By Jan W

I recently read STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND READ THIS! , Vintage Press 2011.  It is a collection of essays written by people who are passionate advocates for reading.

I was particularly taken with the final essay, by Dr Maryanne Wolf and Dr Mirit Barzillai.  Dr Wolf is the Director of the Centre for Reading and Language research at Tufts University.  Dr Barzillai is a researcher whose current work focuses on the implications of technological innovation on reading processes.

Their essay “Questions for a Reader” talks about how ‘momentous and semi-miraculous’ it is that the human species ever achieved the ability to read. It then discusses the fact that an ‘expert reading brain’ is developed over time. This process can be short-circuited at any point by poor instruction, impoverished environments, lack of opportunity or motivation. The essay also discusses the ‘plasticity’ of the human brain, enabling the ‘reading brain’ to adapt itself to whatever is required by the reader.

They go on to share their thoughts and concerns about the current transition from printed to digital text and the possible effects of this change in terms of our traditional definition of an ‘expert reader’ – one who thinks, infers, imagines, connects, reflects and gains insights into their life and the lives of others.

As today’s children are increasingly immersed in digitally dominated formats for reading, the authors pose these questions:

• Will children necessarily develop the more sophisticated reading capacities which demand that they think deeply and reflectively?
• Will they just click on Google and accept (and plagiarise?) the analyses of others? Or will easy access to this material mean that they are motivated to explore further and think more, and therefore the reading experience will be enriched?
• Will the presence of digital tools (e.g. translations and definitions), and the flexibility of digital text serve to enhance the reading experience by acting as aids when readers encounter difficulties?
• Will these tools mean that children who are challenged by the reading process are more easily engaged, or will these tools be just another distraction?
• Will our children develop a whole new set of cognitive skills better suited to dealing with the volume and speed of information today, based on those skills needed to prioritise, sort and critically evaluate,  
• Or will they become victims of the information super-highway?

Huge questions, with real resonance in terms of literacy teaching and learning in the 21^st century.  What do you think? Share your thoughts with us.

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND READ THIS!can be readily borrowed through interlibrary loan if it is not available from your local library.

By Gail

Guess what percentage of New Zealand’s 15 year old students are among the top performers internationally in digital reading?  The January 2012 In Focus reports on the OECD’s PISA  results from the the 2009 survey on the  proficiency of 15 year old students in 16 OECD countries in locating and assessing digital resources. More than 17% of New Zealand students are among the top performers in digital reading, on a par with those from Australia and Korea. However, New Zealand, along with the other participating countries, also has a significant number of low performing students who are unable locate crucial online information even when given explicit directions on how to scroll and navigate across web pages.

The findings included:

• Overall, girls outperformed the boys in both digital and print reading, with the gender gap narrower in digital reading. The girls were ahead by the equivalent of one year of schooling in print reading and by two-thirds of a year in digital reading
• In New Zealand, Australia and Korea more students were top performers in digital reading than in print reading, with a greater percentage of boys who were top performers in digital reading over print reading
• Students who were least enthusiastic about reading for pleasure were twice as likely to perform poorly in digital reading compared with more avid readers.

PISA makes the following observations, which have implications for teaching and learning in your school and for targeting of your library’s services to support student achievement:

• Providing frequent access to computers at schools is not enough to ensure students become digitally literate.  Students must be given the knowledge and skills to locate and use online information.
• “Boys’ interest and capabilities in digital reading could be exploited to start a virtuous cycle through which more frequent reading of digital texts would result in better digital reading proficiency, which, in turn, would lead to greater enjoyment of reading and better proficiency in print reading, as well”

Are you doing something to capitalise on students’ strength in digital reading to create opportunies to increase overall reading mileage? ( digital and/or print)  Please share your success stories with us.

Are your students digital citizens?

by Jan

It was interesting to see the Digital Citizenship survey results in the December 2011 Interface magazine, particularly those results relating to digital citizenship and ethical behaviour.

Young people spend significant time in the virtual world, both in and out of school. As we encourage students to grow their skills in the use of computers and devices, and as the focus shifts to digital learning and online collaboration, we need to scaffold the skills to support our students to think about their digital footprint and to be safe, positive and responsible while online. This is especially relevant in New Zealand schools as we start to take advantage of ultra-fast broadband.

I recently revisited the NetSafe website [http://www.netsafe.org.nz], and found their useful definition of a digital citizen as someone who:

• is a confident and capable user of ICT
• uses technologies to participate in educational, cultural, and economic activities
• uses and develops critical thinking skills in cyberspace
• is literate in the language, symbols, and texts of digital technologies
• is aware of ICT challenges and can manage them effectively
• uses ICT to relate to others in positive, meaningful ways
• demonstrates honesty and integrity and ethical behaviour in their use of ICT
• respects the concepts of privacy and freedom of speech in a digital world
• contributes and actively promotes the values of digital citizenship

NetSafe’s interactive digital citizenship site is a great source of content to support digital citizenship education programmes based on their Learn, Guide, Protect framework. It is designed to help you build a cybersafety programme that is appropriate to your schools’ context, and enables you to maximise local resources and opportunities. Content on this site is created by a range of individuals and organisations (anyone with a myLGP account is able to add content).

I also discovered the New South Wales Digital Education Revolution group website, which offers relevant information for students, teachers and parents, addressing the six domains of digital citizenship: digital conduct, digital relationships, digital footprint, digital health and well-being, digital law and digital financial literacy.

The student information on this site is packaged for both primary and secondary levels, and includes online games, learning activities (with full teaching notes) and videos. The teacher support material includes a professional learning course which familiarises teachers with the materials in the Digital Citizenship programme and guides them through the process of implementing the program in their school.

Technology provides many opportunities for users to learn and expand their horizons, and our students need to learn what will be expected of them and others when using these tools. These sites will be an invaluable support for schools and communities working to ensure that students have the skills and abilities to use technology in a responsible manner.

By Alice

“Our digikids may have the ICT technical skills but they possess limited online information and critical evaluation skills and teachers don’t have strategies to teach these skills. “ These were the findings of a just published New Zealand study undertaken by Judine Ladbrook and Elizabeth Probert.

School librarians will find this research extremely relevant useful as the context of the research is the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum’s vision statement that young people will be, “confident, connected, actively involved and lifelong learners. Ludbrook and Probert describe the lifelong learner as “literate, critical thinkers who actively seek, use and create knowledge.” These are the attributes of an information literate person.

Their research involved three large Auckland secondary schools and began with 188 year 10 students and from those students 22 of the most active, experienced and skilled at using ICT and at seeking information on line were selected for the research.

The students undertook focus group discussions and surveys about how they used information from the internet and how the teachers helped them with the skills involved.

Searching Behaviour

All 16 students used Google as their only search engine. The strategy for choosing a site was to enter the first listed site and they never went beyond the third listed site! Many students based their judgments of site trustworthiness on how the site looked. It was trustworthy if “it’s nicely presented, it’s not just white background, black writing” because that “shows a professionalism” and “it doesn’t have the adverts or pop ups.” Nearly all of the students felt that a internet site was accurate if it was well laid out and divided into chunks with sub-headings as this lent itself to accuracy and if it “sounded convincing it probably was true.”

Using Information and Plagiarising

The students’ strategy for using the information did not involve any synthesising but simple cutting and pasting. When they were asked to research using more than one source students 75% of the students used strategies such as putting in sites that they hadn’t used but which had come up on their initial Google search.

Steps teachers need to take to set student up for success

The students suggested that the prior knowledge work would enable them to judge information more accurately. The students did suggest that if teachers gave them several URLs, a couple of articles or chapters in books from which to choose information, and also built their prior knowledge, then they would be unable to plagiarise because teachers would know their information sources and also it would stop them from adding false references.

Lack of teacher support

One of the key themes that emerged from the research was how little teachers helped students develop their research skills. Most of the students stated that little help had been given to them. There was often an assumption by their teachers that research skills had already been taught before students reached secondary school.

Some students got given a list of helpful sites but only a few were given some minimal help to research on the internet. None of them were given help to use books to research, apart from being taken to the library.

Recommendations

The authors suggest teachers conduct diagnostic work to see what students can do in the area of information literacy and in using online resources, and use this information to make pedagogical decisions for addressing the gaps.

With the advent of the new e-Learning Planning Framework in schools, enabling “students to be successful citizens in a digital world” the deliberate teaching of information literacy skills is even more crucial.

Further reading

Ladbrook, J. & Probert, E. (2011), Information skills and critical literacy:
Where are our digikids at with online searching and are their teachers helping?
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 27(1), 105-121.