Changing our practice and Identity Go hand-in-Hand

1. Changing our practice and Identity Go hand-in-Hand A self-study of our efforts to infuse digital technology into our literacy courses British Educational Research Association Conference 2013

2. Clare Kosnik & Lydia menna Ontario Institute for Studies in Education: University of Toronto

3. Lydia Shawn

4. Self-study Research • Self-initiated and focused • Improvement-aimed • Interactive • Multiple, primarily qualitative, methods • Exemplar-based validation

5. Objectives of our Research • 1. What digital technologies did we use in our literacy courses? • 2. How did a greater integration of technology change our practice? • 3. Did a greater focus on technology change our identities as instructors? • 4. What were barriers to increasing the integration of technology into the literacy courses?

6. Diving into the unknown

7. 2010- 2011 Summary of our efforts • Access the Read, Write, Think website • Different modalities for their All about Me Book (e.g., iBooks) • Authors reading their works (e.g., Gwendolyn Brooks reading We Real Cool • Class set of notebook computers for podcasts • Shutterflyto create a pictorial history of the program • View rap videos (what stereotypes are being presented? What literacy skills are being used?)

8. Discuss pupils’ out-of-school literacy practices to consider what teachers should be doing (or not doing) • Websites for poetry e.g., Shel Silverstein • Frank Serafini’s website re: fiction and non-fiction • Session on adaptive technologies for special needs students • Wordlefor the weekly Ticket Out The Door • Jon Sciezska being interviewed • Teacher created website for the teaching of writing

9. Ottenbreit-Leftwich's six different ways to incorporate technology: • 1. information delivery, • 2. hands-on skill building activities, • 3. practice in the field, • 4. observations and modeling, • 5. authentic experiences, • 6. reflections (2010, p. 20).

10. Categorizing our efforts • Mainly in the areas of: • information delivery • Observation + modeling

11. Understanding our initial efforts • Ad hoc approach • No models to emulate • Not sure what we were trying • to accomplish • Had not done sufficient reading

12. Wow Factor!!!!!!!!!!!!! • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lByDfPOG0LA&noredirect=1

13. Education or Edutainment

14. “the benefits of technology use are often taken for granted in education ” (selwyn, 2011).

15. technology-led innovations do not in themselves lead to improved educational practices. (Kirkwood, 2009, p. 110).

16. Focusing more on Student learning

17. While it is often suggested that preservice teacher education should be reconceived in response to the demands of multiple literacies and the new informational age, little has been written about the program that might prepare future teachers for multiple literacies (Cervetti, 2008, p. 379)

18. What Does it mean to be literate in the 21st century?

19. More Depth Yet more nuanced • Web 2.0 as a form of communication • “…a term that attempts to highlight a new wave and increased volume of users who have developed new ways of using digital technology to interact with each other” Davies and Merchant

20. Wham! Bang! Class – Or so we thought

21. Listing modalities we used in class

22. Being explicit

23. Why A Wiki? • 1. repository for materials related to literacy • 2. show students a way to organize materials and identify priorities for literacy education • 3. on-going site -- access after graduation • 4. model of a Wiki students could use in their classrooms • http://mtliteracy2011.wikispaces.com/Welcome

24. What went wrong? Or is this right? • Sheila Owen’s Classroom • http://www.learner.org/resources/series162.html?pop=yes&pid=1724

25. Final Assignment • Building the rubric forced us to think about why we were insisting that students use a digital technology

26. The Fruits of Our labours! • Student presentations: • Talked to us like we were digital natives • They took risks using technology (e.g., Prezi) • Elements of our courses were woven into their presentations seamlessly • We learned so much • Andrew’s presentation

28. Our Identity

29. Digital native Digital immigrant

30. Like Beginners • New Teacher • Graduate Student • New Faculty

31. Increasing our understanding of technology and multiliteracies Lydia and clare Our Students

32. Teaching with technology is different from using it in your personal life • Like us, our student teachers had few models of teaching with technology. • Because you use Twitter and Facebook constantly, does not mean you know how to teach with technology. • .

33. I never would have thought of Instant Messaging as a form of writing

34. It is impossible to teach people how to teach powerfully by asking them to imagine what they have never seen or to suggest they 'do the opposite' of what they have observed in the classroom. Linda Darling-Hammond

36. Scientific / scholarly significance • Multiliteracies is a paradigm shift which requires us to fundamentally alter our literacy courses but we need more models of how to do this. • Digital immigrant and digital native concept not applicable to education • Be prepared for discomfort and unsettling experiences • Integrating technology is a complex process – what does it actually mean?