1 00:00:09,584 --> 00:00:10,138 Hi there. 2 00:00:10,138 --> 00:00:11,218 My name is Don Leu. 3 00:00:11,218 --> 00:00:15,441 I hold the Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology here at 4 00:00:15,441 --> 00:00:20,550 the University of Connecticut and direct the New Literacies Research Lab. 5 00:00:21,880 --> 00:00:26,952 We do work in new literacies in school classrooms K-12 here 6 00:00:26,952 --> 00:00:32,424 in the US anyway from about ages 5 through 18 internationally. 7 00:00:32,424 --> 00:00:36,708 And so the issue then is what are these new literacies, 8 00:00:36,708 --> 00:00:39,141 and why are they so important? 9 00:00:39,141 --> 00:00:43,798 Well, I guess the take we make on this is that the Internet is really 10 00:00:43,798 --> 00:00:48,288 a literacy issue, using information, reading and writing and 11 00:00:48,288 --> 00:00:52,546 communicating, and so forth, is really a literacy issue. 12 00:00:52,546 --> 00:00:57,193 And we see these as new literacies that are somewhat different from traditional 13 00:00:57,193 --> 00:00:58,939 reading and writing skills. 14 00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:06,230 Because new tools, new technologies, new social practices are all involved in them. 15 00:01:06,230 --> 00:01:09,740 And in addition to that, it's not just that they're new today. 16 00:01:09,740 --> 00:01:13,740 They're new every single day of our lives because things keep changing on 17 00:01:13,740 --> 00:01:15,180 the Internet. 18 00:01:15,180 --> 00:01:18,040 And this notion of change is central to our work, 19 00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:21,800 both in the theories we've been developing, as well as in the research and 20 00:01:21,800 --> 00:01:24,010 in the instructional practices that we have. 21 00:01:24,010 --> 00:01:28,536 It's a real challenge from a theoretical and research point of view, for example, 22 00:01:28,536 --> 00:01:32,220 that the thing that we study keeps changing on us. 23 00:01:32,220 --> 00:01:35,240 That is literacy today is different from 24 00:01:35,240 --> 00:01:37,450 what it's gonna be tomorrow because there'll be a new tool, 25 00:01:37,450 --> 00:01:40,250 a new technology that will be available for us for reading and writing. 26 00:01:41,970 --> 00:01:44,220 So what are these new literacies? 27 00:01:44,220 --> 00:01:47,700 Well to us, these new literacies are the skills, 28 00:01:47,700 --> 00:01:50,620 the strategies, the social practices, 29 00:01:50,620 --> 00:01:57,110 the dispositions that are required to use online information effectively to learn. 30 00:01:57,110 --> 00:02:00,612 Now there are many different definitions of what new literacies are, but to us, 31 00:02:00,612 --> 00:02:02,182 we're concerned about learning. 32 00:02:02,182 --> 00:02:07,120 And we're concerned about preparing our youngsters for these skills, strategies, 33 00:02:07,120 --> 00:02:11,150 social practices, and dispositions that will enable them to use online information 34 00:02:11,150 --> 00:02:12,930 to learn new things about the world around them. 35 00:02:15,270 --> 00:02:18,750 We focus on one particular aspect of new literacies, 36 00:02:18,750 --> 00:02:21,780 in what we refer to as online research and comprehension. 37 00:02:21,780 --> 00:02:26,230 And what we mean by that is students' ability to conduct independent and 38 00:02:26,230 --> 00:02:31,110 collaborative research to learn new things on the Internet. 39 00:02:31,110 --> 00:02:35,860 We see it as comprised of several different elements, locating skills, 40 00:02:35,860 --> 00:02:37,240 evaluating skills, 41 00:02:37,240 --> 00:02:42,080 evaluating the reliability of information that you find on the Internet. 42 00:02:43,610 --> 00:02:48,900 Synthesizing skills or putting together information from multiple sources, and 43 00:02:48,900 --> 00:02:53,811 then communication skills which includes all kinds of new technologies that 44 00:02:53,811 --> 00:02:58,740 are required to pick people's brains, see what they know, look for ideas. 45 00:02:58,740 --> 00:03:01,720 And then, also finally to communicate what you've learned with other people. 46 00:03:01,720 --> 00:03:06,065 So we've been spending the last five years developing a performance-based 47 00:03:06,065 --> 00:03:10,620 assessment on a large federal research grant called The Online Research and 48 00:03:10,620 --> 00:03:13,090 Comprehension Assessment or ORCAs. 49 00:03:13,090 --> 00:03:16,186 And so we've developed about 24 different ORCAs, 50 00:03:16,186 --> 00:03:21,020 performance-based assessments, that give students a problem to solve online. 51 00:03:21,020 --> 00:03:27,220 And then we evaluate their ability at every step of the way, takes place in 52 00:03:27,220 --> 00:03:33,110 a simulation the Internet with a search engine and web pages and wikis and emails. 53 00:03:33,110 --> 00:03:37,080 And it's driven by an avatar that text messages into the student to 54 00:03:37,080 --> 00:03:40,070 sort of direct them and ask them different questions and 55 00:03:40,070 --> 00:03:42,930 engage them in the research project and so forth. 56 00:03:42,930 --> 00:03:46,050 So anyway, we've developed these assessments that are highly reliable and 57 00:03:46,050 --> 00:03:48,490 valid, but they're also performance-based. 58 00:03:48,490 --> 00:03:49,470 They're not multiple choice. 59 00:03:49,470 --> 00:03:53,760 And so they actually ask students to do a research project, and now we're looking at 60 00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:58,260 a lot of the data we've collected in two states, a laptop state main, and 61 00:03:58,260 --> 00:04:03,560 a non laptop state and evaluating students abilities in this area. 62 00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:07,070 So what have we found in the work that we've been doing? 63 00:04:07,070 --> 00:04:09,860 Well, a number of things, one 64 00:04:11,750 --> 00:04:16,020 important concern that we have in one of our studies between a wealthy and 65 00:04:16,020 --> 00:04:19,840 an economically challenged school districts is that kids in the two 66 00:04:19,840 --> 00:04:25,310 districts appear to manifest a separate and 67 00:04:25,310 --> 00:04:28,490 independent achievement gap in the ability to conduct online research. 68 00:04:28,490 --> 00:04:32,050 Separate and independent from reading and writing skills, traditional reading and 69 00:04:32,050 --> 00:04:35,780 writing skills which we've controlled, and 70 00:04:35,780 --> 00:04:39,860 found a separate achievement gap on the ability to conduct online research. 71 00:04:41,040 --> 00:04:46,300 Largely because the schools in the poor school districts are so constrained 72 00:04:46,300 --> 00:04:50,800 by state assessments, assessments that have none of these skills on them. 73 00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:53,500 So those schools are under great pressure to raise test scores, and 74 00:04:53,500 --> 00:04:54,380 that's what they teach. 75 00:04:54,380 --> 00:04:57,800 They teach none of these new online reading and writing skills. 76 00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:02,560 Whereas in wealthier districts, they have many more degrees of freedom and 77 00:05:02,560 --> 00:05:04,530 flexibility about what they're going to teach. 78 00:05:04,530 --> 00:05:07,900 They certainly feel the press of state assessment and test scores, 79 00:05:07,900 --> 00:05:12,570 but they experiment and include a lot more innovative practices, and 80 00:05:12,570 --> 00:05:14,970 as a result, their kids get opportunities. 81 00:05:14,970 --> 00:05:18,930 Kids get opportunities also differently at home, of course, but in schools, 82 00:05:18,930 --> 00:05:21,960 it's a very clear difference between the two. 83 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:23,920 We've also found that students, and 84 00:05:23,920 --> 00:05:27,050 we tend to look at seventh graders, middle school students. 85 00:05:27,050 --> 00:05:30,030 The weakest area for them is critical evaluation. 86 00:05:30,030 --> 00:05:34,590 They don't think very critically about the information they read. 87 00:05:34,590 --> 00:05:36,970 And as a result, they tend to believe much of what they read. 88 00:05:36,970 --> 00:05:40,920 They tend to only go to a single source and not question the author. 89 00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:45,077 And they don't have skills that would allow them to carefully evaluate 90 00:05:45,077 --> 00:05:47,720 the reliability and expertise of an author. 91 00:05:49,590 --> 00:05:52,770 Communication is also a problem at this level. 92 00:05:52,770 --> 00:05:57,922 That is skills such as writing in a wiki, writing in a blog, 93 00:05:57,922 --> 00:06:04,110 writing a summary of what they found in an email message and so forth. 94 00:06:04,110 --> 00:06:08,910 Those kinds of skills are second most difficult for our students. 95 00:06:08,910 --> 00:06:13,310 They tend to do better in synthesis which is really related to their offline skills 96 00:06:13,310 --> 00:06:14,900 of summarizing that they've learned. 97 00:06:16,030 --> 00:06:19,500 And then finally, they do reasonably well on locating, 98 00:06:19,500 --> 00:06:22,620 but a lot of them are clickers and lookers. 99 00:06:22,620 --> 00:06:26,320 And what we mean by that is that when they get a set of search engine results, 100 00:06:26,320 --> 00:06:29,680 they start at the top, click and look to see what it appears like. 101 00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:33,420 And then they work their way down the list rather than reading search engine results 102 00:06:33,420 --> 00:06:37,740 critically and picking on the first click, the best choice for them. 103 00:06:37,740 --> 00:06:40,721 We've done other research as well in terms of instructional models. 104 00:06:40,721 --> 00:06:45,488 And so previously, we worked and developed an instructional model in 105 00:06:45,488 --> 00:06:50,925 one-to-one laptop classrooms called IRT, Internet Reciprocal Teaching. 106 00:06:50,925 --> 00:06:55,103 There's a really interesting problem that you face when you're trying to teach in 107 00:06:55,103 --> 00:06:56,900 one-to-one laptop classrooms. 108 00:06:56,900 --> 00:07:01,644 And that is that you have about 15 seconds of attention, and after that, 109 00:07:01,644 --> 00:07:03,541 the kids are off on their own. 110 00:07:03,541 --> 00:07:07,141 And so we tried to figure out how are we gonna teach some of these critical 111 00:07:07,141 --> 00:07:10,321 evaluation, these locating skills, the synthesis skills, 112 00:07:10,321 --> 00:07:13,864 these communication skills in a classroom when we have 15 seconds? 113 00:07:13,864 --> 00:07:18,560 And the answer we came up with that works pretty well is that instead of teaching, 114 00:07:18,560 --> 00:07:22,013 you give students a problem to solve, and in that problem, 115 00:07:22,013 --> 00:07:24,750 you embed the skill you want to teach. 116 00:07:24,750 --> 00:07:28,148 And then when you see a student manifesting that skill, 117 00:07:28,148 --> 00:07:30,833 that student teaches the rest of the class. 118 00:07:30,833 --> 00:07:35,030 And if you don't see a student manifesting that skill that you've embedded in 119 00:07:35,030 --> 00:07:37,383 the problem that's important to solve it, 120 00:07:37,383 --> 00:07:40,574 then you work with one of your weaker performing students. 121 00:07:40,574 --> 00:07:44,054 And you sort of scaffold their learning until they get the idea, 122 00:07:44,054 --> 00:07:46,250 and then they teach the class to do this. 123 00:07:46,250 --> 00:07:51,089 So an example would be, if you're trying to teach critical evaluation a source, 124 00:07:51,089 --> 00:07:55,944 you give the students a problem like here's a three-part problem for you today. 125 00:07:55,944 --> 00:08:01,450 I want you to find the height of Mount Fuji, we've been reading about Japan. 126 00:08:01,450 --> 00:08:04,510 After you do that, that's an easy one, 127 00:08:04,510 --> 00:08:07,430 then find a different answer to the same question. 128 00:08:07,430 --> 00:08:10,529 So find somebody else who says, no, it's a different height. 129 00:08:11,640 --> 00:08:13,940 Then the third part of the question is who's right and why? 130 00:08:14,990 --> 00:08:20,250 And so we give students that problem to work collaboratively in small groups. 131 00:08:20,250 --> 00:08:25,228 And then we monitor them in a little software tool which 132 00:08:25,228 --> 00:08:30,460 puts thumbnails of every student's laptop on your laptop. 133 00:08:30,460 --> 00:08:35,400 So you can watch what they're doing, and when you see somebody evaluating source, 134 00:08:35,400 --> 00:08:40,850 that is clicking on a link that says who we are, or doing a search for 135 00:08:40,850 --> 00:08:45,610 the site, the name of the site to see what people are saying about it. 136 00:08:45,610 --> 00:08:47,944 Then we ask that student to take over, and 137 00:08:47,944 --> 00:08:50,954 we project their laptop screen up on the smart board. 138 00:08:50,954 --> 00:08:54,509 And then have them tell everybody else what they were doing as they solved 139 00:08:54,509 --> 00:08:57,846 the really key part of that problem, which is who's right and why. 140 00:09:00,779 --> 00:09:05,640 So Internet Reciprocal Teaching, or IRT, is really a three-phase model. 141 00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:09,680 And I described the second phase of developing these 142 00:09:09,680 --> 00:09:12,300 strategies that are important for online research and comprehension. 143 00:09:12,300 --> 00:09:13,450 The first phase is a nuts and 144 00:09:13,450 --> 00:09:18,360 bolts phase, where you just go through some of the mechanical things. 145 00:09:18,360 --> 00:09:24,070 What's a wiki, what's a blog, how those work, how different search engines work, 146 00:09:24,070 --> 00:09:25,950 locating skills, if your students need them? 147 00:09:25,950 --> 00:09:28,600 Only the skills that are really required in your classroom, of course. 148 00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:33,221 And then the third phase, once the kids have developed a pretty sophisticated 149 00:09:33,221 --> 00:09:36,162 understanding of the skills that are required for 150 00:09:36,162 --> 00:09:38,414 online research and comprehension. 151 00:09:38,414 --> 00:09:41,203 Then we take them into the final phase, 152 00:09:41,203 --> 00:09:46,192 which is conducting an online collaborative project with at least one 153 00:09:46,192 --> 00:09:51,095 other student in another part of the world, related to the problem, 154 00:09:51,095 --> 00:09:55,597 related to the curriculum that makes the world a better place. 155 00:09:55,597 --> 00:09:57,526 Those are the criteria we have. 156 00:09:57,526 --> 00:10:03,044 We build these up to this point, by the way, by having collaborative 157 00:10:03,044 --> 00:10:08,340 classroom projects throughout the phase one and phase two. 158 00:10:08,340 --> 00:10:10,620 We tend to use ePals, 159 00:10:10,620 --> 00:10:13,950 a wonderful tool for connecting classrooms from around the world. 160 00:10:13,950 --> 00:10:17,102 You can quickly find teachers in many parts of the world that are interested 161 00:10:17,102 --> 00:10:18,311 in collaborating with you. 162 00:10:18,311 --> 00:10:20,450 But there are other tools as well. 163 00:10:20,450 --> 00:10:25,035 And so they practice this collaboration as a whole class. 164 00:10:25,035 --> 00:10:28,420 So then when we get to phase three, when they're ready to do online research, 165 00:10:28,420 --> 00:10:31,590 they've developed a network of friends in other parts of the world. 166 00:10:31,590 --> 00:10:36,415 And so they have to come up with a project and get it approved by the teacher, 167 00:10:36,415 --> 00:10:38,420 but here's an example of one. 168 00:10:38,420 --> 00:10:43,460 So these students in Connecticut shared the problem they had with other 169 00:10:43,460 --> 00:10:48,248 kids around the world on their list of friends in an email message and 170 00:10:48,248 --> 00:10:51,460 said, look, we've got to do this project. 171 00:10:51,460 --> 00:10:52,476 Do you have any ideas? 172 00:10:52,476 --> 00:10:55,946 And a student of South Africa actually popped up and said, yeah, 173 00:10:55,946 --> 00:10:58,760 why don't you create a web page about Gary Paulsen? 174 00:10:58,760 --> 00:11:03,900 We're reading about Gary Paulsen, author at that age, and 175 00:11:03,900 --> 00:11:08,428 put a web page together with links to all of the resources you can find online. 176 00:11:08,428 --> 00:11:10,834 And then you'll have a research site for 177 00:11:10,834 --> 00:11:14,456 kids who want to do research on Gary Paulsen in their school. 178 00:11:14,456 --> 00:11:18,910 And that'll make the world a better place, and that's related to the English language 179 00:11:18,910 --> 00:11:21,390 arts, the class that you're taking right now. 180 00:11:21,390 --> 00:11:23,120 So why don't we do that? 181 00:11:23,120 --> 00:11:26,306 And then a bunch of other kids chimed in and said, yeah, yeah, let's do that, 182 00:11:26,306 --> 00:11:26,986 let's do that. 183 00:11:26,986 --> 00:11:29,506 And said, I can help, we'll send you the links. 184 00:11:29,506 --> 00:11:33,133 And these two students in Connecticut said, okay, we know how to make a web 185 00:11:33,133 --> 00:11:36,330 page, our teacher showed us how to do that, so send us the links. 186 00:11:36,330 --> 00:11:41,200 And so they built a web page about Gary Paulsen, and so 187 00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:43,580 that's an example of an online collaborative project. 188 00:11:43,580 --> 00:11:46,650 But there are many, many different types of projects. 189 00:11:46,650 --> 00:11:50,656 We just think that it should be something that connects the skills that students 190 00:11:50,656 --> 00:11:54,484 have been learning into a global context because that's exactly where kids 191 00:11:54,484 --> 00:11:56,846 are going to be working when they're adults. 192 00:11:56,846 --> 00:12:01,332 They'll be working in environments where they'll have to collaborate and 193 00:12:01,332 --> 00:12:06,026 problem solve and work with many other people from other cultural contexts from 194 00:12:06,026 --> 00:12:11,520 other countries and to solve whatever problem they face in their work place. 195 00:12:11,520 --> 00:12:14,400 So let me talk a little bit about school leadership in this area. 196 00:12:14,400 --> 00:12:18,960 It's probably one of the most important areas 197 00:12:18,960 --> 00:12:21,430 as we think about the changing nature of literacy and 198 00:12:21,430 --> 00:12:25,170 learning in the school classrooms with the Internet for several reasons. 199 00:12:25,170 --> 00:12:29,410 First of all, everything we know about the research on school leadership is that 200 00:12:29,410 --> 00:12:30,910 school leaders drive change. 201 00:12:30,910 --> 00:12:36,110 That is, change doesn't happen unless there's a school leader with a vision for 202 00:12:36,110 --> 00:12:39,780 the change that's needed. 203 00:12:41,770 --> 00:12:43,470 So school leaders have to have this vision, 204 00:12:43,470 --> 00:12:47,740 they have to understand what's going on in the changing nature of things. 205 00:12:47,740 --> 00:12:51,240 But it's also constrained right now at least in the US by 206 00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:52,610 Common Core State Standards. 207 00:12:54,190 --> 00:12:59,307 Because you can look at those Common Core State Standards with the lens 208 00:12:59,307 --> 00:13:04,162 to the past that most of us have and only see what we've been doing in 209 00:13:04,162 --> 00:13:09,208 school classrooms, or you can look at Common Core State Standards. 210 00:13:09,208 --> 00:13:11,810 A few people are starting to look at it with a lens to the future. 211 00:13:11,810 --> 00:13:15,440 And understanding each of those standards in terms of what it really means to learn 212 00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:18,310 and communicate, read and write in online context. 213 00:13:18,310 --> 00:13:21,330 So let me give you an example of what I mean by a lens to the past and 214 00:13:21,330 --> 00:13:22,670 a lens to the future. 215 00:13:22,670 --> 00:13:26,510 So the first anchor standard, it's close reading, that is we want our kids, 216 00:13:26,510 --> 00:13:27,780 I'm going to summarize it here. 217 00:13:27,780 --> 00:13:33,250 We want our kids to be able to read carefully, closely, with the information 218 00:13:33,250 --> 00:13:37,460 but also to make inferences about the information that they encounter. 219 00:13:38,490 --> 00:13:42,010 So traditionally, we've taught that in reading comprehension, 220 00:13:42,010 --> 00:13:47,180 through discussion, through levels of comprehension questions, and so forth. 221 00:13:47,180 --> 00:13:51,600 And that's one way of implementing close reading but with a lens to the past. 222 00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:54,540 But if you take a lens to the future, you would see that 223 00:13:54,540 --> 00:13:59,470 reading search engine results is really one of the best examples of close reading. 224 00:13:59,470 --> 00:14:03,430 Because there, kids have to read, very carefully, 225 00:14:03,430 --> 00:14:07,870 make inferences about what those short little segments are telling them 226 00:14:07,870 --> 00:14:10,760 about the information they're gonna find behind that link. 227 00:14:10,760 --> 00:14:14,060 And make an inference about whether or not that source is the best source for 228 00:14:14,060 --> 00:14:16,380 them given their particular needs. 229 00:14:16,380 --> 00:14:22,200 So to me, close reading really involves helping students read carefully and 230 00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:25,720 make inferences about search engine results. 231 00:14:25,720 --> 00:14:29,250 So that they can be more efficient when they're trying to locate information. 232 00:14:31,030 --> 00:14:34,270 And that's what we have to do is we look at these Common Core State Standards. 233 00:14:34,270 --> 00:14:38,360 Each one of them can be looked at with a lens to the past and a lens to the future. 234 00:14:38,360 --> 00:14:41,700 And it's really important that all of us look at those standards with a lens 235 00:14:41,700 --> 00:14:42,250 to the future. 236 00:14:42,250 --> 00:14:45,890 And think about how does this Common Core State Standards 237 00:14:45,890 --> 00:14:50,780 really play itself out when we're reading and learning and communicating online. 238 00:14:52,070 --> 00:14:55,770 And that's a real key as we think about leadership. 239 00:14:55,770 --> 00:14:59,482 If you can see that, then you're in a position to really help your teachers and 240 00:14:59,482 --> 00:15:01,689 help your students prepare for their future.