Erin Scott

When it comes to language arts, the jury’s still out on the quality and effectiveness of the available software. Some schools are investing and experimenting with different products, with mixed results, while others are working with free available web 2.0 tools. Here are two case studies examining each approach.

THE SOFTWARE APPROACH

Firstline Schools, a public charter school company in New Orleans operating five schools, has aggressively pursued blended learning with hopes to help students who have fallen behind — especially after the devastating effects on schooling after Hurricane Katrina.

“We can’t imagine going back to a traditional model,” said Chris Liang-Vergara, director of instructional technology for personalized learning at Firstline. “It seems crazy with the amount of differentiation we need.”

Firstline uses Achieve3000 in some schools, a program that allows students to read a nonfiction

article everyday and answer questions related to it. But the program is dry, according to Liang-Vergara, and it can seem random and disconnected to the rest of what students are doing in class. He says he’s seen it used well, but usually by experienced teachers who are empowered to use it for the best kind of differentiation. If the teacher takes the time to search the Achieve300 database for nonfiction articles that are relevant to other class work, discusses them, and wraps them into the curriculum that works best. And the software does provide differentiation, increasing the difficulty of vocabulary and sentence structure as a reader progresses.

“When you show it to any experienced teacher, they get very excited because they think about how much time they’ll save and how much information can be at their fingertips,” said Liang-Vergara. It’s easier for the teacher to see what the student has learned and whether their reading comprehension skills are improving, while saving her grading time.

Overall, Liang-Vergara hasn’t seen the success in language arts blended learning that he’d hoped for and Firstline schools have scaled back the amount of time they use digital tools in English class. Liang-Vergara admitted that some schools have stopped using Achieve3000 partly because kids were quickly bored by it.

[RELATED: To Make Blended Learning Work, Teacher Try Different Tactics]

“The biggest issue I still see is that people are still trying to break it down when
it needs to be combined,” Liang-Vergara said. Learning to read and write requires many complimentary skills working in unison and offering a program that addresses just one skill doesn’t work as well to promote literacy as whole. Vocabulary in a text contributes to understanding meaning, literary structures give it depth, and non-fiction works about the subject matter help deepen understanding. These things can’t be parsed and require frequent back and forth with the teacher.

Still, Liang-Vergara says some software has proven more successful – like Vocab Journey, which puts words in context and uses pictures and gamification to make learning new words fun. Even putting a small portion of assessment online saves teachers time, a big factor in English classes where teachers have to grade writing. “English teachers spend so much time on assessment that it causes them not to assign much work because they know they’ll have to correct all of it,” said Liang-Vergara. Removing some of that burden with programs like Achieve3000 or Vocab Journey allows them more time for one-on-one instruction.

Liang-Vergara says software developers he’s spoken to at conferences aren’t as interested in working on innovations in language arts software as they are in math. He believes the whole market has a lot of growing to do.

THE WEB 2.0 APPROACH

For Catlin Tucker, a high school teacher in Winsor, Calif., her school has not focused on blended learning the way Firstline has, partly because the cost of software and infrastructure has been a barrier. Even if she had the choice, though, she would not use what she refers to as “canned content.” Instead, she started integrating technology naturally into her classroom on an experimental basis using free web tools.

Tucker started off by trying to improve her students’ communication skills both online and in-person by using the free online platform Collaborize Classroom, which offers more tools than an average discussion board. The online discussion, debate, and collaboration replaced homework, with assignments like posting a response to the discussion topic and responding to three peers. “It was interesting to see students who don’t engage verbally with their peers be super engaged in the online space,” Tucker said. Once those students found an online voice, she said they participated more in class discussions too.

She also realized that just because students have been exposed to technology at young ages and use it often doesn’t mean they know how to have an appropriate online discussion, a skill Tucker knows they need.

With the success of Collaborize Classroom, Tucker began to slowly integrate her classroom time with online spaces, making the transitions fluid with a clear focus on the learning goal, not the technology. She might start a discussion in class, extend it online, require collaboration through Google docs, deepen an understanding of the topic through a TED-Ed video, then pull it back into the classroom with extension activities.

For example, her vocabulary lessons — one of the few areas where she still found herself lecturing, and a necessary part of any English class — have been transformed. She now starts out by having students look at words in context and predict what they mean. Then they go home and watch Tucker’s video lecture. When they come back to class, they use mobile devices to find synonyms and antonyms, then go home and incorporate them into poems or stories. They share their work online, the class votes and the winner gets to read aloud in class. Suddenly vocabulary, a traditionally dull aspect of English class has some spice and students find a personal connection to the words they’re using.

[RELATED: How Teachers Mix Online Math With Classroom Instruction]

Tucker doesn’t teach in a wealthy school district where every student has access to a smartphone and a home computer. But if there’s one phone for every three to four students, the activity can still work. And, she doesn’t allow home computer access to become an excuse not to participate – instead she connects her students to free online resources in town.

This blended teaching style has completely changed Tucker’s classroom. “So much of my creative energy was being drained by managing the paper load,” Tucker said. “Now I read their online discussions, I see how they’re engaging in that space, but I’m not the only one giving feedback; they’re getting it from their peers too.” And while teaching this way doesn’t make her job easier, she’s more engaged too. “This is so much more creative, inventive and exciting,” she said. “As a teacher I am so much more energized.”

And she’s assigning more work than ever before. “Everything that happens online requires that they’re reading and writing as well as thinking critically, so all these different skills are being developed,” said Tucker. For her, blended learning is a good way to get away from collecting and disseminating information, instead helping students discover it on their own.

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Students at Rocketship Mateo Elementary working in the Learning Lab.

When it comes to math and literacy software, the choices are vast and varied. But over the past months, I’ve heard a recurring complaint from different school administrators: The quality of literacy software is not as high as that of math.

Why is this the case?

I spoke to Aylan Samouha, chief schools officer at Rocketship Education, a network of charter elementary schools in San Jose that allots 25 percent of students’ time at school in the computer lab, where they use math and literacy software for basic skills mastery. Time in classroom with their teacher is spent on what they call “higher-order thinking” and collaborative projects.

For math, Rocketship uses Dreambox Learning, ST Math, TenMarks and Equatia. For literacy, Compass Learning is used for vocabulary and Rosetta Stone for English language learners. Students also have independent reading time, for which they’re given “comprehension quizzes.” For both math and literacy, students who need more individualized help work in small groups of four or five with math and literacy specialists.

Samouha, who’s in charge of what software the school uses, says that the math software is “much further along than literacy.”

“It’s not like people aren’t trying to crack the code,” he says. “But the truth is that there are aspects of math, particularly at the elementary school level, that lend themselves to online learning more easily.”

In general, he points out, with any form of learning — online or otherwise — basic skills are easier to teach, grasp, and to measure than higher-order thinking and concepts. And although math does involve conceptual thinking, even at the elementary level, it’s easier to break out conceptual skills than in literacy.

Take, for example, multiplication. A student can practice and master multiplication and make improvement on basic skills with varying degrees of understanding of the concept. “A kid can spit out five-times-five quickly, whether they understand what that means,” he says.

But literacy is a different animal. When it comes to vocabulary, the definition of a word is not a simple mathematical equation. A word has different meanings in different contexts, and some have multiple meanings. “To isolate the basic skill of literacy is just much trickier to do,” Samouha says.

What’s more, the successful math software can scaffold the process, working on basic skills that lead to conceptualization, whereas in literacy the conceptualization process is immediate. “Anytime you’re starting to read a sentence, you’re already in the world of conceptual understanding,” he says.

What do they want to accomplish with literacy software? Two things: Comprehension and expression — and “almost everything falls under those big buckets,” Samouha says.

“We want a child to be able to read a text and derive meaning from that, literally understand what the author is trying to say, make connections between the text and their own experiences, and other text they’ve read,” he says. “That’s what real literacy mastery looks like with comprehension.”

With expression, the goal is for the student to be able to communicate verbally and with writing — the ability to express oneself in ways that are grammatically correct, interesting to read, presenting a logical point of view, showing a connection between what they’re reading to their own experiences, all while being as descriptive as possible.

Of course, educators do just that — they isolate each one of those skills and help students work on them individually. “But for a computer to know whether or not there’s a proper self-to-text connection is a lot trickier than finding out if they have the right answer to math problem,” he says. “We are much more cautious and protective on the literacy side. If we saw there was software that was just as effective as Dreambox is in math, we’d do that.”

Which begs the question: Why are we using software to teach literacy, if it’s not as effective.

Samouha says we need both teachers and great software.

“Learning happens best when human beings are freed up to do what they’re best at,” he says. “Teachers didn’t sign up to teach so they can teach short vowel sounds for four months. Or do times table recitation with kids. They’re teachers because they want to teach concepts and ideas.”

And especially in under-served communities, where basic skills are typically in need of “shoring up to such degree that teachers get stuck there, it’s not good for kids or teachers.”

All that said, Compass Learning does have an engaging program, and it’s shown to increase students’ Northwestern Evaluation Association scores, according to Samouha, who describes assessment as a reliable adaptive diagnostic test.

“For the very basic parts of literacy, it’s starting to make itself valuable in the process,” he says. “We’re starting to see benefits, but it’s at early stages. But literacy software right now doesn’t have as much lift as math.”

Flickr:KidPerez

We hear a lot about the promise of technology closing the achievement gap, but few studies have definitively shown this to be true. In this article in Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning by Sara Jackon, a recent study by the Center for Children and Technology delves into how digital media can make an impact on the preschool set.

By Sara Jackson

“We have some children who can operate a computer, enjoy reading books and have an extensive vocabulary,” said Rosalie Moran, curriculum director for two Head Start centers based in Harlem and the Bronx. “And we have others who have never been around other children before and need a lot of help with the social emotional skills.”

Complicating classroom education further, some of the children speak limited or no English; some have special needs, including language or learning delays.

As a group, preschoolers from low-income families are often behind on fundamental literacy skills. Studies show these children arrive for their first day of kindergarten with less emergent literacy skills than children from higher-income families.

Several years ago, four of Moran’s classrooms participated in an evaluation of how well video and interactive games produced as part of PBS’s Ready to Learn initiative could teach early literacy skills to children from low-income families.

The randomized control study of 398 children from 80 preschool classrooms, found that when coupled with professional development, a media-rich curriculum could improve early literacy skills. The 4- and 5-year-olds from low-income families who had been taught with the media curriculum showed increases in letter recognition, sounds associated with letters, and understanding basic concepts about stories and print.

“The reason it worked is that we had at our disposal high-quality media content,” said Shelley Pasnik, director of the Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center in New York City and an author of the study. “We placed an emphasis on high quality media and professional development for educators.”

The curriculum included intensive professional development and teacher-led activities with video and interactive games from the PBS television shows “Super Why!,” “Between the Lions” and “Sesame Street.”

Through training and coaching visits to the classroom, the teachers were given instruction on how and when to stop the videos and guide children’s learning.

“What was different with this study,” Moran told Spotlight, “was that the teacher was actually viewing the episode with the children and interacting with the children, stopping to ask questions, pausing in certain places.”

Moran said teachers were very enthusiastic about the curriculum and the support they received. Several of the participants have continued to use it in their classrooms after the study’s conclusion.

Pasnik said that the kids who had the most to learn made the greatest gains: “Those kids in the bottom fifth who knew the fewest numbers of letters, ended up learning the most letters.”

She points out that these results are particularly significant because literacy curricula doesn’t have a great success rate. A recent U.S. Department of Education review of experimental studies of literacy curricula found only two that had significant positive effects.

The latest round in PBS’s Ready to Learn Television grant competition awarded funding to support “transmedia storytelling” for children age 2 to 8, with the goal of producing stories that children can watch and interact with across multiple forms of media – including TV, websites, online games and mobile apps.

Pasnik says she sees a lot of learning potential in these newer technologies. Tablet computers for example, offer repetition, portability and the possibility of learning with gestural movements, all of which hold promise for preschool students.

She cautions that many of the apps being developed today place too much emphasis on academic skills and not enough emphasis on making things, discovering, sharing and turn taking.

“We do a disservice to young children in attending to a very rigid and narrow sense of math and literacy and not really paying attention to the developmental needs of this age group,” said Pasnik.

“The uptake of adoption here is far in advance of the research. But that’s not to say that we can’t be really thoughtful about what we do know about children’s development.”