Why should teachers care about digital literacy? Explore the potential benefits and or challenges depending on your reading.

Being digitally literate is to have the ability to understand, evaluate and integrate information and materials from the wide variety of formats that are available today. It is because of this that I believe that it is essential for teachers to care about digital literacy, particularly in a society where the majority of individuals, including children, have such easy accessibility to new technologies and media.

There are a wide variety of aspects to the digital world that are important to consider, especially when considering how often children are exposed new technologies such as TV, the internet, computer games and mobile technology. However from reading Dr. Linda Papadopoulos report- Sexualisation of Young People Review- which has been commissioned by the Home Office Violent Crime Unit for Together We Can End Violence Against Women, it is clear to see one of the key issues concerned in terms of children.

Sexualisation is the imposition of adult sexuality on to children and young people before they are capable of dealing with it, mentally, emotionally or physically and therefore is a risk that all teachers should be considering within school.  A large amount of the material out there available to children through a variety of mediums is often very sexualised, whether that be through advertising on TV, the characters within computer games as well as the aims of computer games or articles on the internet. These can range from the images of adults being sexualised or in some cases of children being sexualised, whether that be through clothing, make-up, posing, or the general message that is being given through the use of language. Another key factor that is important to consider is the stereotyping of gender that is also represented, particularly in video games, as research has found that there is often a notable lack of strong female characters and that male characters are often portrayed as being aggressive (Dill and Thill, 2007).

Based on theories of learning, such as the Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1971) it is assumed that children learn from observing others attitudes and behaviours as well as seeing the outcomes of these behaviours and then reflecting this in their own behaviour. Therefore by exposing children to this, they are at risk of maturing before they should due to the high exposure. It is important to consider that children’s ability to interpret messages is directly linked to their ability to understand abstract behaviour, and therefore exposing children who are not yet equipped to handle it can have a negative impact.

It is thought that based on this, children can often be impacted in terms of having a negative body image, which in turn can lead to a decrease in mental health due to low self-esteem , as well as having a significant impact on the level of violence. This can have a significant impact in schools as in relation to this it has often been observed that sexual harassment and gendered and sexualised name-calling and bullying are on the rise in both primary and secondary schools (Duncan, 2004).

It is because of this that Papadopoulos (2010) recommends that education and schools are a key place to start in ensuring children are digitally literate as we cannot prevent this sort of material reaching children, however we can make an impact on how they process the information in the hope that they do this in a critical way as well as how to use the various outlets available within new technologies in a productive way.

She makes the point which I feel is particularly important to consider that although parents inevitably have to take some responsibility as to how their children use the internet, we cannot realistically expect them to take complete responsibility and that as informed educators we are in a place of authority to ensure that children are safe from this.

Bibliography

Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory of aggression. Control of aggression: Implications from basic research, 201–250

Dill, K., & Thill, K. (2007). Video game characters and the socialization of gender roles: Young people’s perceptions mirror sexist media depictions. Sex Roles, 57, 851–864.

Duncan.C., & Loretto, W. (2004). Never the right age? Gender and age-based discrimination in employment, Gender, Work and Organization 11, 95-115

Papadopoulos , L. (2010) Sexualisation of Young People Review Home Office (Executive Summary)

Module Summary

Summarise your own significant learning from this module. Identify its implications for your future role as an English or IT subject leader. Make links to any relevant readings.

Within today's culture more and more information and ideas are being presented in non-print forms (Dean, 2010) and throughout this module it has been presented that the National Curriculum does not currently offer much educational material for information that is presented in the media. Personally this creates an implication for my future practice. As an ICT subject leader I believe it is vital to present children information in a variety of ways so that they can fully acknowledge the information that will be available to them at all times when they become an adult.

I have come to learn that it is true that what it means to be literate today is not the same as what was considered being literate 50 years ago. Consequently, the way in which we teach children how to become literate has to be altered in order to cater for these advances. Now, after completing this module, I believe I can define being digitally literate as meaning not only to learn how to read from a book but, as Dean (2010) suggests, as also means having the ability to; be able to understand all elements of a text so images and print; be aware of the way light, movement and colour is deployed in film; and to have the skills in which to argue whether a source is reliable or not when researched online. In order to create digitally literate children, the way in which we implement ICT lessons needs to change. 

I have also allowed myself to consider that through well thought out and planned use of technologies within my classroom it will lead to improved attainment for all the children within the class. Studies have found that with small inserts of ICT use in the classroom, knowledge and understanding has increased and the potential for better class behavior and class management (Higgins, 2012). Therefore, within my own classroom the use of technology could even be used as part of the reward system. 

Finally this semester has improved my abilities to see the positive and the negatives of using ICT within the primary classroom. I have always been fairly positive with its use as I believe its advancing the children's learning to where it needs to be for the future. However, as my knowledge throughout this semester has developed I now understand that there may be some cases where using ICT in the classroom would alter its effectiveness for the worse. For example, for a child who uses a lot of ICT tools when they are at home, would it then be best for them to use it for every lesson within one day at school? This module has allowed me to approach the topic of using technologies sensibly and has improved my ability to outweigh where I can see potentials with its use and when sometimes it may be seen as an add-on to the lesson. These module sessions have been invaluable to my ever growing knowledge of ICT and I will continue to use a reflective approach as my ICT specialist knowledge continues to develop.


Bibliography:

Dean, G. 'Rethinking Literacy' in Bazalgette, C. (ed) (2010) Teaching Media in Primary Classrooms London: Sage

Higgins, S. et al Impact of Digital Technologies on Learning Durham

Why should teachers care about digital literacy?

Drawing on your given text, your own thoughts in view of the seminars and your own experiences and observations, respond to the following question: Why should teachers care about digital literacy?  Explain the potential benefits and/or challenges, depending on your reading. 

As teachers we should care about digital literacy. Our lives are becoming more and more technologically advanced and as teachers our job is to educate generations of young children in all areas of life in order to allow them to grow up to be educated with the skills, knowledge and understanding that we need as adults. By teaching children at primary school level, we as the teachers, may be the only point of call and educational influence in that child's young life and therefore we need to be there for the child to prove that we can teach them all that they need to be able to prosper within this world.

Being digitally literate means having an understanding of the different modes of communication and being made able to have access to a broad range of materials in which to expand your digital literacy capabilities. It is vital as a teacher to care if your pupils are becoming digitally literate as there are numerous ways of presenting data and information and if a child has not been taught at school how to critically evaluate, engage and understand different ways in which a text has been shaped to convey information then as that child grows they will struggle with how to communicate as a majority of the world does: through technology. 

Schooling is not wholly about what academic information you can teach to a child but it is also about supporting a child socially in order for them to grow into well rounded individuals. However, when we as teachers use technology to aid learning we have to ensure that the use of ICT does genuinely enhance the teaching and learning and is not simply treated as an add-on to the lesson. This is vital because as teachers we have to have a bank of appropriate ways in which to foster digital literacy learning within the classroom. It is interesting because as a teacher of specific set of pupils, who all obtain a specific skill set, we are the best person in which to consciously decide when and if we will incoporate ICT use within the classroom. Therefore we are in the most influential position in which to use our expert knowledge of ICT and use it to our benefit to aid the children within our class. For my an implication about my own practice I believe I should care about digital literacy as it is a large part of what children need in order to be equipped with secure knowledge of ICT before they reach adulthood. 

Finally, I also believe it is paramount to equip children with the knowledge of internet safety in order to prepare them for the dangers of the internet. Children should be informed how to remain safe and they should be aware of their digital footprint as this can effect how they are seen by the public eye and by their future employers. If they are not taught how to be safe on the internet how can we expect they will take that initiative themselves. 

Bibliography:

FutureLab (2010) Digital Literacy Across the Curriculum: http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf (Accessed 31.10.14)

Summarise your own significant learning from this module

I have learnt a lot from this module; it has allowed me to think in depth about how I would implement technology into a lesson, the benefits of using them within the classroom as well as the dangers and disadvantages of enabling children to use technology from such a young age.

The visit to Shirley Warren enabled me to gain an insight into the use of iPads in the classroom. I am still unsure about what my thoughts are regarding this, but I did feel that iPads were used too frequently and I would have liked to see the teachers interact with the children a bit more. I really enjoyed using the apps though, and felt that they would be highly engaging for pupils. I was particularly interested in Green Screen, which I think would be great linked to areas of the curriculum such as History. I also liked I Can Animate. I think there are many advantages to using iPads, I would just worry that the children will only become engaged in lessons when iPads are being used.

However, I really like the idea of using comics and graphic novels in the classroom; this is educational because the children are not only developing their reading skills, but their creative skills as well. Comics such as Beano and Dandy ‘are very child-centered and reflect a world of school, friendships…’ (Millard et al, 2001) I also enjoyed exploring ‘Comic Life’ and feel that it would be a successful way of incorporating creativity into an English lesson. Although many children may already read comics at home, this does not necessarily mean they should not be used at school too. Dyson (2003) believes that it can ‘help them ‘recontexualise’ these familiar texts into those of the school.’

It was very useful for me to interview my friend, who is a primary school teacher in Scotland, and find out how she felt about the use of popular culture within the classroom. She believed that it was important for children to share their interests inside and outside of school, which I agree with. Harret and Benjamin (2009) implied that ‘ignoring children’s popular culture as a means of teaching and learning seems remiss.’

In our last session, we discussed advertising and whether children should be exposed to it or not. Most of us agreed that children are exposed to it everyday anyway, so teachers should acquire the responsibility of educating their pupils about adverts and highlighting the fact that they should not believe everything they see or hear on an advert, because they are simply designed to persuade people to buy their products. Kunkel (2005) claimed that children in America ‘may view more than 40,000 advertisements every year’ and considering that young children are easily influenced, this is a lot of time that they are being persuaded to buy certain products, and are likely to be continuously asking their parents for those things. However, watching adverts can be beneficial for children, as it will enable them to gain skills for persuasive writing, which can be implemented into English lessons.

Bibliography

Lambirth, A (2003) They Get Enough of That at Home Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd p. 12

Gunter, B, Oates, C & Blades, M (2005) Advertising to Children on TV New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates p. 2

Harret, J & Benjamin, T (2009) Travel with a Time Lord: using media to enhance literacy Oxford: Blackwell Publishing p. 135

Millard, E & Marsh, J (2001) Sending Minnie the Minx Home: comics and reading choices Sheffield: Cambridge Journal of Education p. 27

School Experience

Having been in school, share your observations and reflections in terms of the use of technology/ new literacies. What surprises you? What were the challenges and how might you overcome these? What questions arise for you? What have you learnt? Make links to any relevant readings.

On the 14^th of September, we were provided with the opportunity to visit a school in order to work with children in Year 6 on a project involving the use of new literacies.

Within the year, they had been focusing on the text ‘If the World Were A Village’ by David J. Smith, which compares a variety of different statistics taken from all over the world, such as religion and food in different continents. I firstly felt that this book was very engaging as children seemed to share a genuine interest in the book and the facts that came with it due to the fact that it related to the real world. As part of their task they were therefore asked to create their own multi-modal book based on their own school community which would eventually be made available to the rest of the school. The promise that this would be shared with the rest of the school as well as with parents with the school’s continuously updated online blog appeared to spark a real motivation with the children as this gave them a sense of ownership and pride over their work in a way a controlled piece of writing that only their teacher would see would not.

As I have not yet been in a school where technology is used heavily in areas outside of ICT, it was especially intriguing to observe a school where there is such a large focus on the use of technology throughout all subject areas. This meant that children were fluent in using all apps and all forms of technology presented to them, allowing them to carry out the task with ease as they rarely came across any glitches or misconceptions in regards to the iPads themselves. It was clear that there extensive experience in using the apps meant that they were able to make creative ideas in how they can represent their data which allowed them to get on with the task in hand.

With the children’s wide experience, I felt that one particular challenge that I came across was a fear that has concerned me in the past- that children are more fluent in what they are doing than I am as the educator. However I can now see that this is not necessarily a drawback. Although I feel it is still necessary that I become more familiar with apps that can aid education within the classroom, if children are able to perhaps do more than I can this rarely produces any problems for myself as the teacher and this can provide an opportunity for me to learn from children which is not necessarily a bad thing.

One aspect of the task the children had been set that I felt was particularly effective was the focus on collaborative work. At first I was slightly apprehensive as the typical scene that I envisioned was children all attempting to use one iPad to get one task done, which would inevitably lead to more confident children taking the lead and those less confident perhaps drifting into the background meaning that they would not necessarily benefit from the situation. However the way in which the session was structured, and the use of technology, such as being able to ‘drop’ pieces that others had created onto other members of their group’s iPads in order to create a larger collaborative piece, helped to demonstrate to me that this is not the case.

Overall I feel that this experience has equipped me to understand and appreciate the uses that new technologies such as iPads and their accompanying apps can have in schools and the ease in which they can be used to support a wide variety of topics. 

Use of graphic novels and comics within the classroom

Does the use of comics and graphic novels (hard copy/electronic versions) within the primary literacy curriculum undermine the values of the classroom or do they offer opportunities for learning?

Introducing non-traditional formats of text to a classroom is unlikely to come without its critics, and therefore it is no surprise that the use of comics and graphic novels in order to aid the literacy curriculum has caused a large amount of controversy amongst educationalists.  However with the National Curriculum stating that children should ‘appreciate our rich and varied literacy heritage’ (DfE, 2013), which therefore can imply that teachers should be exposing children to a wide range of texts and with the growing demand for alternative non-traditional texts within today’s popular culture, it is understandable why comics and graphic novels are being used within children’s education.  With studies finding that children appear to find comics more engaging than traditional texts that they read, such as that carried out by Marsh and Millard (2001) which found that 86% of children found comics more interesting, this therefore also reinforces that we should be considering the usefulness that this can have within the classroom in order to produce effective teaching.

A key concern that can often lead to controversy with teachers as stated by Marsh and Millard (2001) is that the content of comics could potentially have a detrimental influence on children due to the large amount of violence and sexualisation of female characters, and therefore the negative effect on the children could outweigh any positive effect from reading this differentiated form of text. However Stafford (2009) makes the clear point that making the personal and professional judgement as to what content is appropriate for your particular class is the responsibility of the teacher and therefore children do not have to unnecessarily have to be exposed to such material. It is important to note at this stage that a similar argument could be used for traditional texts within the classroom as similar content is often involved in books, just the way in which it is presented is different, and therefore we need to consider whether comics should be treated any differently to books.

Another key point that Stafford (2009) implies is important to consider is how these texts are used. Through the experience of creating my own example of a comic through the app ‘Comic Life’ in the manner that a child would within the seminar has helped to inform me that there is a significant benefit in not only using comics for reading but as a basis for written and creative work if used in an appropriate way. The experience I have gained not only helped me to understand how this could be used effectively within a literacy classroom, but also enabled me to see the appeal when creating the piece due to the sense of ownership that came with creating my own piece, as well as the opportunity to use the technology of the iPads and the app ‘Comic Life’ which in turn can create a sense of engagement that I believe cannot be replicated in any alternative way, especially with traditional texts.

Bibliography

DfE (2013) National Curriculum: Primary Education [online] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/260481/PRIMARY_national_curriculum_11-9-13_2.pdf. [Accessed 9th October 2014].

Millard and Marsh (2001) 'Sending Minnie the Minx Home: comics and reading choices' Cambridge Journal of Education, 31:1, 25 - 38

Stafford, T. (2009) Teaching Children’s Literature: Making Stories work in the Classroom Abingdon: Routledge

Why should teachers care about digital literacy? Explore the potential benefits and/or challenges, depending on your reading

The text that I explored was Palfrey and Gasser’s ‘Born Digital – Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives’. Digital Natives are people who were born after 1980 and have a clear understanding and knowledge of how to use modern technology. In today’s world, more and more people are becoming exposed to technology from a very young age.

Nowadays, it is rare not to own an iPad or an iPhone. The Internet can be accessed whenever needed; emails can be checked; colleagues can be contacted; locations can be found. They do not ‘just make phone calls, they also send text messages, surf the net and download music.’ (Palfrey et al, 2008) Surely, this is something we all need in our lives. There could be situations where we need to find a place urgently, or get onto the Internet to find out crucial information. Pupils must learn about this from a young age, because they may need them in their lives, not just in the future, but now.

I have a Nokia. I can call, I can text, I can even take pictures and videos, but I can’t get onto the Internet. In an incident where I have lost my way walking to someone’s house, one might say: ‘Look it up on Google Maps’, but I can’t. When I pull out my ‘brick phone’, people are surprised. Isn’t it a good phone, though? I mean, it does what a phone is required to do – it phones people!  

We refer to people who were born before 1980 as settlers, or digital immigrants – basically outcasts from the technological world - because they are not as experienced with technology. Some may argue that digital immigrants lead fuller lives because they are not reliant on the Internet to provide them with entertainment, but think about what digital natives can do that they can’t. Technology allows us to become more creative: we can make movies, post videos on Youtube and create blog posts. This is why technology is successful within the classroom – lessons become exciting and motivating, allowing children to expand on their creativity and technological skills. Children are far more likely to engage and participate fully in lessons. However, this can lead to issues. What if children become addicted to technology? Will they then be reluctant to take part in lessons unless technology is involved?

One problem highlighted in the Palfrey and Gasser reading (2008) is the antisocial element; ‘maybe your daughter never comes down to dinner on time because she’s always busy online.’ Once, when I went out for dinner with my friends, I noticed that every one of us was texting rapidly under the table. 

Nowadays, it is normal to talk to someone online before meeting them. Of course, this can be dangerous in instances where the person is a complete stranger, but if you have mutual friends, it’s fine. Or is it? People are now ‘leaving more traces of themselves in public places online.’ Have you ever had a quick ‘stalk’ down someone’s Facebook profile before going on a date with them? Did you see them in a different light to when you first met them? Technology gives people the outlet to express themselves and be more open, to give out more information to the 500 people they barely know.

For these reasons, teachers must care about digital literacy, firstly because it can be a great resource within the classroom, and secondly because of the issues that can arise from it.

Bibliography

Palfrey, J & Gasser, U (2008) Born Digital – Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives New York: Basic Books p. 1-7