As Lucien points out in his piece, there is some issue of dating in this article. I think that is the bane of research in matters of technology; it moves too fast for the research to be any good on it. One example that stands out a bit, even though it is from earlier in the article, is the bit about how much $500 dollars can get you: “As we write this, $500 will purchase a package including a 750 megahertz computer with a monitor, a CD-ROM drive, a 57k modem, a 60 megabyte hard drive and a basic printer” (Kinzer and Leander, 547). Given that this was written in 2003, I really hope that information is wrong, or that there is a type, at least with the hard drive size. Anyway, $500 dollars can get you a lot more than that.
The example with Tara is also rather interesting. For the sake of the article, they assume a student who has no idea about how to surf the web, and at least as far as the students I have worked with, even the ones without a computer at home, they are all much more advanced than she is – and again, you wonder about the dating and the resources the school has. Lots of school libraries have databases that the students could use, as well as normal web pages. Still, this was a rather hard working, inquisitive student – if only all of them were like her. She even felt guilty about being on a web page that would help her with her research! In this section they also mention the plagiarism problem, but like Lucien says, I also feel rather comfortable catching online plagiarism; a little googling of a phrase here and there and you can usually catch it. (On a side note, my previous school used Turn-it-in and I actually rather liked it. I had my students turn in their receipt with the paper. It seemed to be a very useful tool.)
So, the steps Tara has to take on her project that K&L discuss:
Information searching: K&L bring up several questions: “How might students be guided at the outset of a search?” (556) and offer some advice. They say that “often, students are not taught that the web employs two types of tools:...an information index ...[and] a search engine.” These two devices are very different, and provide different resources. The former is “an information index made up of lists of subjects with each subject divided into subcategories containing lists of web sites with their abstracts and addresses.” The results from search engines “return only sites that are relevant.” K&L do not provide any answers, but only suggest certain areas need to be researched: “In teaching students processes of searching, how can the goals of searching to facilitate true inquiry be left intact? How might some degree of scaffolding or oversimplification of processed for the sake of learning be achieved while nurturing students' desires to inquire about the world around them? (557).
Multimedia interpretation: In this section, they again bring up questions that need to be addressed: What should Tara do with the film clip? How should she interpret the picture with the text? What form of interpretation is most meaningful? What do you do with the different methods of navigation? Etc (557). Again, these are all good questions to ask, but also again I feel like they are rather rudimentary, and that at least for myself, most of my students are all set in these regards. If this were being written before any research at all is being done, then these are appropriate questions to ask, but in 2003?
Information evaluation: This part seems to be rather important as K&L talk about how to evaluate information. They say that “a significant amount of work on curriculum and pedagogy needs to be done to translate these preliminary resources into effective educational practice” (557), and this certainly makes sense – is the information accurate? Is really the bottom line question here, and how can we teach students to evaluate it. These methods exist in libraries and classrooms, but by the time students are there, they have probably already figured out their own means of assessment, and they could be wrong. How can we correct them? There is so much out there written by just about anybody who wants to and we have to teach students to separate fact from fiction from bias, etc. Kajder discusses this in her chapter.
Assessment of literacy in hypermedia environments: How do you assess students? Should Tara's reading of that one page be compared to another student's reading of the same page? New rubrics need to be created, argue K&L, and again I think this is a rather straight forward point. Any time there is a new assignment, or a new medium for an assignment, or anything new, for that matter, you need a new rubric. Rubrics are not static and should be constantly evolving anyway.
K&L have a discussion about the availability of computers and online access, and they break it down across economic levels, and at this point I think most of us are aware that some people in certain demographics are less likely to be online.
Overall, I think K&L do a decent job raising questions that we as teachers need to think about, but their article is strangely too dated - it almost felt like a mid 90's article, not something written in 2003 – to really provide us with something profound to think about. (I'm assuming it is from 2003 because that is the copyright date, is that wrong?) I'm not really left with any questions because I am not entirely sure I learned anything from this: should we be inquisitive about this information, as they suggest? I think the answer is an obvious yes, and that, at least for us, because we are already in this class, we already were inquisitive. They call for research on this information, and again, that should obviously be done; I would hate to be teaching, or using a teaching tool, that no one had researched the benefits, or lack there of, of. Should we be aware that students have different backgrounds and availability? I think, again, that we all have already addressed those differences that students have. Regardless of the medium, a good teacher is going to be cognizant of and act on those differences.
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3 comments:
Daniel,
You've done a terrific job of capturing the key points that K&L make in this portion of their article. And again I agree that much of what was written in 2003 does seem dated now, although there hasn't been an equivalent overview article article published more recently (just as there hasn't been a newer book that combines the general good sense and practical classroom advice of Kajder's). But I do find their formulation of the need for developing appropriate literacy practices for an online environment that include information searching, multi-media interpretation, and information evaluation to be useful (even if each element is obvious enough). And I don't thnk I know enough about how to guide my students to do these things most effectively (or even to do them most effectvely myself). I've been trying to learn more about visual rhetoric, for example--an important tool for multi-media interpretation (there's a reading for next week by Gunter Kress on that topic)--but there's a great deal to learn that hasn't traditionally been within the purview of English teachers.
My real problem with this portion of K&L's article is that their account of the student feels made up. I think more actual, case study, process research is needed, of the sort that was done 20 years ago about writers' processes and readers' processes. Somewhere I have an article (and I don't remember the reference),reporting on a case study of a college student's research process (for library research), and I found it quite eye-opening since it didn't match at all what I thought I was guiding my students to do--and when I gathered some real process data from them, I found them to be more like the case study student, not like my imagined students. So I think that there's really a lot of empirical research to be done (which I think is your final point).
I think one of the better points that Kinzer and Leander make in their article regarding the validity of digital literacy comes a few pages from the end:
“Finally although questionable credibility is often thought of as a defect of web-based information, it may be one of its greatest assets for literacy educators invested in developing students’ critical tool kits. Beyond having students critique and shore up the credibility of a resource used, curriculum can be designed in which students compare contradictory accounts of the same social event, contradictory readings of the same text, and the opposing interpretations of so-called scientific facts” (559).
I think this is the key to harnessing meaningful digital literacy. Comparing and contrasting opposing viewpoints on a subject (any subject) fosters the kind of critical thinking that is needed at college level. The internet allows us to do this better than any other tool. I guess it’s a modern take on the Socratic Method and being able to see and debate multiple sides to an issue is an important skill.
Daniel I did check out turnitin.com and I like it especially their grade book. You made a good point that “Rubrics are not static and should be constantly evolving anyway”. Point well taken and never more appropriate than when referring to digital literacy. If we want to make technology work in the classroom and make the grades match the work, evolution and improvisation of the existing/beginning rubric is necessary to achieve our pedagogical goals.
As a wise man once said (I forget who) “It’s not so much that we don’t know, but we need to be reminded”. Well Kinzer and Leander certainly do a lot of that in this article. Maybe they are subtly telling us that reinforcement is the key to a lot of what we learn.
I appreciate Jason's thoughtful addition to this thread.
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