WEBVTT 00:00:09.584 --> 00:00:10.138 Hi there. 00:00:10.138 --> 00:00:11.218 My name is Don Leu. 00:00:11.218 --> 00:00:15.441 I hold the Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology here at 00:00:15.441 --> 00:00:20.550 the University of Connecticut and direct the New Literacies Research Lab. 00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:26.952 We do work in new literacies in school classrooms K-12 here 00:00:26.952 --> 00:00:32.424 in the US anyway from about ages 5 through 18 internationally. 00:00:32.424 --> 00:00:36.708 And so the issue then is what are these new literacies, 00:00:36.708 --> 00:00:39.141 and why are they so important? 00:00:39.141 --> 00:00:43.798 Well, I guess the take we make on this is that the Internet is really 00:00:43.798 --> 00:00:48.288 a literacy issue, using information, reading and writing and 00:00:48.288 --> 00:00:52.546 communicating, and so forth, is really a literacy issue. 00:00:52.546 --> 00:00:57.193 And we see these as new literacies that are somewhat different from traditional 00:00:57.193 --> 00:00:58.939 reading and writing skills. 00:01:00.680 --> 00:01:06.230 Because new tools, new technologies, new social practices are all involved in them. 00:01:06.230 --> 00:01:09.740 And in addition to that, it's not just that they're new today. 00:01:09.740 --> 00:01:13.740 They're new every single day of our lives because things keep changing on 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:15.180 the Internet. 00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:18.040 And this notion of change is central to our work, 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:21.800 both in the theories we've been developing, as well as in the research and 00:01:21.800 --> 00:01:24.010 in the instructional practices that we have. 00:01:24.010 --> 00:01:28.536 It's a real challenge from a theoretical and research point of view, for example, 00:01:28.536 --> 00:01:32.220 that the thing that we study keeps changing on us. 00:01:32.220 --> 00:01:35.240 That is literacy today is different from 00:01:35.240 --> 00:01:37.450 what it's gonna be tomorrow because there'll be a new tool, 00:01:37.450 --> 00:01:40.250 a new technology that will be available for us for reading and writing. 00:01:41.970 --> 00:01:44.220 So what are these new literacies? 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:47.700 Well to us, these new literacies are the skills, 00:01:47.700 --> 00:01:50.620 the strategies, the social practices, 00:01:50.620 --> 00:01:57.110 the dispositions that are required to use online information effectively to learn. 00:01:57.110 --> 00:02:00.612 Now there are many different definitions of what new literacies are, but to us, 00:02:00.612 --> 00:02:02.182 we're concerned about learning. 00:02:02.182 --> 00:02:07.120 And we're concerned about preparing our youngsters for these skills, strategies, 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:11.150 social practices, and dispositions that will enable them to use online information 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:12.930 to learn new things about the world around them. 00:02:15.270 --> 00:02:18.750 We focus on one particular aspect of new literacies, 00:02:18.750 --> 00:02:21.780 in what we refer to as online research and comprehension. 00:02:21.780 --> 00:02:26.230 And what we mean by that is students' ability to conduct independent and 00:02:26.230 --> 00:02:31.110 collaborative research to learn new things on the Internet. 00:02:31.110 --> 00:02:35.860 We see it as comprised of several different elements, locating skills, 00:02:35.860 --> 00:02:37.240 evaluating skills, 00:02:37.240 --> 00:02:42.080 evaluating the reliability of information that you find on the Internet. 00:02:43.610 --> 00:02:48.900 Synthesizing skills or putting together information from multiple sources, and 00:02:48.900 --> 00:02:53.811 then communication skills which includes all kinds of new technologies that 00:02:53.811 --> 00:02:58.740 are required to pick people's brains, see what they know, look for ideas. 00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:01.720 And then, also finally to communicate what you've learned with other people. 00:03:01.720 --> 00:03:06.065 So we've been spending the last five years developing a performance-based 00:03:06.065 --> 00:03:10.620 assessment on a large federal research grant called The Online Research and 00:03:10.620 --> 00:03:13.090 Comprehension Assessment or ORCAs. 00:03:13.090 --> 00:03:16.186 And so we've developed about 24 different ORCAs, 00:03:16.186 --> 00:03:21.020 performance-based assessments, that give students a problem to solve online. 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:27.220 And then we evaluate their ability at every step of the way, takes place in 00:03:27.220 --> 00:03:33.110 a simulation the Internet with a search engine and web pages and wikis and emails. 00:03:33.110 --> 00:03:37.080 And it's driven by an avatar that text messages into the student to 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:40.070 sort of direct them and ask them different questions and 00:03:40.070 --> 00:03:42.930 engage them in the research project and so forth. 00:03:42.930 --> 00:03:46.050 So anyway, we've developed these assessments that are highly reliable and 00:03:46.050 --> 00:03:48.490 valid, but they're also performance-based. 00:03:48.490 --> 00:03:49.470 They're not multiple choice. 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 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:58.260 a lot of the data we've collected in two states, a laptop state main, and 00:03:58.260 --> 00:04:03.560 a non laptop state and evaluating students abilities in this area. 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:07.070 So what have we found in the work that we've been doing? 00:04:07.070 --> 00:04:09.860 Well, a number of things, one 00:04:11.750 --> 00:04:16.020 important concern that we have in one of our studies between a wealthy and 00:04:16.020 --> 00:04:19.840 an economically challenged school districts is that kids in the two 00:04:19.840 --> 00:04:25.310 districts appear to manifest a separate and 00:04:25.310 --> 00:04:28.490 independent achievement gap in the ability to conduct online research. 00:04:28.490 --> 00:04:32.050 Separate and independent from reading and writing skills, traditional reading and 00:04:32.050 --> 00:04:35.780 writing skills which we've controlled, and 00:04:35.780 --> 00:04:39.860 found a separate achievement gap on the ability to conduct online research. 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:46.300 Largely because the schools in the poor school districts are so constrained 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:50.800 by state assessments, assessments that have none of these skills on them. 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:53.500 So those schools are under great pressure to raise test scores, and 00:04:53.500 --> 00:04:54.380 that's what they teach. 00:04:54.380 --> 00:04:57.800 They teach none of these new online reading and writing skills. 00:04:57.800 --> 00:05:02.560 Whereas in wealthier districts, they have many more degrees of freedom and 00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:04.530 flexibility about what they're going to teach. 00:05:04.530 --> 00:05:07.900 They certainly feel the press of state assessment and test scores, 00:05:07.900 --> 00:05:12.570 but they experiment and include a lot more innovative practices, and 00:05:12.570 --> 00:05:14.970 as a result, their kids get opportunities. 00:05:14.970 --> 00:05:18.930 Kids get opportunities also differently at home, of course, but in schools, 00:05:18.930 --> 00:05:21.960 it's a very clear difference between the two. 00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:23.920 We've also found that students, and 00:05:23.920 --> 00:05:27.050 we tend to look at seventh graders, middle school students. 00:05:27.050 --> 00:05:30.030 The weakest area for them is critical evaluation. 00:05:30.030 --> 00:05:34.590 They don't think very critically about the information they read. 00:05:34.590 --> 00:05:36.970 And as a result, they tend to believe much of what they read. 00:05:36.970 --> 00:05:40.920 They tend to only go to a single source and not question the author. 00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:45.077 And they don't have skills that would allow them to carefully evaluate 00:05:45.077 --> 00:05:47.720 the reliability and expertise of an author. 00:05:49.590 --> 00:05:52.770 Communication is also a problem at this level. 00:05:52.770 --> 00:05:57.922 That is skills such as writing in a wiki, writing in a blog, 00:05:57.922 --> 00:06:04.110 writing a summary of what they found in an email message and so forth. 00:06:04.110 --> 00:06:08.910 Those kinds of skills are second most difficult for our students. 00:06:08.910 --> 00:06:13.310 They tend to do better in synthesis which is really related to their offline skills 00:06:13.310 --> 00:06:14.900 of summarizing that they've learned. 00:06:16.030 --> 00:06:19.500 And then finally, they do reasonably well on locating, 00:06:19.500 --> 00:06:22.620 but a lot of them are clickers and lookers. 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, 00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:29.680 they start at the top, click and look to see what it appears like. 00:06:29.680 --> 00:06:33.420 And then they work their way down the list rather than reading search engine results 00:06:33.420 --> 00:06:37.740 critically and picking on the first click, the best choice for them. 00:06:37.740 --> 00:06:40.721 We've done other research as well in terms of instructional models. 00:06:40.721 --> 00:06:45.488 And so previously, we worked and developed an instructional model in 00:06:45.488 --> 00:06:50.925 one-to-one laptop classrooms called IRT, Internet Reciprocal Teaching. 00:06:50.925 --> 00:06:55.103 There's a really interesting problem that you face when you're trying to teach in 00:06:55.103 --> 00:06:56.900 one-to-one laptop classrooms. 00:06:56.900 --> 00:07:01.644 And that is that you have about 15 seconds of attention, and after that, 00:07:01.644 --> 00:07:03.541 the kids are off on their own. 00:07:03.541 --> 00:07:07.141 And so we tried to figure out how are we gonna teach some of these critical 00:07:07.141 --> 00:07:10.321 evaluation, these locating skills, the synthesis skills, 00:07:10.321 --> 00:07:13.864 these communication skills in a classroom when we have 15 seconds? 00:07:13.864 --> 00:07:18.560 And the answer we came up with that works pretty well is that instead of teaching, 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:22.013 you give students a problem to solve, and in that problem, 00:07:22.013 --> 00:07:24.750 you embed the skill you want to teach. 00:07:24.750 --> 00:07:28.148 And then when you see a student manifesting that skill, 00:07:28.148 --> 00:07:30.833 that student teaches the rest of the class. 00:07:30.833 --> 00:07:35.030 And if you don't see a student manifesting that skill that you've embedded in 00:07:35.030 --> 00:07:37.383 the problem that's important to solve it, 00:07:37.383 --> 00:07:40.574 then you work with one of your weaker performing students. 00:07:40.574 --> 00:07:44.054 And you sort of scaffold their learning until they get the idea, 00:07:44.054 --> 00:07:46.250 and then they teach the class to do this. 00:07:46.250 --> 00:07:51.089 So an example would be, if you're trying to teach critical evaluation a source, 00:07:51.089 --> 00:07:55.944 you give the students a problem like here's a three-part problem for you today. 00:07:55.944 --> 00:08:01.450 I want you to find the height of Mount Fuji, we've been reading about Japan. 00:08:01.450 --> 00:08:04.510 After you do that, that's an easy one, 00:08:04.510 --> 00:08:07.430 then find a different answer to the same question. 00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:10.529 So find somebody else who says, no, it's a different height. 00:08:11.640 --> 00:08:13.940 Then the third part of the question is who's right and why? 00:08:14.990 --> 00:08:20.250 And so we give students that problem to work collaboratively in small groups. 00:08:20.250 --> 00:08:25.228 And then we monitor them in a little software tool which 00:08:25.228 --> 00:08:30.460 puts thumbnails of every student's laptop on your laptop. 00:08:30.460 --> 00:08:35.400 So you can watch what they're doing, and when you see somebody evaluating source, 00:08:35.400 --> 00:08:40.850 that is clicking on a link that says who we are, or doing a search for 00:08:40.850 --> 00:08:45.610 the site, the name of the site to see what people are saying about it. 00:08:45.610 --> 00:08:47.944 Then we ask that student to take over, and 00:08:47.944 --> 00:08:50.954 we project their laptop screen up on the smart board. 00:08:50.954 --> 00:08:54.509 And then have them tell everybody else what they were doing as they solved 00:08:54.509 --> 00:08:57.846 the really key part of that problem, which is who's right and why. 00:09:00.779 --> 00:09:05.640 So Internet Reciprocal Teaching, or IRT, is really a three-phase model. 00:09:05.640 --> 00:09:09.680 And I described the second phase of developing these 00:09:09.680 --> 00:09:12.300 strategies that are important for online research and comprehension. 00:09:12.300 --> 00:09:13.450 The first phase is a nuts and 00:09:13.450 --> 00:09:18.360 bolts phase, where you just go through some of the mechanical things. 00:09:18.360 --> 00:09:24.070 What's a wiki, what's a blog, how those work, how different search engines work, 00:09:24.070 --> 00:09:25.950 locating skills, if your students need them? 00:09:25.950 --> 00:09:28.600 Only the skills that are really required in your classroom, of course. 00:09:28.600 --> 00:09:33.221 And then the third phase, once the kids have developed a pretty sophisticated 00:09:33.221 --> 00:09:36.162 understanding of the skills that are required for 00:09:36.162 --> 00:09:38.414 online research and comprehension. 00:09:38.414 --> 00:09:41.203 Then we take them into the final phase, 00:09:41.203 --> 00:09:46.192 which is conducting an online collaborative project with at least one 00:09:46.192 --> 00:09:51.095 other student in another part of the world, related to the problem, 00:09:51.095 --> 00:09:55.597 related to the curriculum that makes the world a better place. 00:09:55.597 --> 00:09:57.526 Those are the criteria we have. 00:09:57.526 --> 00:10:03.044 We build these up to this point, by the way, by having collaborative 00:10:03.044 --> 00:10:08.340 classroom projects throughout the phase one and phase two. 00:10:08.340 --> 00:10:10.620 We tend to use ePals, 00:10:10.620 --> 00:10:13.950 a wonderful tool for connecting classrooms from around the world. 00:10:13.950 --> 00:10:17.102 You can quickly find teachers in many parts of the world that are interested 00:10:17.102 --> 00:10:18.311 in collaborating with you. 00:10:18.311 --> 00:10:20.450 But there are other tools as well. 00:10:20.450 --> 00:10:25.035 And so they practice this collaboration as a whole class. 00:10:25.035 --> 00:10:28.420 So then when we get to phase three, when they're ready to do online research, 00:10:28.420 --> 00:10:31.590 they've developed a network of friends in other parts of the world. 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, 00:10:36.415 --> 00:10:38.420 but here's an example of one. 00:10:38.420 --> 00:10:43.460 So these students in Connecticut shared the problem they had with other 00:10:43.460 --> 00:10:48.248 kids around the world on their list of friends in an email message and 00:10:48.248 --> 00:10:51.460 said, look, we've got to do this project. 00:10:51.460 --> 00:10:52.476 Do you have any ideas? 00:10:52.476 --> 00:10:55.946 And a student of South Africa actually popped up and said, yeah, 00:10:55.946 --> 00:10:58.760 why don't you create a web page about Gary Paulsen? 00:10:58.760 --> 00:11:03.900 We're reading about Gary Paulsen, author at that age, and 00:11:03.900 --> 00:11:08.428 put a web page together with links to all of the resources you can find online. 00:11:08.428 --> 00:11:10.834 And then you'll have a research site for 00:11:10.834 --> 00:11:14.456 kids who want to do research on Gary Paulsen in their school. 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 00:11:18.910 --> 00:11:21.390 arts, the class that you're taking right now. 00:11:21.390 --> 00:11:23.120 So why don't we do that? 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, 00:11:26.306 --> 00:11:26.986 let's do that. 00:11:26.986 --> 00:11:29.506 And said, I can help, we'll send you the links. 00:11:29.506 --> 00:11:33.133 And these two students in Connecticut said, okay, we know how to make a web 00:11:33.133 --> 00:11:36.330 page, our teacher showed us how to do that, so send us the links. 00:11:36.330 --> 00:11:41.200 And so they built a web page about Gary Paulsen, and so 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:43.580 that's an example of an online collaborative project. 00:11:43.580 --> 00:11:46.650 But there are many, many different types of projects. 00:11:46.650 --> 00:11:50.656 We just think that it should be something that connects the skills that students 00:11:50.656 --> 00:11:54.484 have been learning into a global context because that's exactly where kids 00:11:54.484 --> 00:11:56.846 are going to be working when they're adults. 00:11:56.846 --> 00:12:01.332 They'll be working in environments where they'll have to collaborate and 00:12:01.332 --> 00:12:06.026 problem solve and work with many other people from other cultural contexts from 00:12:06.026 --> 00:12:11.520 other countries and to solve whatever problem they face in their work place. 00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:14.400 So let me talk a little bit about school leadership in this area. 00:12:14.400 --> 00:12:18.960 It's probably one of the most important areas 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:21.430 as we think about the changing nature of literacy and 00:12:21.430 --> 00:12:25.170 learning in the school classrooms with the Internet for several reasons. 00:12:25.170 --> 00:12:29.410 First of all, everything we know about the research on school leadership is that 00:12:29.410 --> 00:12:30.910 school leaders drive change. 00:12:30.910 --> 00:12:36.110 That is, change doesn't happen unless there's a school leader with a vision for 00:12:36.110 --> 00:12:39.780 the change that's needed. 00:12:41.770 --> 00:12:43.470 So school leaders have to have this vision, 00:12:43.470 --> 00:12:47.740 they have to understand what's going on in the changing nature of things. 00:12:47.740 --> 00:12:51.240 But it's also constrained right now at least in the US by 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:52.610 Common Core State Standards. 00:12:54.190 --> 00:12:59.307 Because you can look at those Common Core State Standards with the lens 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 00:13:04.162 --> 00:13:09.208 school classrooms, or you can look at Common Core State Standards. 00:13:09.208 --> 00:13:11.810 A few people are starting to look at it with a lens to the future. 00:13:11.810 --> 00:13:15.440 And understanding each of those standards in terms of what it really means to learn 00:13:15.440 --> 00:13:18.310 and communicate, read and write in online context. 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 00:13:21.330 --> 00:13:22.670 a lens to the future. 00:13:22.670 --> 00:13:26.510 So the first anchor standard, it's close reading, that is we want our kids, 00:13:26.510 --> 00:13:27.780 I'm going to summarize it here. 00:13:27.780 --> 00:13:33.250 We want our kids to be able to read carefully, closely, with the information 00:13:33.250 --> 00:13:37.460 but also to make inferences about the information that they encounter. 00:13:38.490 --> 00:13:42.010 So traditionally, we've taught that in reading comprehension, 00:13:42.010 --> 00:13:47.180 through discussion, through levels of comprehension questions, and so forth. 00:13:47.180 --> 00:13:51.600 And that's one way of implementing close reading but with a lens to the past. 00:13:51.600 --> 00:13:54.540 But if you take a lens to the future, you would see that 00:13:54.540 --> 00:13:59.470 reading search engine results is really one of the best examples of close reading. 00:13:59.470 --> 00:14:03.430 Because there, kids have to read, very carefully, 00:14:03.430 --> 00:14:07.870 make inferences about what those short little segments are telling them 00:14:07.870 --> 00:14:10.760 about the information they're gonna find behind that link. 00:14:10.760 --> 00:14:14.060 And make an inference about whether or not that source is the best source for 00:14:14.060 --> 00:14:16.380 them given their particular needs. 00:14:16.380 --> 00:14:22.200 So to me, close reading really involves helping students read carefully and 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:25.720 make inferences about search engine results. 00:14:25.720 --> 00:14:29.250 So that they can be more efficient when they're trying to locate information. 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. 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. 00:14:38.360 --> 00:14:41.700 And it's really important that all of us look at those standards with a lens 00:14:41.700 --> 00:14:42.250 to the future. 00:14:42.250 --> 00:14:45.890 And think about how does this Common Core State Standards 00:14:45.890 --> 00:14:50.780 really play itself out when we're reading and learning and communicating online. 00:14:52.070 --> 00:14:55.770 And that's a real key as we think about leadership. 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 00:14:59.482 --> 00:15:01.689 help your students prepare for their future.