To "E" or Not To "E" - Teens and Reading

Adrienne St. George is our district's Media Center Specialist. She contributes this guest post on teens and reading, although she would like to state for the record that she had nothing to do with the terrible headline of this post. You can contact her at adrienne.stgeorge@sduhsd.net.



Teens are reading more than ever!!! No, that is not a line from a science fiction story; that is a very current consensus by reputable research groups and interested critics.

Teens' reading efforts match/exceed adult levels:
16 – 29 age groups actually read MORE than the 30+ age group. A lot of this is due to reading that is necessary for school but personal reading numbers are equal for both age groups which is awesome news! Teens/young adults will read on any device available while the 30+ age group prefers an e-reader or print.

Teens/adults use libraries differently than adults. Statistics show that they actually use libraries MORE than adults. However, they use them for book recommendations, getting help with apps and digital questions, e-books, online information, and online classes. The general consensus of teens/young adults is that all library services should be online. When asked about the future of public libraries, teens and young adults don’t think that libraries, as a physical entity, will have a strong impact on their community. They DO, however, want to be able to access all of the public library digital resources.

When asked about a preference in reading print or a digital format, youngsters (0 -8) tend to lean to print, as that is what they are familiar with when parents read to them. Parents are in full support of print for the 0 – 8 age groups for reading because that is what they grew up with and are familiar with. From age 10 on, most parents are not as concerned with the version of a book; they just want their kids to read! Some of the reasons given by parents for the huge rise in digital reading in teens since 2011:

• I read e-books and that’s what my kids see. If I am modeling this behavior, I need to allow them the same option.
• E-books are available right away. Being able to satisfy an interest in a book right away is important.
• There is a wide selection of e-books.
• E-readers are affordable, some are even free.
• E-books are easy for long travel, on the way to school or in bed.
• If an e-book will get my kids to read, then they can read an e-book!

The bottom line is that reading, as a whole, is on the rise. Statistics show that e-books have been instrumental in saving the publishing industry... just like Burton pretty much saved the skiing industry with the very “nasty” snowboard! (Sorry I can’t back that up officially but who cares as long as there is a mountain covered with sierra cement to ride?!)  Many say that e-books have contributed to the resurrection of reading, but who cares as long as everyone is enjoying a book in whatever format they prefer?




Book Revenues are Up, by Kelsey McKinney on June 27, 2014, Vox Media
Children, Teens and Reading, Common Sense Media Research Brief, 2014
E-books vs Print: What Parents Need to Know, by Jenny Deam, Parent and Child/Scholastic, 2014
E-book Revolution: We’re Reading More than Ever!, by Husna Haq, Christian Science Monitor, April, 2012
Zero to Eight, Children’s Media Use in America 2013, Common Sense Media Research

Pew Reports:
A Snapshot of Reading in America in 2013
Digital Age Reading, Writing, Research
E-reading Rises in 2014
The Rise of E-reading

Teens, Tech, and Trends

Adrienne St. George is our district's Media Center Specialist. She contributes this guest post on teens and technology. You can contact her at adrienne.stgeorge@sduhsd.net.

Technology is NOT going away! That’s not a news flash, is it? The real news is that as the use and acceptance of technology expands, so do the skills of the users, especially those in the 16 – 29 age groups.

Recent reports from PEW, Common Sense Media, and other research centers, show that the use of technology as a whole is increasing dramatically from ages 0 – 60+ with very encouraging trends. The surges of use and skill vary for different age groups and for different end goals.

With the focus on teens and young adults, the research results are amazing. Referred to as millennials, access to media devices for this group has exploded in the past 2 - 3 years. Usage of media devices has more than doubled in that time. Average time of use on a device has tripled in that same time frame. Traditional screen media such as TV, DVD, video games has decreased significantly. TV is still a dominant venue but is now viewed through a DVR, is streamed or viewed from “on demand”. Access to devices is becoming more equitable to all socioeconomic groups. Smartphones are the devices that are used the most.

Why a mobile device? Why a smart phone? Reasons given to researchers:

• Always with us 
• Instant information and accessibility anytime/anywhere 
• Fingertip action 
• Timely info 
• Location sensitive 
• Instant feedback 
• Ability to create our own info and share 

Summary of research:

Teens live in a different information ecosystem:
“There is no playbook for this new environment” (13 Things to know about Teens and Technology, Pew Project, July 23, 2014.) Teens are not aliens but they are different because they are tied to technology. Technology saturates their lives. Teens are becoming a network of information. Information is another skin…natural, ubiquitous, portable, immediate, timeless, participatory, connected and social. More than 95% of all surveyed have broadband at home, more than 70% have access to the Internet on a mobile device, 78% at least have a cell phone (close to 50% have smartphones), 81% use social networking. End result: data and info is a third skin…it is just normal.

Teens live in a different learning ecosystem:
The surveyed College Board and NWP teachers agreed that although technologies are creating a somewhat distracted generation, the internet and digital tools have had a very positive impact on student research. These same teachers strongly believe that the Internet gives students a much wider range of resources than traditional resources. Students know how to access the Internet, use search engines and find information easily. They all agree that while students are very self-sufficient researchers, they believe that a lot of the information found is overwhelming and difficult for students to understand. However, they believe that this is a common problem with traditional research as well. Their main concern for students is the inability to discern bias and validity. Traditional resources were usually considered “pre-validated”. Now students must learn how to validate sources themselves. This is where teachers come in. The surveyed teachers strongly believe that digital literacy needs to be incorporated in daily lesson plans. These teachers stated that exposing students to and teaching them how to use digital resources other than the top three used (Google, Wikipedia and YouTube) would expand research skills, learning and knowledge to even higher levels.

Learning should be a process, rather than an assignment. Teens/young adults create knowledge, rather than receive knowledge. Knowledge is interactive, rather than transmitted in static structures. Learning is active with the learner managing his/her own learning process, rather than passive with the learner just listening and watching.

Overall consensus:
Teens/young adults are wired differently and lead very functional hyper-connected lives. Teens are able to handle multitasking seamlessly. Adults claim multitasking skills, yet they are aware of the different tasks they try to accomplish simultaneously, while it is effortlessly integrated in millennials. Multitasking for adults is clunky and obvious; multitasking for the under 30 age group, is fluid and natural.

The majority of survey participants strongly predict that the future, as soon as 2020, is positive for millennials. Millennials will be able to problem solve quickly and efficiently through cooperative work; they will be able to effectively search for information online, discern the quality and veracity, then communicate the findings; they will be able to synthesize and collect details from many sources into a final suggestion/solution; they will have the ability to distinguish between “noise” and the real information in forever growing amounts of data.

I've always been fascinated by what teens/young adults are capable of doing with phones, with tablets, with all of their devices for school and for fun. Teens today are bright and savvy; they want to be challenged. They want to try to do everything on their devices especially if people tell them it is not possible. It is so nice to hear clear optimism from so many reliable sources that teens really are capable of using technology successfully for learning and probably in ways adults never imagined.




More Teens Use Smart Phones to get Online, eSchool News, 3, 2013
Zero to Eight, Children’s Media Use in America 2013, Common Sense Media Research

Pew Reports:
5 Media Spaces Where People Live
Digital Age Reading, Writing, Research
Teens and Libraries in Today’s Digital World
13 Things to Know about Teens and Technology
Teens and Technology 2013

Ditch the Presentation Myths

Cross-posted at http://www.graphite.org/blog/ditch-the-presentation-myths

We’ve all been there. Assigning the students a project and class presentation seemed like a good idea at the time. Now you’re a third of the way through listening to the students, and you’ve seen enough bad Powerpoint and heard enough monotone reading of notes to last a lifetime. “Never again,” you say to yourself. “Next year, I’m assigning something different.”

I’ve found that many teachers still hold ideas about student presentations that are not true. Here are some myths for you to bust when thinking about your next “presentation” assignment:

1. Presentations take students a long time.

This may have been true in the days of 3-fold poster board and glue sticks. Today, however, even if you give students 3 weeks to create a presentation, they are likely to do it the night before it is due. Most students with access to computers or tablets can create presentations in about an hour. Such is the power of Google Slides, Prezi, or Haiku Deck.

I recently ran a workshop for principals and assistant principals in our district. As part of that, I asked them to research models of student-centered classrooms and create a presentation for their colleagues. They had 45 minutes in which to do this, and I asked them to use a presentation tool they were unfamiliar with. Every team was able to produce something. If non-tech-savvy-administrators can deliver in 45 minutes, surely our students can do likewise.

Now, obviously, you probably don’t want to have every presentation be a quick-and-dirty assignment like that. But don’t think that assigning a presentation necessarily has to be a long-term project for students.

2. Students have to stand and deliver their presentations.

“Well, OK, maybe students don’t need that long to create their presentations. But it still takes a huge amount of class time for each group to get up and deliver their presentation, right? I mean, even a 5-minute presentation, times 10 groups in a class, that’s nearly an hour of class, right?”

It doesn’t have to be. Sure, there will be times when you want students to present orally in front of groups of people. But that doesn’t mean it’s a requirement any time students create a presentation. Students could use tools like Explain Everything, Screencast-o-matic, or Educreations to make a short video. They can then share that video with you, or with the rest of the class. Homework that night could be to watch three other groups’ videos and write responses.

One of the ways I have had teachers collect links to student productions is through Google Forms. A simple form could include just two questions: “What is your name?” and “What is the link to your presentation?” The teacher then gets a spreadsheet with links to all the presentations and can do with that what they want.

3. Presentations have to be linear.

As we ask teachers to move away from the “stand-and-deliver” model of classroom teaching, we should be asking students to move away from that model as well. Part of that instructional shift means allowing the viewer of the presentation to choose how they move through the material. Tools like Thinglink, Padlet, Tackk, and GlogsterEDU allow for a non-linear delivery of information, at the discretion and control of the viewer.

Creating a linear presentation is simple: first this, then this, then that. Creating a presentation that makes sense no matter which order the viewer chooses is much harder, and will require some coaching from the teacher to make sure the student groups can accomplish this. Still, it is a valuable strategy for students (and teachers) to learn.

Of Poor Cartooning, Obvious Jokes, and Back-to-School Assignments

Joe Heller, Green Bay Press-Gazette, 2009

Jeff Parker, Fort Myers News-Press, 2012

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle, 2014

And these are just the ones I found with a few minutes of googling. OK, we know that there are only a few editorial cartoons in existence, that get rehashed over and over. (Surely there's an "Editorial Cartoon Tropes" website, like "TV Tropes", but I'm not going to search for it because I might find it.) And, yes, I get that single-panel cartoons have to include signifiers like the apple on the desk, old-school (literally) chalkboard, and ruler in the school-marmish teacher's hand, so that (older?) readers know the scene is set in a classroom. And I understand that part of the "humor" in these is the contrast between the "old" teachers and the "young" students these days with their phones and their technology and their twittagramsnapbookchatspaces and whatnot. But really? Do we have to do this same "joke" over and over again? (With a little bit more searching, I bet you could find the same cartoon for 2010, and 2011, and 2013. I'll actually give Joe Heller a little credit: in 2009, Twitter was not nearly the big deal and obvious cultural reference it became later.)

You know what would be a great assignment for the first week of school? Having students share what they posted on Twitter during the summer. Or on Instagram. Or have them create a Glogster of their photos and texts and tweets. Or contribute to a class blog about their experiences. Or compiling their Vines into an annotated YouTube video.

You know what would not be a great assignment for the first week of school, and would only indicate that you are out of touch with modern schools, children, technology, and culture in general, and that you can only imagine a school system that looks exactly like it did when you went to school decades ago? Asking students to put down their devices, ignore the writing and reflection they did during summer when school is out, have them get out a nice, sharp #2 pencil, and handwrite (maybe in cursive) a boilerplate 3-paragraph essay about "What I Did This Summer".

"But," you might object, "kids didn't do real writing during the summer. Texting and tweeting and tumblring aren't valuable as academic writing." Maybe not. But they were doing it. They were communicating with each other. Writing practice is writing practice. The inestimable Randall Munroe of XKCD, as usual, has said it better than most: