Borderland

When I started blogging about literacy education, I wasn’t focused on teaching reading with the internet. My assumption was that reading the web is essentially the same as any kind of reading. I’ve changed my mind about that. What follows is a lengthy, and perhaps overly academic analysis of reading theory applied to information and communication technologies. I’ve posted it as an attempt to catalog some practical guidelines for using digital texts in the context of reading instruction for K-8 students.

From Learning is Messy, Brian says that

What is missing are the models – the working, breathing, reproducible, intriguing models. We need ongoing models of all the power of what this looks like or we get nowhere.

I agree, and though we do have some good examples from K-12 teachers who write about instructional uses of blogs and wikis, we still lack a framework to guide our decision making for the use of ICTs. There is a general sense that we need to prepare kids for a networked future, which satisfies the rationale for broadening our definition of literacy, but we still haven’t (for me) adequately addressed the need for theoretical models that will provide us with general principles for the instructional use of web-based tools and information.

Will asked an important question (a few, really) about how reading is different on the internet than in conventional ink and paper texts. Among several questions that Will asked, I find these most interesting:

How is reading literacy changed by the social creation of highly distributed digital texts on the Web?….If they are reading them in the same way that they are reading a book, isn’t that a problem?….Should they be reading to engage the ideas that are being presented?….Once we’ve figured out how to “read” Wikipedia and blogs and the like, how do we learn (and teach) how to write it as well?

I hear these questions as an expression of need for a theoretical model for reading instruction, as opposed to content instruction, with digital texts. An article in the latest edition of Reading Teacher addressed this question with a detailed description of the skills we need and should teach students to effectively read the web. In a study conducted from a New Literacies Perspective, Laurie Henry outlined and discussed these

strategies necessary for reading the web:

1. identifying important questions;
2. locating information;
3. critically evaluating information;
4. synthesizing information;
5. communicating answers.

Henry focused on search strategies, but discussed the others as well. After considering what I found in the article, I’m rethinking my view of literacy instruction with ICTs. It’s time to think about the practical considerations for teachers who want to teach lessons using internet tools and resources. New literacies will require a new instructional focus. We might consider this a necessary part of David Warlick’s new story about implementation. Fundamental literacy comprehension and decoding skills remain as important as ever, and a new literacy perspective entails addition, but not replacement, of literacy skills to the reader’s toolbox. (Leu, 2004)

Laurie Henry’s article, SEARCHing for an Answer: The Critical Role of New Literacies While Reading on the Internet, is the model for this outline of strategies needed to read the web.

Identifying Important Questions

Identifying important questions involves goal-setting. A proficient researcher is someone who can effectively define the need for specific information. This should be considered the initial stage of searching. From an inquiry perspective, the questions that frame a research project are critical to the success of an investigation. Teachers can help their students with this stage by providing them with guiding questions to help them set a focus for their search.

Locating Information

Henry argued that locating information may be the most essential of all skills for students to learn since without the ability to locate suitable sources, no further progress is possible. Effective searching is a “gatekeeper skill in online reading” since other reading skills are not needed until relevant information is found (Henry, p. 616).

Strategies that are useful for guiding students toward information that suits their needs include:

• Search engine strategies – We need to help students understand how to use search engines, and provide them with opportunities to compare results from different engines. We can use sites like Walt’s Navigating the Net Forum and NoodleTools that help us compare search engines to determine which search engine fits the needs of a particular investigation. Experimenting with different search engines and comparing results is also a worthwhile activity.
• Activating prior knowledge – A fundamental strategy for comprehension in any context is activating schema. When we link what we already know to new information, we are more likely to understand and remember what we are learning because we have personalized the meaning. This assumption underlies constructivist learning theories. Concept (semantic) maps, KWL (what I KNOW, what I WANT to learn, what I LEARNED) charts, and think-pair-share partner discussions are techniques for activating schema.
• Understanding the function of keywords – The activation of prior knowledge can also help generate appropriate keywords for a search. Students can learn to use keywords to search for the exact phrase they want to find, or to eliminate unnecessary keywords.

Learning to analyze the results of a search that might yield thousands of results in order to determine which links to follow, and whether the search terms they used were relevant to their goals involves:

• Making inferences – From a list of search results, readers need to determine which of the links presented will most likely yield information relevant to the seach goals;
• Reading URLs – URLs contain the suffixes .edu, .org, .com, .net, etc. and can provide other information about the possible contents and format of the linked file;
• Skimming for relevant terms and their meanings – Students must learn to search by navigating back and forth from search results to the linked pages until they have the information they are searching for.

Compounding the challenge faced by readers with limited background knowledge for a given topic is a challenge posed by the internet itself, a hyperlinked network authored by millions. Readers must expect any of a limitless variety of potential text structures to present themselves at the end of any particular link. Teaching students to analyze text structures and the conventions of web page construction is therefore a useful strategy. Knowing about sidebars, navbars, headers, footers, titles, hyperlinks, and image maps as well as the features available in different browser applications are all useful understandings for students as they become proficient web readers.

Critically Evaluating Information

Because the internet permits anyone to publish information, students need to learn how to determine whether a source is reliable. In addition to assessing the relevance of any particular information source,

• Students need to make judgments about the intended audience, whether the website is associated with a particular institution, the copyright or date of the last revision, and the expertise and point of view of the author so that they can determine the nature and validity of any claims made on the site.
• After students become familiar with basic web page structures, a list of guiding questions can help them begin learning how to judge the quality of information they find.
• Students can be given the chance to visit reputable websites as well as sites that are completely fallacious.

Synthesizing Information

Synthesizing information involves taking information from multiple sources and transforming it to suit specific purposes. Synthesizing information means making intertextual connections between diverse information sources and forming common threads of meaning. Proficient readers make intertextual links between ideas, events, and people, as well as social, political, and historical connections. Synthesis involves the integration of diverse texts and prior knowledge, and allows readers to extend the meanings of existing texts in the construction of new meanings (Marshall, 2000).

Communicating Answers

Readers may need to communicate the meanings they have constructed. Students should learn the procedures for citing information sources they used in the construction of written texts. They can be taught the protocols for using copyrighted material, as well as how to cite the sources used.

Putting it Together

Henry recommended using internet scavenger hunts to practice these web reading strategies in school. I saw the value in doing so, and found a hunt that is based on Alaska geography, which is a curricular focus for my fourth-graders. I posted the scavenger hunt on our classroom website, and modified the assignment to include an opportunity for the students to create questions of their own. This is a challenging assignment for my students. From my observations, there are a host of problems ranging from reading web pages to using a web browser. Another wrinkle for the kids is that the school purchased new mobile laptop carts, and students are still getting comfortable simply operating the computers. They like the assignment, though, and we may be able to spend a few weeks with it.

The reading strategies outlined here constitute an instructional agenda that would require years of effort to fully explore with students. I have, for some time now, believed that we need a developmental framework for the introduction of technology resources, both actual and virtual, for young students. One of the major problems with an outline of specific exercises for students learning to use information technologies, though, is that the technologies themselves are not static. Therefore any description of what is necessary to prepare students to develop new literacies will inevitably become obsolete. Formulating a theory of reading for the web is in every sense like aiming at a rapidly moving target. The definition of literacy itself will change as we encounter new technologies and newly imagined purposes for them (Leu, Kinzer, et al., 2004).

sources:

• Henry, L.A. (2006, April). SEARCHing for an Answer: The Critical Role of New Literacies While Reading on the Internet. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 614–627.
• Leu, Jr., D.J., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., & Cammack, D.W. (2004). Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging From the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies. In R.B. Ruddell, & N.J. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 1570-1613). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
• Marshall, J., (2000). Research on Response to Literature. In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research: Volume 3 (pp. 381-402). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.