My case against paperless schooling

This post originally appeared as a reply to a post on the NYCIST email chain for technologists working in independent schools in the Greater-NYC area.

As an English-teacher-turned-educational technologist, I'm still actively pushing back against the push to go "all digital." Here are a few of my reasons:

1. Research: I try to keep up on the cognitive research comparing retention and engagement on etexts versus paper, and my sense is that it's still favoring paper, though perhaps we're not sure why.
2. Anecdotal experience: This turns up in the research, but I'll call it anecdotal because it factors so heavily into my own experience reading extensively in both forms. When reading electronically, unless I'm reading .pdfs, which reproduce static, printed pages, I find it much harder to recall where in a given text a moment occurred. Search can help, but the point is about memory. There is a visual component to how we remember printed pages: we tend to remember where on the page text appeared, and we may even remember how far into the book it was (how thick the pages were on either side).
3. Industry woes: Though some digital platforms (e.g. Notability) have achieved "best of both worlds" annotation functionality, combining functions for freehand drawing/underlining/symbols with typing, the mess over copyright in the publishing industry means that most texts can only be accessed in highly limited e-reader apps like Kindle, which, for instance, can't do freehand annotation, and won't show your annotations and the text simultaneously.

Of course there are marvelous benefits to e-texts as well. Interactivity and dynamism can better illustrate certain concepts than mere static text. Searchable text is a dream, as is collecting all of my annotations in one place.

I used to envision an all-digital future. Now, with the advent of increasingly creative hybrids like the Rocketbook notebook, I’m not so sure. If there are unique advantages to both print and digital media, why should we have to limit ourselves to one or the other?

Connectivist Learning for All!

This post originally appeared on Klingspace on 8/11/2014:

Kudos to Leslie McBeth on her recent post, “Klingenstein Summer Institute as a Model for Networked Learning.” It came in the midst of a summer when I’ve been thinking intensely about networked learning--for adults, as I prepare faculty professional development, but also for students. It’s always nice to learn that someone else is thinking on the same issues! (I suppose that’s largely the point of networked learning!)

Two giants in this arena are George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Downes writes the newsletter Online Learning Daily, and if you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you can read his 612 pages of collected essays on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (no doubt he’s written much more in the two years since he published that collection). I highly recommend Siemens’ “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,” as a primer on networked learning and its aptness for this information age. I recently tweeted out his Principles of Connectivism from that essay:

Together, Siemens and Downes are credited with inventing the MOOC, though CCK08 and the connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) they’ve taught since looked very little like today’s high production-value, often low connection-value exponential MOOC (xMOOC) offerings from providers like Coursera.

cMOOCs are Connectivism and networked learning fully realized. As they run, they leverage their scale to de-emphasize the instructor and highlight instead student-student interactions that ultimately build the lessons of the course. But because they run completely in the open, utilizing public social media platforms rather than in a closed Learning Management System, though the course may end, the class never really disbands. The network of learners remains, right in the same social media space(s) where it began, to continue learning on the course’s topic or new interests that find in common. 

From Hollands, F. and Tirthali, D. (2014). MOOCs: Expectations and Reality

What could these principles look like in a K-12 setting? Inspired by CCK08, Wendy Drexler provides a powerful vision in her video, “The Networked Student”:

One of the most exciting possibilities here is empowering students to engage in networked learning not only with other students, but with learners (and experts) of all ages. Furthermore, while students are still in school, a Connectivist approach practices them in the true habits of lifelong, self-directed learning.

Takeaways from #NEIT15 - Post 2 - On Defining Digital Literacy (and the need for vision in EdTech)

A couple weeks back at the New York State Association of Independent Schools' Education and Information Technology Conference (#NEIT15), I convened an unconference session on "Defining Digital Literacy" and attended another on "Digital Fluency & its Place in the Curriculum."  At both sessions, we agreed passionately on the importance of developing digital literacy in our students, and we talked specifically about what we already do toward those ends, but the nature of those ends and their scope were never clear. Since nearly a year ago when I accepted my new title, "Director of Digital Literacy and Innovation," I've been trying to wrap my head around this problem.

Why is defining digital literacy so difficult?

First, digital literacy feels like a moving target. Given the rapid pace of technological innovation, how could I possibly know what digital literacy will mean for our Pre-Kindergarteners when they graduate in 2028?

Confounding terms for Digital Literacy

Second and more importantly, we've put practice before vision. The agreed upon imperative to impart digital literacy has fueled a rush to teach it before we've understood it. Just look at the explosion of digital literacy curricula in schools from every sector, and the explosion of information from sources like CommonSense Media, Edutopia, and TeachThought on what those curricula should look like. Don't forget the explosion of confounding terms that researchers, journalists, and practitioners use to describe digital literacy or components of it: not only digital literacy, but also information literacy, media literacy, new media literacy, web literacy, digital citizenship, digital fluency, Internet Safety, and I'm sure others. Compare this abundance with how few frameworks of standards or competencies for digital literacy have taken hold.

With regard not only to defining digital literacy but also to effectively integrating technology into teaching and learning, putting practice before vision is endemic in educational technology. It is tempting to blame the booming educational technology industry for their part in wrapping old modalities in shiny new packaging and calling it transformative. It's perhaps more more to the point to blame cozy relationships between EdTech marketers, education conference organizers, and educational publishers (including bloggers). Honestly, how many app-slams and top-ten lists of educational apps you absolutely must try right this second! do we need?

Why is defining digital literacy so important?

Because in the end, the onus is on us above all, the EdTech leaders, to be critical consumers of educational technology and media. To make those evaluations, we need frameworks. SAMR is one. I believe that robust definitions of digital literacies are another.

I'm not alone. The New Media Consortium's (NMC's) 2015 Horizon Report on higher education identifies "improving digital literacy" as one of the six foremost challenges to educational innovation in the next five years. The authors contend that digital literacy breeds the agility we need to innovate. But they lament that "Lack of consensus on what comprises digital literacy is impeding many colleges and universities from formulating adequate policies and programs that address this
challenge" (24). "Compounding this issue," they write, "is the notion that digital literacy
encompasses skills that differ for educators and learners, as teaching with technology is inherently different from learning with it.

JISC's Seven Elements of Digital Literacies

Supporting digital literacy will require policies that both address digital fluency training in pre- and in-service teachers, along with the students they teach" (24).

Nonetheless, the NMC optimistically categorizes the challenge of improving digital as "solvable" (others are categorized as "difficult" or "wicked"). They point, for example, to promising initiatives from JISC in the UK, from Cornell University, and from the Massachusetts Department of Education.


I would add to NMC's recommendations the Web Literacy Map from Mozilla's WebMaker program:

Mozilla WebMaker's Web Literacy Map

This work is essential because vision is essential. Because vision inspires, lending intrinsic motivation to our imperatives, and vision bestows direction, framing our individual efforts on a collective path.

So how do I define digital literacy?

The framework below is heavily indebted to the work of Doug Belshaw, now the Web Literacy lead at WebMaker. 

In his book The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, which distills his dissertation, Belshaw argues that definitions of digital literacy must be contextualized to a particular culture; it is impossible to define digital literacy for everyone (hence the teachers and students dilemma that NMC raised). He offers eight elements that he believes will be present in just about any definition of digital literacy--the cognitive, critical, confident, civic, cultural, communicative, constructive, and creative elements--but he deliberately leaves their definitions ambiguous, leaving that task for leaders to take up in our own contexts. 

With input from a great many supportive colleagues, I have arrived at the following, submitted now without further comment (except please, please to invite your comments!):