The kids in Cari Roberts’ freshman English class at Aurora Central High School read novels, essays and nonfiction material — just like generations of students before them. But here, they’re just as likely to find their subject matter on the Internet as the printed page, as likely to tap compositions and critiques into a netbook — or, in one student’s case, an iPhone — as commit them by pencil to a notebook.
“They know that reading online or reading a textbook is part of their lives,” Roberts says. “I don’t think they see it as either this or that. I think they’re incorporating both.”
In this gateway class to high school reading and writing, Roberts wields every tool available to lift students toward “new literacies,” the confluence of language and technology that’s evolving as fast as researchers can study it.
Today’s teens have grown up zooming among hyperlinks in cyberspace and conversing in an online world of Twitter and text messaging where acronyms, assorted shortcuts and creative punctuation have redefined everyday discourse.
And while it may not carry the gravitas of Dostoevsky, it all adds up: Experts figure that kids today read and write even more than previous generations. And they do so in a broader and more complex environment — though not always in academic ways.
The fire hose of online content, plus evolving media platforms, present new challenges for students — and teachers rushing to keep up with technology — as 21st-century literacies blend with traditional skills.
“I’m not going to say it’s a good thing or a bad thing,” says Elizabeth Kleinfeld, assistant professor of English at Metropolitan State College of Denver. “But it’s a thing for sure, and we have to deal with it in our classrooms, in our workplaces and in our relationships.”
Her research indicates that students have a troubling tendency not to read deeply, though she’s quick to add that there’s no evidence that previous generations fared any better.
“Our culture has been moving toward prizing efficiency over taking time to do things,” Kleinfeld says, “and we’ve been moving in that direction for decades.”
As state standards and national policies embrace the relationship between technology and language, specific skills have emerged as central to new literacies.
Addressing rapid-fire data
Mastering the technical aspects of multimedia tools is essential. And both reading and writing in the digital world demand a more collaborative approach, played out before an ever-widening audience equipped for rapid-fire feedback.
Perhaps most important, the breadth of information that flows from Internet search engines requires that students cultivate a discerning eye. It’s not enough to Google something; the trick is to filter the reliable information from the digital flotsam.
“If we don’t start helping kids to slow down and think, they could get overwhelmed and not read deeply at all,” says Julie Coiro, an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island who specializes in new literacies and online reading comprehension. “I think there should be very much a conscious, strategic moving back and forth between rapid locating (of information) and deep reading.”
In other words, she adds, kids need to be taught when to stop clicking and start thinking more carefully. Increasingly, teachers are equipping students with means to evaluate websites rather than taking them at face value.
“I don’t think the Internet itself is creating all these problems so much as the lack of ability to keep up with constant changes and how to address them in school,” Coiro says. “The Internet offers incredible opportunities to build high-level, deep thinkers if we provide the instruction that’s needed.”
To that end, two visiting teachers absorb how Roberts employs an array of technology in her fast-paced literacy lab classroom at Aurora Central.
Meanwhile, the students click their way to a site called ThisIBelieve.org, a collection of personal essays. Together, they read a 16-year-old’s account of his parents’ worries about the country’s future, exploring his use of humor as he makes the case that tomorrow will be a better day.
Then they navigate to the class website, where they read and critique classmates’ personal essays. Later, some exchange ideas about a reading assignment via teleconference to another campus.
“They’re typical kids,” Roberts says. “They read when it suits their purpose. But I think they have access to way more things than I ever did as a child.”
Bound volumes still line the classroom shelves. During one class segment, students dig their independent reading books from their backpacks, marking the time that 15-year-old Daisy Fuentes lives for.
Although she dabbles in Facebook, she doesn’t text or “go crazy” with technology and, all things considered, would rather immerse herself in a good book. She estimates she has read about 30 this school year and is just a few pages from finishing the award- winning young-adult novel “Kira-Kira.”
“Some people call me a nerd,” Fuentes shrugs. “But I’m stuck to books.”
New literacies aren’t about displacing mainstream standards, says Michele Knobel, a professor of literacy education at Montclair State University in New Jersey and a leading authority on the topic.
Still, for some who didn’t grow up with this generation of technology, the concept can trigger what Knobel calls a “false memory” of deeper engagement with the written word.
“If you choose to see (new literacies) as dumbing down, you’re going to see lots of evidence of that,” Knobel says. “But if you choose to see it as something new and opening up all sorts of opportunities for young people to really think about media, how truth itself is often up for grabs, then there are all sorts of ways of understanding it.”
Digital path to deep reading
Vicki Collet, a literacy facilitator for the Poudre School District in Larimer County, recently met with a group of middle-school teachers and posed a question: Are kids reading as much as they used to?
The unanimous response: More.
And yes, that includes novels, not just online fare. But the teachers saw a connection between the two — online information, including social networking, often steers students toward an attractive literary niche.
Think “Harry Potter” or even “Twilight.”
“Then,” says Collet, “they read deeply within that genre.”
At Lincoln IB World Middle School in Fort Collins, literacy coach Elizabeth Kennedy visits a class of sixth- graders that has dug deep into the Louis Sachar book “Holes.”
Their discussion goes beyond the main character’s sentence to a fictional youth camp, where the detainees dig holes, and touches on the realities of the juvenile justice system.
The students log on to the class website, where their teacher has placed a link to a slide show that features a series of compelling photos of kids in detention.
“This really makes you think about what these kids have done,” says 11-year-old Ellis Markey.
Next, they link to a news story about an alternative juvenile-justice program. After reading that, they shift to their individual page on the class “wiki,” or website, and begin composing a piece comparing and contrasting the fictional version of juvenile justice with the examples portrayed in the photos and the news story.
“Anyone can look at it and comment on it, so we can improve our writing,” explains Ally Bormann, 12. “On one of my paragraphs, my classmate said, ‘Your hook is great, but you might want to change your thesis.’ That made it a lot better. And over the year, you can really see your progress.”
Kennedy loves the range of digital tools that teachers can use to advance literacy — the Web, its blogs, the seemingly boundless information superhighway. And yet, she begins the class by asking kids a calculated question: What’s the strongest reading and writing tool you have with you?
“Our brain!” comes the response.
“What impresses me,” Kennedy says later, “is when students go to a website that the teacher has made available and think deeply. Otherwise, it’s just a dog-and-pony show.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com
