BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Connecting Students to Electronic Text

Terry.Maxwell@hesperiausd.org—English Department Chair, Hesperia High SchoolDavid.Cain@hesperiausd.org—Secondary Literacy Coach, Hesperia USD

Presentation URL: http://www.slideshare.net/dfcain/_____________________

READING AT THE CROSSROADS

READING AT THE CROSSROADS

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution• A—Adaptation

• M—Modification

• R—Redefinition

READING AT THE CROSSROADS

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution

• A—Adaptation• M—Modification

• R—Redefinition

READING AT THE CROSSROADS

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution

• A—Adaptation

• M—Modification• R—Redefinition

READING AT THE CROSSROADS

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution

• A—Adaptation

• M—Modification

• R—Redefinition

ELECTRONIC TEXT• Strengths

• Convenience

• Immediacy

• Limitless library

• Relevancy

• Search/Find ability

• Textual correlation

• Range of vocabulary, visual, and auditory accommodations

• Weaknesses

• Absence of tactility and dimensionality—haptic dissonance

• Limited control

• Limited visual scope

• Increased distraction

• Emphasizes hyper reading, not deep reading

ETEXT AND COMPREHENSION LOSS

• Although initial studies in eText, as early as 1998, suggested little difference between reading on paper and reading on a screen, a host of more recent studies have demonstrated significant comprehension discrepancies, suggesting that paper text is the preferred medium for communication of complex ideas.

• "Hypertext structure tends to increase cognitive demands of decision making and and visual processing and this additional cognitive load, in turn, impairs reading comprehension performance.” (DeStefano & LeFevre, 2007)

• “[S]tudents who read texts in print scored significantly better on the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts digitally.” (Mangen, Walgermo, & Bronnick, 2012)

WHY WOULD THAT BE?

• “Nevertheless, cue the scary music from your couch, or wherever you read: Can you concentrate on Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy while Twitter beckons? People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.” Jenn Doll, The Wire

•

SHOULD WE STOP THE ROLLOUT?

• Even though study after study highlight the differences in reading comprehension and analysis based on the use of paper or etext (content v. container debate), few had attempted to monitor student comprehension and analysis when the tools of paper text were accommodated and then enhanced by technology.

• “[T]he introduction of an interactive annotation component helped improve comprehension and reading strategy use in a group of fifth graders. It turns out that they could read deeply. They just had to be taught how. […] We cannot go backwards. As children move more toward an immersion in digital media, we have to figure out ways to read deeply there.” (Konikova, The New Yorker, July 2014)

SHIFT HAPPENS

• New standards (CCSS, ELD, and NGSS, etc.) emphasize developing students’ abilities to use language in academic settings for complex purposes. The new standards specifically describe the importance of understanding complex texts, critiquing the reasoning of others, and using evidence to support ideas orally and in writing. This focus on constructing and communicating complex ideas is a major shift for many schools that have focused on teaching discrete facts and vocabulary items for multiple-choice tests. (Stanford University, 2015)

THE DIFFERENCES IN READING

• What do we read for and what devices do we use for those types of reading?

• Samuel Johnson, 1723-1792, distinguished four types of reading:

• Hard study—with pen in hand

• Perusal—searching for information

• Curious reading—engrossed in a novel

• Mere reading—browsing and skimming

• Deep reading vs. Hyper reading (Katherine Hayles, How We Think)

• Levels of reading—0, 1, 2

WHEN TO USE PAPER…WHEN TO USE ETEXT• What percentage of college students are

more comfortable with etexts than with paper texts?

• According to the research of Naomi Baron (2015), 92% of college students polled preferred paper text to etext when they were expected to concentrate on textual ideas.

• However, financial constraints dictated that students purchased an increasing percentage of etexts.

• Additionally, the percentage and number of words read by college students has grown dramatically in the last ten years—solely because of electronic media.

WHEN TO USE PAPER…WHEN TO USE ETEXT

(Educause, 2011)

CAN TECHNOLOGY HELP?

• Chen & Chen (2014) found that electronic annotation abilities that overlaid etext resulted in nearly identical textual comprehension with paper formats with the same activities—however, when they added collaborative electronic written response, similar to blog entry and responses, etext comprehension and analysis, resulting in the experimental group significantly outperforming the control group in direct and explicit comprehension, inferential comprehension performance, and use of reading strategy.

• Moreover, the experimental group, but not the control group, had a significantly improved reading attitude in the total dimensions and in the behavioral and affective sub-dimensions. Additionally, the experimental group showed positive interest and high learning satisfaction.

Student comprehension

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

No SuportsAnnotation

Annotation+Physical

CollaborationAnnotation+ Digital

Collaboration

Paper

eText

STUDENT COMPREHENSION

Individual Freedom

Private/Student to Teacher

Public Post and

Collaboration

Student to Student

STUDENT INTERACTION

As the teacher, I can quickly

“hide” all annotations and leave

only those that might require

further attention.

Then I can leave a comment to

prompt the student for more detail

Create a Google Form with the desired information as questions

Form can be linked to a class page or emailed directly to students

All students’ annotations come to one

place

Can be sorted by period or name

Ssfs

CLOSE READING

• It is not cloze reading, or closed reading—it is thoughtful and careful attention to the text, moving from the intention to the interpretation through deliberate process

• Bob Probst—”Read it again, and likely again”

• It is a conversation with the text and author—an transactional exchange of ideas.

• Close reading is text-dependent—what does the text say about itself, how does it say it, how does it connect to other texts, and why is it significant?

CLOSE READING

• A significant body of research links the close reading of complex text—whether the student is a struggling reader or advanced—to significant gains in reading proficiency and finds close reading to be a key component of college and career readiness. (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, 2011, p. 7)

• Take a look at your standards, not in isolation, but for student activity.

• For example, ELA 11/12.RI4, “…how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text…”

CLOSE READING

• According to former International Reading Association president, Tim Shanahan, close reading in the CCSS era must:

• Utilize short text selections—what can be surface-read by students in no more than 10 minutes.

• Focus on text meaning

• Minimize background preparation/explanation

• Minimize text apparatus (marginal notes, vocabulary, ancillary information, etc.)

• Students must do the reading and interpretation, not teachers

• Teacher’s role is to ask text dependent-questions and encourage student generation of text-dependent questions

• Build stamina—multi-day, multiple-read approach to text

• Practice purposeful rereading, each with a separate purpose

CLOSE READING ACTIVITY

READERS AS WRITERS…WRITERS AS READERS

• Readers are writers and writers are readers—some of those who promoted marginalia:

• S.T. Coleridge (coined the term, marginalia)

• Edgar Allan Poe

• Alan Jacobs—Literary Critic

• Mortimer Adler

• W.H. Auden

• P.B. Shelley

• Mark Twain

• Charles Dickens

• Thomas Jefferson—his marginalia comments have been the basis of Supreme Court decisions

• We must write as we read and read as we write—the two are symbiotic

THE MOST ANNOTATED AUTHORS

SOLUTIONS

• Do what we have always done, just change the medium

http://genius.com/Maxwellscorp-herman-melvilles-moby-dick-chap-12-biographical-annotated#-herman -melvilles-moby-dick-chap-12-biographical-annotated#

So let’s begin by finding a digital text to annotate.

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution• A—Adaptation

• M—Modification

• R—Redefinition

Now let’s grab our digital highlighter . . .

http://www.scrible.com/ And paint some lines . . .

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution

• A—Adaptation• M—Modification

• R—Redefinition

• SAMR Model and its implications

• S—Substitution

• A—Adaptation

• M—Modification• R—Redefinition

By overlaying the Scrible platform over the

LitGenius page, we’re modifying the learning

experience.

https://todaysmeet.com/pluggedin

Now let’s add the collaboration piece . . .

SOLUTIONS

• www.notablepdf.com

SOLUTIONS

• Skitch (Evernote)

SOLUTIONS

• https://emargin.bcu.ac.uk/

KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN

•The tools available to us are always changing, and never get locked in to a particular one.

•Look at new technology through the lens of best practice.

•Does the technology support student comprehension through:

•Student autonomy •Student freedom•Collaborative analysis of text •Collaborative analysis of peer’s text comments•Systems that support students to significant production

SOLUTIONS

• www.litgenius.com