Digital Literacy and Screencasting

As mentioned in my recent posts, I’ve been exploring various types of literacy and their application in my fourth grade classroom including the use of visual representation and comics. There are five essential elements of digital and media literacy as outlined by Hobbs and Moore in their book, Discovering Media Literacy. I’ve outlined them here and will refer to them throughout this post.

• Access: locating materials responsibly and understanding those materials
• Analyze: comprehending messages in a variety of formats and evaluating the credibility and quality of those messages
• Create: using digital tools and technology to make content in a variety of formats
• Reflect: making responsible choices and evaluating one’s own behavior and work
• Act: taking action to solve problems and address social issues

Screencasting

Screencasting is recording anything on your computer screen. It’s one of the easiest ways for students to interact with content and create videos. Most frequently, people make screencasts to demonstrate how to do something on their computers as a video tutorial. In the past, I have made screencasts showing my students how to download spelling lists from our class webpage. I’ve seen other teachers make screencasts to show the steps of long division and the process of analyzing characters. I’ve considered using screencasting to create video conferences to review student work when we can’t meet face-to-face. Screencasting is a great tool for teachers because it allows you to publish videos and students can replay them as often as they need.

For students, screencasting allows them to either create their own content or interact with already created media and become co-authors or evaluators. Here are a few ways students can use screencasting:

• Students could watch a video while screencasting and narrate their evaluation of the author’s use of a concept being taught in class.
• Students could listen to and analyze the author’s message of a video or song by creating a screencast.
• Rather than giving an oral presentation in front of their class, students could narrate a presentation from their computer and publish to a much larger audience.
• Students can become the teacher and create a tutorial about a skill they have mastered.
• Screencasting can be used to create a guided digital portfolio tour where students show off their work.

The options are pretty endless since students can make a video from anything on their screen.

Next year I would like to have my students apply screencasting as an assessment tool for their learning about digital citizenship. Digital literacy, according to Hobbs and Moore, is using the internet and social media responsibly. Google’s Be Internet Awesome resource teaches students simple rules for safe and responsible internet use. This free teaching tool allows students to play games to learn five main principles of digital citizenship including evaluating the safety of websites, personal privacy and security, and kind online interactions. It’s also paired with a free curriculum for teachers.

To incorporate screencasting, I would first have my students complete the Be Internet Awesome course so that they have the digital citizenship knowledge they need for their project (access). Next, I would have students choose a project they would like to complete:

• Surf the web with a friend while making a screencast. Use a script and have a conversation about a digital citizenship principle that you notice online (create, analyze).
• Create a short presentation about one principle you learned about. Write a script and narrate your presentation (create). Explain when you would use this principle in real life (analyze).
• Narrate over one of the games in Be Internet Awesome. Write a script and explain the principle you learned from this game (create). Explain when you would use this principle in real life (analyze).

Once students have selected their projects, I would model using the screencast tool screencast-o-matic. After students have finished their projects, they can publish them to our class website and share feedback (reflect). These projects can also be shared online to teach others about safe and responsible internet use (act).

Here is an example I made as a model for my students. I used screencast-o-matic to record. I chose the first project option. In my video, I look over an email from an unknown sender and determine the content should not be trusted based on various criteria I learned from Google’s Be Internet Awesome program. In all, this screencast took less than 15 minutes for me to plan and publish.

Extra Resources

If you’re interested in exploring the topics of visual, digital, and media literacy, see my symbaloo web mix for my favorite resources and readings on these topics and others such as classroom film festivals, color theory in marketing, free stock photos, and graphic novels for kids.

Using Comics to Teach Literacy

Not too long ago our media specialist began increasing the graphic novel section in our school library. I began seeing more and more students bringing these books back to my class and asking me where to find similar books in my own classroom library. Admittedly, I found little value in this format at the time. Afterall, my goal is to increase student reading and how can I do that when comic books hold so few words? My recent study of various literacies has show me just how wrong I was!

These ladies were reading graphic novels in the media center.

He brought this book from home and read it every chance he had!

Comics, graphic novels, and political cartoons can be used to teach students valuable components of visual literacy. Since there are so few words, the author must use images to communicate a message and readers can work to uncover the meaning behind each panel. The reader must continually think and use their mind to complete the picture and draw conclusions.

I know that my own students are motivated to read these books, so next year I am planning to incorporate this format into my instruction. Here are a few ways I plan to incorporate a graphic novel and political cartoons with my fourth graders. As with my last post, Literacy 2.0, I will reference the five essential elements of digital and media literacy as described by Hobbs and Moore in their book, Discovering Media Literacy.

• Access: locating materials responsibly and understanding those materials
• Analyze: comprehending messages in a variety of formats and evaluating the credibility and quality of those messages
• Create: using digital tools and technology to make content in a variety of formats
• Reflect: making responsible choices and evaluating one’s own behavior and work
• Act: taking action to solve problems and address social issues

Inferencing with Mysteries

After reviewing several graphic novels for my students, I found Big Break Detectives by Alan Nolan. This graphic novel follows a group of four friends who solve mysteries during their lunch period. When using this text with my class, I will begin with a series of lessons teaching my students how comics strips and graphic novels are read. While some of my students have experience with this format, many do not, so they will need to know how to follow the panels, narration, and speech bubbles. I will also need to show them examples of the difference between the narrator’s voice and the thoughts and feelings of the characters. These skills will enable my students to better comprehend the author’s message (access). If you’re interested in a resource to learn about the various parts of a comic, this review resource gives a nice overview with visuals.

Once my students have a bit of experience reading graphic novels, we can begin using Big Break Detectives to explore the literary conventions of mysteries. I want to teach them to use the features of graphic novels to not only realize that images have meaning, but also have the skills they need to figure out the meaning (access, analyze). To do this, I need to show many of my students how to analyze a section of a comic and pause for reflection, rather than breezing through it. I predict that many of my students would look at the picture, glance at the text, and allow their minds time to perform closure, a skill where the reader takes in parts of the story draws conclusions about the text as a whole.

A major fourth grade skill is making inferences by using both the reader’s background knowledge and the clues left by the author. Big Break Detectives is a great choice for fourth grades because mysteries naturally engage the reader in looking for clues, considering suspects, drawing conclusions and making inferences in order to solve the problem. When reading graphic novels, students must realize that the author must decide what to include in the frames of a comic or graphic novel. Everything left in the gutter, or the spaces between panels, is an opportunity to make an inference.  The story continues beyond the shown frames, and what happens in the gutter should be considered as well as what is seen (analyze).

Creating Comics

In the past, I have used comics as a way for my students to retell parts of a story we have read together. I hadn’t yet used a graphic novel as a main part of my curriculum though, so students struggled to use the format to its full potential. Once students have an idea of how authors force readers to make inferences through reading Big Break Detectives, I will give my students the challenge of creating their own comics (create). They can choose to make a single panel or multiple panels, all focusing around making an inference. As authors, students will make purposeful choices about what to include in a frame and what should be left to the reader's imagination (reflect, act).

Here is an example of a comic that I made using Pixton, a free comic maker. I was really surprised at how easily and quickly I could create a comic. Pixton has numerous backgrounds, characters, and options to easily construct comic panels. I think this web tool will be a hit with my students!

Political Cartoons in Action 

Political cartoons are unique in that there is a lot of information packed into one or two frames. The reader must have some background knowledge of the topic or situation in order to understand the author’s message. If a student is missing background information, they may need to read a few articles to become up-to-date on a topic (access). Political cartoons often include irony, metaphors, caricatures, and symbols. Students must spend time considering each aspect of a cartoon beyond the literal picture (analyze). While the content of many political cartoons may be too mature for my elementary students, the skills required to read and understand them are valuable and absolutely appropriate for teaching visual literacy. Even elementary students benefit from this deep thinking.

Benjamin Franklin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I plan to use Benjamin Franklin’s political cartoon, Join, or Die while teaching a unit on the American Revolution. We will search for the main message of the cartoon and discuss how the author used a metaphor to portray his ideas (analyze). Following that lesson, students will research various other persuasive media during war times, such as Rosie the Riveter and various Uncle Sam images (access). We can discuss how authors use images and very few words to portray their message. Next, students will be given the challenge of using images to make their own war propaganda or political cartoon for the American Revolution in order to persuade colonists to join the revolution movement in some way (create). Students can offer peer feedback, revise to communicate a clear message and publish their work (reflect, act). I think this is a great way to apply content knowledge, persuasive techniques, and visual literacy skills.  

I made this example of a political cartoon for my students as a model for the project they will try. I used a premade background and added a few details to communicate my message through Pixton. The various backgrounds are a great way to make quick and effective comics without needing lots of experience with the program.

Literacy 2.0

I’ve been reading up on visual, digital, and media literacy lately and I’ve learned some really great strategies that I plan on using with my class next year. Join me over the next few weeks as I share a series of posts outlining useful strategies to promote these literacies in elementary classrooms!

What is Literacy?

When you think of literacy you probably think of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. What I’ve come to learn lately is that this is just part of what literacy can really mean. Infact, there are many different kinds of literacy:

• Visual literacy involves the design, creation, and interpretation of visual images.
• Media literacy focuses on comprehending, analyzing, and creating media in popular culture.
• Digital literacy encourages using the internet and social media responsibly.

While reading Discovering Media Literacy by Renee Hobbs and David Cooper Moore, I read that there are five essential elements of digital and media literacy. I will reference these elements in the lesson ideas I share with you here and in upcoming blog posts.

• Access: locating materials responsibly and understanding those materials
• Analyze: comprehending messages in a variety of formats and evaluating the credibility and quality of those messages
• Create: using digital tools and technology to make content in a variety of formats
• Reflect: making responsible choices and evaluating one’s own behavior and work
• Act: taking action to solve problems and address social issues

When considering these literacies together with the skills associated with them, I realized that there are many opportunities for students to both practice higher order thinking strategies, and also develop the 21st century skills that are vital for their success. The reality is that our systems of communication are rapidly changing. Teaching our students to engage with these various literacies empowers them to be effective and creative communicators.

Do you use visuals when teaching your students? You probably incorporate various visuals as often as possible. Why? Because teachers know that visual supports help our students learn, especially our students with disabilities. In fact, when a student can visualize a concept or idea, they are more likely to remember it and make connections to prior knowledge. Teachers often use graphic organizers, picture books, videos, and diagrams to enhance their lessons.

A new-to-me idea that I read about in Teaching Visual Literacy is the concept of graphic note taking. The idea is to represent learning through visuals. See this great blog post at Teach Thought for 10 great examples. This skill needs to be modeled and supported by the teacher in order to move beyond pictures to actual graphic representation of complex ideas.

Using Collages to Promote Visual Literacy

I think the idea of a picture collage has a lot of possibilities in my fourth grade classroom. I really like the idea of students graphically representing their learning throughout a grading period. Each week, students could have the opportunity to make a symbol or visual example of something they learned in math, Language Arts, science, or social studies (create). During this time, I would also teach lessons about images being used as symbols as well as lessons about graphic note taking and mind mapping as tools students could use as they learn new concepts. By the end of the grading period, students would have a nice visual to show their parents during student-led parent-teacher conferences. This collage project would serve many purposes including students learning and demonstrating principles of visual literacy and allowing for better communication between parents and students regarding classroom learning (act).

This first collage example shows an end-of-the-year project we tried just a few days ago. I challenged my students to graphically represent one or two concepts they learned this year in fourth grade (create). This was our first try at graphic representation beyond simple pictures. I modeled the process for students and showed the difference between a picture and a model or symbol before students gave it a try. As you can see, our collage includes a lot different concepts, and I think it’s pretty great for our first try. I used PhotoCollage, a free collage maker to create this arrangement.

I made this second collage using PicMonkey, a free online collage maker. I outlined a day in my classroom. This collage is much cleaner, and less visually stimulating. I was interested to see that my class was pretty evenly divided between which collage they preferred. After a short discussion about the benefits of each collage, students shared a few key observations (analyze, reflect). While some students liked being able to include many pictures of various sizes using PhotoCollage, others disliked that they could not see each visual in its entirety. Next year, as I use collages and visual images with my students, I plan to give my students choice in the program and type of collage they use to represent their learning.  

Infographics: Short but Sweet

If the goal of teaching literacy is to help students communicate in various ways, then reading and creating infographics is a fantastic way to teach and practice visual literacy skills. While many infographics do not contain much text, they do communicate clear messages, requiring the reader to think, make connections, and infer (access, analyze).

This simple infographic shows data I collected from my current students. I was interested in learning about how they prefer to learn and represent their understanding. Many of my students prefer to see examples of what they are learning and create projects to demonstrate their understanding. Reading and creating infographics would be a great fit for this group of learners.

The Edutopia article, Inventing Infographics: Visual LIteracy Meets Written Content  by Brett Vogelsinger, gives some really great tips for teaching visual literacy through infographics. It also gives some questions to use with your class to help students analyze various infographics. I realized shortly after having my students attempt to create infographics this year, that they tend to simply draw pictures. Direct instruction and exploring various examples of quality work is a necessary step that I skipped this year because I expected making infographics to be easy.

Next year, I plan to use a lot of the ideas from this article to teach my students visual literacy concepts through reading infographics (access). Next, I would like to have my students use data they collect for various science and math lessons to create infographics using Venngage (create). This would allow students to both practice the visual literacy skills of the use of color, text and graphic alignment, and the balance between text and images and also explore the various ways they can display information.

My first lesson idea related to creating infographics is to have different student groups represent the same information in an infographic. Then, student groups can evaluate each project based on the visual literacy skills we learned (analyze, reflect). We can see how the use of the visual elements affects the overall product we create.

As a more advanced lesson, students could again use the same data, but have a different purpose for making an infographic. Some groups could inform their audience, while others entertain or persuade. Students could then compare and contrast the infographics and discover how authors can use the visual skills we learned in different ways to depict the same information in various ways (create, analyze, reflect). Students will then have the opportunity to update their work based on their collaboration with their peers (act).

If you’re interested the reading more on the topic of various literacies, I suggest Discovering Media Literacy by Renee Hobbs and David Cooper Moore and Teaching Visual Literacy by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher. Both texts share great ideas for incorporating visual literacy in daily teaching practices.

Student Success with Media Creation

Can I brag about my students for just a few minutes? I’m so proud of their work over these last few weeks as they engaged in project based learning. They were amazed by our virtual field trip to the Borneo rainforest, inspired to take a stand, awed by my colleague’s lesson on writing hip hop and freestyle rap, and challenged to create persuasive media to make a change in the world. They have been motivated by a cause and encouraged to creatively solve real problems.

Mr. Porter brainstorms a word list to use while rapping.
Photo by Rachel Lamb

Hip hop in action!
Photo by Rachel Lamb

If you’re interested in the reading more about the project based learning my students participated in, see the last section of my post titled Personalization and Universal Design for Learning or visit the webpage I created to house all the materials we used.

A Sample of Student Work 

These students chose to persuade their peers to donate money to help solve the clean water crisis. Did you hear those lyrics? They used their research to paint a picture of the problem and help their peers relate to the tragic hardships that others face on a daily basis. Wow!!

This group researched both deforestation and forest fires and wrote a song to persuade people to use trees responsibly and put out campfires completely.

These two student groups originally chose to make an infographic to persuade the community to donate money to solve the clean water crisis. Unfortunately, we had to change our infographics to posters because I stretched myself too thin and was unable to provide all the background knowledge these groups needed to complete their original project while also supporting the many needs of the other groups.

Stretched too Thin: Incorporating Blended Learning

My students were given many options during their learning. They chose the natural resource they planned to research, how they learned about today’s issues, and the type of media project they would create. Somehow, I didn’t anticipate that this would require more support than I could possibly give face-to-face. Looking back, it’s obvious that I either needed fewer choices for my students or more teachers to meet the needs of my students.

I’d hate to restrict my students, especially seeing how engaged and motivated they were to create their projects. At the same time, I let my students down a bit because I wasn’t able to fully support each group. So, that leaves needing more teachers. I’m remembering back to my biggest ah-ha moment while using blended learning: blended learning essentially allows you to make your own digital co-teacher. It can increase the productivity of your face-to-face time with students because you are basically cloning yourself by providing quality instruction online while also supporting that instruction when you meet with students.

Next year, I plan to create a series of online lessons to meet some of the most frequent needs of my students during this project. First, a solid review of persuasive techniques would be helpful. Next, I would also design a variety of lessons covering the various elements and design principles of various media options that students chose including song writing, infographics, and public service announcements. These online lessons would give students a foundation to build from and allow me to be much more intentional in my face-to-face time with my students.

The Fast Finishers and Purposeful Slowpokes of Blended Learning

I was very purposeful in my planning to make blended learning implementation as smooth as possible. See my post, Planning for Success, for details. I used some of our strengths to our advantage while proactively addressing predicted areas of concern. My planning definitely helped us transition to blended learning successfully, but we have had a few bumps in the road lately. Here are a few issues I’ve run into, some solutions I’m considering, and a major success we have experienced.

Fast Finishers 

There are two types of fast finishers in my class. Both finish their work quickly and eagerly await for me to release the next lesson to them. For this reason, I purposefully wait to release the next lesson to students until I am sure they have completed their work to the best of their ability and have received extended learning time with me on the same topic.

I’m finding that some of my fast finishers have neglected to truly think deeply about the online content. In fact, they often completely miss the requirements and directions for online discussions and fail to answer extended response questions adequately, even when models are provided. When I meet with these students and review the directions I get the typical, “Ohhhhh, ok,” and off they go. These students seem to need constant monitoring in order to produce thoughtful, quality work.

If we are being honest, I just can’t keep up with their need to be redirected continually. I’ve thought of three possible solutions to this problem. First, I can pair these students with partner who is working successfully online to provide extra support and explanations of directions. Another possibility is providing an incentive for completing activities according to the directions. Finally, I can provide audio clips explaining directions for the extended response and discussion boards. If you have other suggestions, please comment below!  

The fast finishers who have truly mastered the content are another matter. I recently read a blog post by the Gifted Guru about early finishers that I absolutely agree with. My goal is to create meaningful learning for every student in my class. If the same students are consistently finishing early and mastering content quickly, then I should be planning for them differently rather than simply providing busy work activities. In the context of blended learning, I believe the solution to this problem lies in personalizing lesson content. This allows each individual student to own their learning and interact with content in challenging ways. I’ve explained that idea in my post titled Personalization and Universal Design for Learning. I plan to explore this more this summer and create online content following these principles.     

Purposeful Slowpokes

I’ve noticed a slowly growing number of students who are taking a surprising amount of time to complete their online learning. These students do not typically need extra time in class to complete other assignments, so I monitored their work very closely for a few days without them knowing in order to see what was going on. They were avoiding parts of the lesson that required answering questions or completing discussions by replaying online videos and learning games to excess. The surprising part is that these students are not normally task avoiders. In fact, they are high readers who usually excel in their work.

I’ve encouraged my students to review completed parts of lessons as needed, but these three students were pretty much camped out on videos, songs, and games. My best solution so far is to create a checklist for these students and require them to update me of their progress at the end of our stations each day. I’ll be starting this on Monday for my three purposeful slowpokes.

Winning with Student Tech Support 

The biggest issue I anticipated before implementing blended learning was the fact that students would not have direct teacher support while learning online because I teach guided reading groups at that time. To address this issue, I assigned 3 students the role of “tech support.” These students displayed the ability to problem solve and use good judgement when working online. Our class technology troubleshooting steps are posted every day during blended learning:

1. Think, “Do I really need help with this?”
2. Try to solve the problem on your own
3. Check with a Tech Support student
4. If you are still stuck, raise your hand for help

At first I had to interrupt my group to help a few students with tricky issues a few times per day. Now more students are fixing their own problems, and tech support students are being used less and less. Allowing three students to provide tech support has completely freed me up to teach- that’s winning!