Write: Managing Digital Disruption in Libraries, Schools and Workplaces.” I tweeted most of what I was thinking throughout the day, yet wanted to offer a few reflections based on those tweets before everything escapes me.

First, the day was framed around the following prompt:

In 1931, Indian mathematician and librarian S.R. Ranganathan proposed five laws widely accepted as foundational to library science and practice: (1) Books are for
use. (2) Every reader his [or her] book. (3) Every book its reader. (4) Save the time of the reader. (5) The library is a growing organism. All institutions – libraries, schools, workplaces – have legacy rules now being disrupted by Internet-spawned, digital-media driven, read-write culture or marketplaces. How might we use the challenge of modernizing Ranganathan’s Laws to react to the blurring boundaries among readers, writers, librarians and creative media professionals in multiple environnments?

Thus, the conversations were far-ranging and engaging. It is hard to fully appreciate all that we discussed at the end of a busy day, but here are a few of my tweets that, upon review, I feel capture the spirit of it. Many of the tweets were paraphrasing what other participants said or asked in my attempt to capture some record of what happened, as it was happening. My apologies to my fellow participants for not knowing everyone’s names and capturing them in the tweets. Here are a few of my thoughts from the day:

Wondering how librarians, journalists, media producers, and others could/would help inform/reform teacher education? #digiuri

What are the new roles for libraries in information literacy? Is teaching word processing enough? What is “basic” info lit? #digiuri

What are we hoping to accomplish with community based, third spaces? Is it a workspace? Is it to gather information? To teach? #digiuri

Within complex systems and organizational structures, when do we allow professionals the time to play, fail, and try again? #digiuri

Thinking about the possibilities that an interdisciplinary approach to communication studies would offer all constituencies involved, I have to wonder whether or not we could reconceptualize teacher education in a similar manner? One of the main concerns that I have for the pre-service teachers with whom I work is that they often report a disconnect between their methods courses, major/minor courses, and field experiences. Could an approach to blur the boundaries across disciplines and institutions be one that might improve teacher education and, in turn, the quality of teacher candidates that we produce?

Also, as someone whose interests cross the field of composition and English education, I found the opportunity to talk with some librarians about their goals for making reading accessible and teaching information literacy both refreshing and — from the opposite side of the literacy coin — to be very much in line with my own philosophies. I would like to think about how a broader vision of literacy in teacher education (beyond decoding and basic comprehension) might lead our teacher candidates to develop a more robust set of approaches for teaching reading, too.

Of course, as most good conferences and conversations are wont to do, I am left with more questions than answers. How can I work to bridge teacher education and community action/activism? In what ways can digital literacy be promoted through public libraries and teacher education programs? How can we maintain services in the spirit of public education and libraries — accessing information and encouraging personal growth — in a digital age where access is just as much about getting online as it is finding a particular book or other resource?

I appreciate the opportunity to discuss these ideas with a wide variety of colleagues, and look forward to building on the many connections made today.

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Two New Articles for Teacher Educators and Parents

In the past two weeks, I’ve had to wonderful opportunities for writing, one through my colleague Todd Finley via Edutopia, and the other from a group of English educators via their Writers Who Care blog. Here is a brief preview from each, as well as links to the originals.

Engaging Pre-Service Teachers in Authentic Writing Instruction

One of my ENG 315 students presenting part of her multigenre research project.

As a writer, I know firsthand how important it is for me to share what I’ve written and receive feedback on my work. And as a teacher of writing — from my initial experience in the middle school classroom up to my current work as a teacher educator at Central Michigan University and director of our Chippewa River Writing Project — I want my students to experience this, too. It is with this understanding in mind that I teach my methods course, ENG 315: Writing in the Elementary and Middle School.

Unfortunately, I know that many of my pre-service teachers come to my course with a jaded view of writing. If high school hadn’t already taken a passion for writing out of them, four years of college certainly have. Thus, I must teach my preservice teachers how to re-envision themselves as writers and, consequently, as teachers of writing…

Teaching Writing, Tablet Style

CC Licensed Photo (Some rights reserved by flickingerbrad.)

While I am very much an advocate for digital writing that incorporates multimedia content such as audio, video, and images, I also understand and appreciate the idea that writing involves — and should always involve at some level — the use of words. Very rarely, if ever, does a young writer need all the bells and whistles that come with standard word processing software.

This is especially true when it comes to using a tablet, given the limited amount of space we have for viewing and typing on smaller screens, especially when not using an external keyboard.

So, when it comes to helping our students to write, to put words into sentences and then into stories, essays, scripts, and more, I look for applications that make the writing process simple and elegant. As a teacher, this means that an app does not, should not, have to do everything from brainstorming to drafting to publishing…

Hope that you find the articles useful!

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Digital Reading (from LA)

Having spent a significant chunk of time during my trip to LA last week in classrooms (and another large chunk in traffic), was able to talk informally with many students about their experiences as readers and as digital readers. While I conducted no formal interviews with students, there were a number of themes that emerged with these teens that are similar to the themes I am discovering in official interviews that I am doing for our book project on digital reading. Here are a few reflections on what I discovered.

Comfort

Image from Flickr. Some rights reserved by bm.iphone.

First, I want to start with some limitations of the technologies for digital reading. Many of the students that I talked to discussed the fact that iPads are difficult screens to read from. The glass surface is too reflective and the glare is distracting. While some e-reader screens are better (one student mentioned her Kindle specifically), they find it difficult to read long passages of text on screen. Many of them described how they would print — and would prefer it if their teachers would print — their reading homework.

It is also about familiarity (simply holding a book is a nice feeling) and a sense of accomplishment as one flips through the pages toward the end of a section or chapter. Annotating is doable, but sometimes awkward with ebooks. One student said that she felt no sense of accomplishment with ebooks and, while she can get distracted with real books too, she would often feel as if words, sentences, and pages simply melded together.

So, there is something (or a few somethings) to be said for comfort.

Reading Choices

Of a more positive note, a second point that emerged is the fact that many teens did report (at least through knowing nods and smiles) that they did read online, though I am sure that the amount and quality of reading varies widely (as it does for adults, too, I am sure). Still, they reported some interested digital reading practices, most notably the idea that the way they find interesting things to read include tools like Tumblr, Stumble Upon, and Flipboard. In other words, they don’t often start with search as the default for finding things to read online.

Again, this was not a result discussed by all the students (a few still headed to Google or Yahoo first), but it did suggest that students are engaged in self-sponsored reading and, more importantly, figuring out a variety of ways to encounter new texts. Though they might still limit their choices based on the app, their social network, and their own preferences, I am curious to know more about how teens perceive these tools.

When teaching a group of seniors about Feedly, one young man made a comment to the effect that finding personalized content from across the web would actually make him want to read more. We talked about how to search within Feedly, as well as how to set up Google Alerts and use Tehnorati to find blogs. By the end of the class period, some students had a small, yet robust, list of multiple sources to read about their favorite topics.

New Norms

A third point that I want to mention could be broadly conceived of as the social norms of digital reading. In particular, one young woman described how — even when she is reading and annotating something for school purposes — her parents complain that she is just messing around with her iPad. Not sure what to make of this piece of information yet in the grand scheme of our study, but I know that this is a recurring theme and I am sure it will come up again.

E-reading Strategies

Finally, a few students and one teacher also mentioned a particular ebook reading strategy: search. Since ebooks lack page numbers, and people can change the font size for readability anyway, teachers can’t call out a page number anymore and expect that students will show up there. Thus, searching becomes essential. One teacher described how he would have students search for quotes, and I can imagine that would become a useful strategy in the context of teaching students how to find and cite textual evidence.

As we continue to gather survey results, am sure that some more surprises and trends will emerge. I look forward to discovering them.

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Keynote Presentation from the Discovery Educators Network Fall 2013 Fall Virtual Conference

Thanks to the many educators who joined in the conversation this past weekend as I presented “Mixing Sources, Amplifying Voices: Crafting Writing in an Information Age.” Here is the description, and the archived version of the keynote.

As the inputs continue to multiply, how can we help students find, evaluate, and synthesize information from a variety of sources? More importantly, how can we help them craft digital writing in effective ways, utilizing the information that they have found to develop multimedia texts? Bring your favorite device, because in this interactive keynote we will explore a variety of web-based tools and mobile applications to help students mix together a variety of sources and amplify their digital voices.

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