iPad Literacy Program Increases Reading & Writing Ability

Footsteps2Brilliance (F2B) is an impressive educational game platform that supports students in prek - 3rd grade in learning to read and write. Their Academic Language Program for Students (ALPS) teaches young children the 1,000 key words they will need to develop a powerful reading and writing vocabulary through animated ebooks and games. There is a back end management system tracks mastery of each child's vocabulary and comprehension development as well as standards-based concepts.  The program was developed in response to the landmark Hart-Risley study on language development that shows that an underprivileged child enters school with 25% of the vocabulary they need to succeed academically.  This program helps to rectify this situation by creating a language rich environment for all children.  

There are several features that I particularly like. First, I love that the books are interactive. With F2B books literally come to life.  Each story page has animated characters that students can interact with to act out what is written on the page.  I also like that the child can have the choice of  reading the book or having the book read to him or her.  Additionally, a child can choose to read the book, and just have words they are unsure of read to them. Reading comprehension is assessed in a fun and natural way with interactive games that rewards children as they develop their comprehension skills.  Student's reading ability is tracked in a backend system that provides meaningful information to the child's teacher or parent.  With a tool like this assessing student progress, there should no longer be a need for outdated, standardized bubbletests.  Finally, I love that the program provides children with the ability to write and illustrate their own books.  

Research-based success
Reading comprehension of Calistoga preschoolers increased from 58.5 percent to 76.4 percent, with Footsteps 2 Brilliance. You can read more about what happened at the school here and in this newspaper article. Read the data behind the study here.


See for yourself
The three videos below provide great insight into how this program works. The first video shows a five-year-old girl using the program. The second brings us into it's use in the classroom and the last video is a story featured on NBC with the teacher and the parent of a student who used F2B for learning.

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Research Supporting the Benefits of Technology In Reading and Writing

Despite the fact that we’re well into the 21st century innovative educators often still have to make a case for using the tools of the world inside school. This post was written for those looking to justify their decision to use technology to support readers and writers.  Below you will find a compilation of research that outlines the benefits of technology in supporting readers and writers.


Effects of Computer Versus Paper Administration of a State-Mandated Writing Assessment
This article reports that open-ended Language Arts items that require students to generate responses using paper and pencil severely underestimate the achievement of students accustomed to writing using a computer. The article concludes by recommending that state testing programs that employ open-ended items in Language Arts provide students with the option of composing responses on paper or on computer. -Read the results of the study here.

Using Technology to Improve the Literacy Skills of Students with Disabilities
Summary of best practices in using technology to improve the literacy skills of students receiving special education services.  Topics include common literacy problems, suggestions for including assessment info into IEP development, and tools to enhance literacy skills of students with disabilities.  

Writing, Technology and Teens
This Pew Internet report indicates that teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them. I caution readers of this report to note that results in this report have much to do with that fact that few schools value real-world writing for authentic audiences as “real writing” and often don’t empower students to use tech ubiquitously for writing as writers in the real-world have access to.

iPads Make Better Readers, Writers
In a research paper titled “Unlocking Literacy with iPad,” Ohio English teacher James Harmon found that state-compiled statistics indicate that those students with iPad access in the year leading up to the Ohio Graduation Test had a 6-percent greater chance of passing the test’s reading portion than those without, and an 8-percent greater chance of passing the writing portion.

Writing Next Report
This report identifies 11 elements of current writing instruction found to be effective for helping
4th- to 12th-grade students learn to write well and to use writing as a tool for learning. The report is missing attention to 21st century writing skills such as writing for authentic audiences and creating work that is not only text-based.  There is also little attention to global connection and collaboration which is generally seen my this report as something that age and location, rather than passion-driven, and age agnostic. 
Leaders Share How Tech Has Helped Students Learn
Leaders share how they have witnessed technology has enriched literacy classrooms with students who are more engaged, excited, and better behaved and teachers are more alive and motivated.  
The Role of Technology in Primary Grades Writing Instruction
Students showed an increase in both the quality of writing and the number of words and sentences produced. Student and teacher attitudes were favorable regarding the use of a computer for composition.

Computer Use Helps Students to Develop Better Writing Skills
Study indicating that students who practiced composing on word processors were able to write better compositions afterwards.

How has writing for a world wide audience changed the way you write?
Teacher captures students insights into the importance of writing for the world rather than for a grade in school such as: 

“Now I always write as if I’m talking to a large audience, even in school.”“It makes me keep in mind that anyone and everyone is able to see it so I do not want to say something I may regret or something that may be inappropriate.”“It makes me think that I can accomplish great things.”

Student Test Scores Improved in an English Literature Course through the Use of Supportive Devices
This study investigated whether a technology-rich environment used in an English Literature classroom would make an impact on students’ passing rate on their state-mandated reading test.

iPads Credited with Reading Gains
During the four weeks of instruction, the reading comprehension of the Calistoga preschoolers increased from 58.5 percent to 76.4 percent, said Eugene Narciso, COO of Footsteps 2 Brilliance™, which offered the interactive reading and vocabulary iPad program.
Read more about the program here and in this newspaper article. Read the data behind the study here.

If you have research to add, please share a link and description in the comments section.

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Tool assesses student work more meaningfully with peer review

In traditional writing classrooms students write and teachers grade their work.  Usually the work isn’t written for an authentic audience but rather what I call the audience of one (the teacher) or perhaps some (classmates).  When we push students to do work that is not worth publishing and has no audience in mind, we are teaching them some bad lessons.  

1. What you have to say is not important enough for anyone but the teacher to read.


2. You are not good enough to have your work published.


3. Audience is not important.


4. Writing is not a tool to connect you with others who share your passions and interests.


5. What the teacher believes about your work is all that matters.

And, let’s face it.  If a secondary teacher has 180 students how much time are they really able to devote to student work?  One way to help this process is by using rubrics which is something I did in my practice as a literacy coach and library media specialist.  Students would self assess, then have two peers assess and turn that in with their papers.  This encourages students to take ownership of their work and have conversations with others about it as well.  

Today there is a cool product that helps automate this process. SWoRD is a free web-based, peer review system that was developed to help teachers organize writing assignments in a way that uses peer review as its backbone.  Students learn a lot from giving their peers feedback, and they learn a lot from getting feedback from multiple peers. SWoRD makes peer review so easy that teachers have the opportunity to assign writing without adding teacher work because the time restraints of teacher reviewing and paper grading is greatly minimized. Instead of assessing student work, teachers can be working with students to develop and grow their work.  SWoRD has a number of novel features over the standard peer review approach to make students take the task seriously and to simplify the teacher’s life. Once a teacher signs up for an account and creates a class w/ assignments it is ready for students to sign up for their accounts and join your class. Students then submit their papers and SWoRD automatically assigns them for review to their peers. As part of the assignment set-up the teacher provides the students with reviewing rubrics. They use this combination of comments and ratings to anonymously evaluate and offer useful advice in revising the paper. This valuable exercise gets student actively involved in thinking about (and articulating) what makes their writing “good.” What is also powerful about SWoRD is that work can not only be shared with peers, but the teacher can set it up so work can also be shared with mentors, family and others whose feedback could be valuable.  

Will students take these peer review tasks seriously? SWoRD not only takes into account if they actually completed the reviewing tasks but it also gives students the opportunity to respond to the reviews through back-evaluation. Students as authors respond to the reviews and provide a helpfulness rating that figures into the reviewer’s reviewing grade.

Once reviewing and back-evaluation are completed SWoRD automatically grades the papers and reviews based on a number of features.  First, SWoRD examines and weighs each reviewer's evaluations through its own unique algorithm. This is used for grading each review activity. Also, this measure is used for computing each writer's writing quality. It helps writers from being penalized by unqualified reviewers.

The teacher determines the % value (typically, Task= 20%, Writing= 40% and Reviewing= 40%) of the following grading categories: task grade (what percentage of assigned reviews and back evaluations were done), writing grade and reviewing grade to determine the overall grade.

The Writing Grade is basically an average of what the reviewers rated a paper, with some minor adjustments. First, the system calculates the reviewing accuracy of each of the reviewers. Rather than an equally weighted average across reviewers, the system weights higher accuracy reviewers more. So, if one of the reviewers is either flipping coins or is very confused about how to do the reviewing, that reviewer's ratings make up a smaller portion. Second, the system does curving----what matters is how well the student wrote relative to others in the class. The teacher determines the curve (what the average grade will be). Third, if the teacher also grade a draft, those ratings are included in the paper grade, but the teacher determines how much their ratings count relative to student ratings. Finally, if a draft was submitted a little bit late (during what SWoRD calls a “grace period”), the student will be docked a few points (also determined by the teacher).

The Reviewing Grade is basically an average across drafts of the following two pieces: the accuracy grade and the helpfulness grade (minus any penalties for submitting reviews during the grace period). The accuracy grade is the degree to which the student rated papers on every reviewing dimension in the same quality order as the average rating given by other reviewers to those same papers. If they loved papers that others hated or if they hated papers that others loved, then their accuracy score goes down. This accuracy number is curved, so what matters is how accurate they are relative to the accuracy of other reviewers. The helpfulness grade is the extent to which authors thought their review comments were generally helpful. The first step is to normalize each author's ratings (some authors might be cranky across the board or overly nice across the board). Then the average rating they got across reviews is calculated. Then the system looks at how helpful reviews were relative to others in the class?

In short, SWoRD does a lot of behind the scenes work that allows teachers to focus on teaching and students to focus on writing.  The final writing is also more likely to writing that is ready for publishing to a real audience because it has been thoughtfully vetted by the writer and his peers.  

SWoRD is a free, educational tool that is available to teachers worldwide. To sign up for an account you can visit: http://sword.lrdc.pitt.edu/sword.  For more information you can visit https://sites.google.com/site/swordlrdc. 

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Reading 2.0: Where is the Love?

My cousin Laura Nadler Scott just published her first book, Where is the Love?

As described by award-winning journalist and writer Mikey Rox, the "story of little Leni Lovebird reminds us that it's all too easy to take what we have for granted and that often it's what's in front of our eyes that we fail to see. In the end though, we always end up back where we belong: Home. Fitting, too: that is where the heart is, after all."

As I went to the publisher site to check out the book preview, what struck me was that the entire book is available in a beautiful digital format using ISSUU. Which you can view here.



I continued through the publisher site and saw that there were several other books available like this one:



Then I went to the ISSUU site and there are so many free digital publications available there that will become a powerful resource for any innovative educator and their students. What is even most powerful is that with a site like this every student and teacher has the ability to become a published author for free by publishing works such as this one from nine-year-old Dylan Matthew Winger a student who has moved from 20th century "Hand-it-in Writing" to 21st century "Publish-it Writing."



However, just like with Tweeting, perhaps the most powerful transformation in 21st century reading, writing, and publishing is the power of the conversation which is not possible with paper books and rarely occurs with hand-it-in writing. You see books published on ISSUU provide book and magazine authors and their readers the unique ability to have a conversation by providing commenting and rating functionality.

Additionally, the site also provides analytics which give writers insight into their popularity by number of views and also indicates any sites that link to them. This is truly authentic publication that connects students to their audience in a real way. You can see what this looks like in this publication of The Paw Print, a student newspaper from Lonoke, Arkansas.


Here are the comments and analytics showing number of views and who links to the newspaper.


















What a terrific way for innovative educators to provide their students with authentic opportunities to engage with a book author and other readers around the world. You can try it yourself by visiting this book on the ISSUU site at this link. After logging on to ISSUU you will be able to rate and comment on any book.

Innovative educators can easily reach out to their personal learning network and find other teachers who might want to share the book with their students. Classes reading the book can contribute to the rating of the book and they can comment and converse with each other, and ideally with the author as well! Innovative educators interested in conversing with this author can friend Laura Nadler Scott on Facebook with a "personal message" indicating that your class is reading the book, will be commenting, and that you'd love for her to respond to some of their questions and comments. I'm sure she'll be happy to do so.

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Yearbook Yourself - Great Resource for Innovative History, Social Studies, and Writing Educators

I came across a site called Yearbook Yourself which allows you to take a photograph of yourself and see how your yearbook picture may have looked from the 1950s all the way to the year 2000. In addition to making the photo the site tells you a bit about the trends of the time. My friends/colleagues and I had a great time making albums of one another and posting them on Facebook. Our other friends and colleagues got a kick out of them too.

It was really cool to imagine myself as a high school senior in each of those eras. The 80s picture happened to look a lot like the big-haired photo I had of myself in my 1985 senior photo that I have, and laugh about today.

As an innovative educator the thought immediately came to mind that this would be a great way to launch an American History unit...letting students really place themselves as they were actually a character in history. I was also thinking that if the social studies/ history teacher and literacy/ writing teacher were working collaboratively this could turn into some interesting writing and projects. I'm sure there are many other great ideas other innovative educators can come up with as well.

Featured along the right of this page are photos of me in the 60s, 70s, 80s, then as a boy in the 90s.

Below you'll see some pictures of one of my colleagues and my director. Take a look, then hop on over to www.yearbookyourself.com and try it out. If you use this idea with your students, please share how it went!








Do you recognize any of them :PPP

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Finally, A True Reading, Writing, Publishing Machine - XO 2010

Unlike some other laptops, you certainly could not accuse the new OLPC XO of being a business device thrown into a school. With its new open book design comprised of two touch-enabled screens that can transform into a keyboard when placed on its side, this is a true reading/writing/publishing machine. Placed face open not only does the XO offer two usable screens, but it also becomes a device where two people can work collaboratively-one on each screen.

When I saw the new XO and read the reviews I reflected on a conversation I had years back with Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Director Lucy Calkins as I attempted to convince her of the importance of laptops in the classroom. She said, "Why on earth would I buy laptops for each student? If I was going to spend $1500 per child, I'd rather purchase a library of books for each of them." I retorted saying a laptop is like providing every student with a vast library of books. I think I may have moved her thinking a bit, but while she agreed she could see how laptops could be a valuable coaching tool for her staff (topic for another post), there was still a leap to be made in convincing her of their usefulness as a student learning tool.

Like many literacy experts Lucy thinks of paper bound books when she thinks of reading, and paper notebooks when thinking of writing. At the same time numerous studies indicate that today’s digital native students, when given the choice, spend a great deal more time using computers to read and write than they do using traditional paper books and notebooks. The new XO laptop appears to be uniquely designed to bridge this gap between paper-trained adults and today’s millennial students by offering a device that looks and feels like it is designed for digital native reading, writing and publishing in a way digital immigrants can appreciate. It’s finally a device that brings to life the concept that this really is a tool positioned to bring an infinite amount of books and other reading materials right into the hands of students. In his, "Can the $100 Laptop Change the World?" interview with Laptop magazine, OLPC's Nicholas Negroponte shares that with this device, suddenly, a child has access to millions of books. Even more important, children can collaborate, can make things and can learn by doing.” As a former literacy coach and library media specialist I can tell you the countless hours I spent helping teachers acquire classroom libraries for general reading, for reading in the content areas, for reading by interest, etc. We would write grants, go to book fairs, beg, steal, borrow, type books in word processors, etc. etc. This was a lot of work and at the end we still struggled to have enough books to meet the needs of a class. It was a turn off for many in moving away from easy to acquire basal reading programs.

To date digital reading and writing is often neglected in literacy education, but it is where the Millennial generation chooses to spend the majority of its reading and writing time. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that student Bloggers, in addition to doing more types of writing and writing more frequently, are also among the strongest proponents of the importance of writing. This is correlated to another finding from the report stating that writing for an authentic audience motivates students to write and write well.

Since we know that many students use various technologies to communicate, a shift in the mediums we use with kids to communicate in education should follow. While I’ve already seen how XO’s can make a positive difference in the classroom, the new design appears to be even better situated to help make that shift by offering a tool that looks and feels like it’s been designed to harness the educational power of the device. What's great about the XO is it really simulates the look and experience of a book, but with a whole lot more functionality such as speaking text, instantly defining unknown words, translating text, highlighting, voice commenting, interactivity, dictionary, encyclopedia, video, and so much more.

With the new design and a targeted $75 targeted price point for 2010, the XO is sure to get hugs and kisses from even the most skeptical. This is a device that will literally push the transformation of education because with these specs and price point even the most reluctant will have to think twice. The future is now and the world of education needs to step up and start teaching to it. Now it looks like there's a device that will be a great partner in helping to make this happen. As the educational technology professional development manager for the largest school district in the U.S. you better believe that the new XO along with other low-cost laptops will transform how I work with our vendors and partners. If it is not on their radar to test out how their product or service can be implemented in schools using sub laptops, conversations will cease until they agree to explore this option. It is the responsibility of people like me to push and drive our digital immigrant educational partners to start working and thinking in 21^st Century ways that will appeal to our students. Even if these partners are not comfortable doing so…our students deserve it!

More Information

First Look: OLPC XO-2 - May 2008 review from Laptop magazine featuring pictures and video.

Watch Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, describe how the One Laptop Per Child project will build and distribute the "$100 laptop.

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