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.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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"The Internet offers incredible opportunities to build high-level, deep thinkers if we provide the instruction that's needed."
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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."
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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.
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"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."
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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."
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In a 2006 article in the Handbook of Writing Research, "The Effects of New Technologies on Writing and Writing Processes," he explains that his series of three studies of 9- and 10-year-olds with severe spelling problems showed that these students' legible words increased from 55 to 85 percent, and their correctly spelled words rose from 42 to 75 percent.
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In developing the program, Greig worked with University of Oregon researcher and pioneer in computer-supported studying Lynne Anderson-Inman to test its effectiveness with kindergarten students. Using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills test, Greig tested the group of students every two weeks on pre-reading and early reading skills, such as naming letters, phonemic awareness, and ease of decoding nonsense words accurately. After six weeks of using Reading Buddies, Greig says, "We saw kids who had been operating at the 10th and 20th percentiles moving up to the 40th and 50th percentiles." At the end of the 10-week pilot, Grieg says, "[Students] were at or above the test's benchmark."
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The Reading Buddies program promotes the school's whole child approach, Greig says, by encouraging multiple modalities—such as visuals, tracing letters, auditory, and songs—and requiring students to discuss the material with parents or an adult family member in the home.
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Greig found that, for these students, the program's benefits included higher test scores as well as increased comprehension and confidence. "These were kids who, in a large or small group, would just as soon not give answers—they'd be in the back making trouble," Greig notes. "In two weeks, they were the kids raising their hands and saying, 'I know that.'"
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The technology "builds those auditory and language skills" of students, allowing them, generally, to be more receptive to learning because typically 80 percent of the instructional day relies on auditory information, Egli says. "They're better able to make use of classroom instruction because they can understand the language of the instructor better," she explains.
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Recently, the Bridges Academy also started using Reading Assistant, a program that uses speech recognition technology to help students improve their reading fluency. At the high school level, students first listen to the computer read a passage from a novel. Using a headset with microphone, students then read the same passage aloud, and the program records the exercise. If a student stumbles on a word, the program automatically prompts with a correct pronunciation. Teachers use the data collected by the Reading Assistant software to see how many words students correctly read per minute and which words they struggled with. Teachers use this data to inform classroom instruction.
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Additional Resources Dynarski, M., Agodini, R.., Heaviside, S., Novak, T., Carey, N., Campuzano, L., et al. (2007). Effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products: Findings from the first student cohort. Retrieved August 12, 2008, from U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences Web site: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20074005.pdf.