My head is spinning with ideas for how to address this postdigital condition in my fifth-grade classroom. In my 25 years teaching, I’ve gone from digital literacy zealotry to promoting print literacy over screens. I want to acknowledge the changing landscape of literacy, while simultaneously teaching my students the importance of critical literacy. I think I may have to start over, teaching my students how to engage in literary studies across multiple media platforms (possibly favoring print initially as they learn, and then moving to other formats).
I think many folks, myself included, have followed similar ebbs and flows. Instead of leaning on vague notions of balance, I’ve been keen on Courtney Cazden’s framing of “weaving.” It feels less about finding an arbitrarily middle and more about intentionally using whatever media/mediums make sense for your goals, learners, and context. As much as I love and write about multimodality and different media forms, I’d say print still remains the anchor of a lot of my work. I always feel like I have to emphasize embracing other modes and literacies doesn’t diminish print’s importance. I guess I’m a “literacy abundance” guy or something. 😅
If I could instill one habit into my students from an early age, it would be reading. When I started teaching MS over 30 years ago, I would do an internal audit on the first day of school - have students read aloud. The correlation with how well students could read at 11-12 years old and their ultimate performance in a class which demanded a significant amount of reading (which was most of them) was striking. Students who had moved beyond simple decoding by 6th grade were far better positioned to grapple with, understand, annotate, and dig into more complex texts sooner which only compounded over time. Over the past decade, as I've taught advanced HS courses, I can still see the difference between those who can read well and those who cannot. One thing I have often pointed out is we rarely teach more advanced reading skills beyond the basics - once we know kids can "read" we typically spend time on content rather than modeling the ways in which reading fires up our brain. It's gotten better, but many students never move beyond it. On the print / digital point, I am always curious about those who disdain reading on a tablet vs. a physical book. I don't see one as "better" than the other - each offers different opportunities and strengths. Now that my eyes are going, the ability to increase the size of the text on a screen is a lifesaver - I have over 200 books on my Amazon Kindle and can jump around which I find useful. I can bring them all to the beach, on a plane ride, and it's small enough to slide in a coat pocket for when I'm online at the store or waiting for an appointment. I can load PDFs onto my device. I can look up words instantly. Print books bring their own joys and the ability to annotate by hand creates a unique experience. My wife cant' stand that I can't part with my physical books. Just read and it's amazing what happens! If that is just one thing I can model for my students, that would be it! You nailed it, Trevor!
We gave our kids our old Paperwhites as soon as they could read fluently and it’s been great! We can check a book out from the library and all read it at the same time and see each other’s annotations. Wonderful since everyone in our family would rather read text than listen to a book being read aloud.
This was very interesting! We're homeschoolers so I can't speak to the classroom aspect, but we've been making up for the fact that my kids got into independent reading on the early side and weren't into picture books for a while by casting a picture book from Libby to our large screen for dramatic close reading and analysis every morning. We'll probably switch to physical picture books after our neighborhood library opens but this has been working surprisingly well, especially because everyone can see the pages perfectly clearly without having to be on top of each other. Over and over I see people reminding each other to not have a large screen in the living space because you don't want to center your life around TV but it's immensely useful to have a large screen we can use together intentionally since we're interested in keeping technology use social and intentional rather than avoiding it entirely. Our central living space is also full of building toys and board games and a swing and a rebounder; it doesn't have to be one or the other.
My head is spinning with ideas for how to address this postdigital condition in my fifth-grade classroom. In my 25 years teaching, I’ve gone from digital literacy zealotry to promoting print literacy over screens. I want to acknowledge the changing landscape of literacy, while simultaneously teaching my students the importance of critical literacy. I think I may have to start over, teaching my students how to engage in literary studies across multiple media platforms (possibly favoring print initially as they learn, and then moving to other formats).
I think many folks, myself included, have followed similar ebbs and flows. Instead of leaning on vague notions of balance, I’ve been keen on Courtney Cazden’s framing of “weaving.” It feels less about finding an arbitrarily middle and more about intentionally using whatever media/mediums make sense for your goals, learners, and context. As much as I love and write about multimodality and different media forms, I’d say print still remains the anchor of a lot of my work. I always feel like I have to emphasize embracing other modes and literacies doesn’t diminish print’s importance. I guess I’m a “literacy abundance” guy or something. 😅
If I could instill one habit into my students from an early age, it would be reading. When I started teaching MS over 30 years ago, I would do an internal audit on the first day of school - have students read aloud. The correlation with how well students could read at 11-12 years old and their ultimate performance in a class which demanded a significant amount of reading (which was most of them) was striking. Students who had moved beyond simple decoding by 6th grade were far better positioned to grapple with, understand, annotate, and dig into more complex texts sooner which only compounded over time. Over the past decade, as I've taught advanced HS courses, I can still see the difference between those who can read well and those who cannot. One thing I have often pointed out is we rarely teach more advanced reading skills beyond the basics - once we know kids can "read" we typically spend time on content rather than modeling the ways in which reading fires up our brain. It's gotten better, but many students never move beyond it. On the print / digital point, I am always curious about those who disdain reading on a tablet vs. a physical book. I don't see one as "better" than the other - each offers different opportunities and strengths. Now that my eyes are going, the ability to increase the size of the text on a screen is a lifesaver - I have over 200 books on my Amazon Kindle and can jump around which I find useful. I can bring them all to the beach, on a plane ride, and it's small enough to slide in a coat pocket for when I'm online at the store or waiting for an appointment. I can load PDFs onto my device. I can look up words instantly. Print books bring their own joys and the ability to annotate by hand creates a unique experience. My wife cant' stand that I can't part with my physical books. Just read and it's amazing what happens! If that is just one thing I can model for my students, that would be it! You nailed it, Trevor!
We gave our kids our old Paperwhites as soon as they could read fluently and it’s been great! We can check a book out from the library and all read it at the same time and see each other’s annotations. Wonderful since everyone in our family would rather read text than listen to a book being read aloud.
This was very interesting! We're homeschoolers so I can't speak to the classroom aspect, but we've been making up for the fact that my kids got into independent reading on the early side and weren't into picture books for a while by casting a picture book from Libby to our large screen for dramatic close reading and analysis every morning. We'll probably switch to physical picture books after our neighborhood library opens but this has been working surprisingly well, especially because everyone can see the pages perfectly clearly without having to be on top of each other. Over and over I see people reminding each other to not have a large screen in the living space because you don't want to center your life around TV but it's immensely useful to have a large screen we can use together intentionally since we're interested in keeping technology use social and intentional rather than avoiding it entirely. Our central living space is also full of building toys and board games and a swing and a rebounder; it doesn't have to be one or the other.
Really into this
Thought it might be up your alley! Lots of both/and going on here.
Thanks for this interesting and thoughtful piece, Trevor.
Thanks, Julian! It’s a bit of a different take from the usual moral panic/tech accelerationist binary, so I’m always curious how it lands with people.