Abstract
"The Common Core" distracts educators away from a pressing need: training in digital literacy. Access to technology is access to power. Without training and resources education continues to drive a larger wedge between the haves and have-nots. With, at best, a casual mention of digital
literacy, the Common Core ensures only one thing—as the Digital Renaissance
evolves we are all at risk of being left behind.
What the Common Core Missed
As Digital Literacy provides access to information—and access to power—this
Digital Renaissance exposes the haves and the have-nots in our country. While education must always
remain pedagogy-driven, society’s immersion in technology can not be ignored by
educators. Without the correct
training and focus on a Common Core built on the needs of this society,
teachers will no longer be able to help students unlock
their futures.
Teachers need immersion and training in technology in order that
students may have immersion and training in technology. Technology passes books as the access
point to information and power. In a 2008 PEW study, researchers learned that the primary
source for research done at or for school is the internet: 94% of teens use the
internet at least occasionally to do research for school and nearly half (48%)
report doing so once a week or more often. Without a revised Common
Core, we are in danger of contributing to an even greater divide of haves and
have nots—and it isn’t all about having the money to supply the technology. Permitting a culture of teachers of
haves and have-nots is my greater fear—those who have the comfort, experience,
and training to immerse themselves and their classes in digital literacy and
those who simply have not.
Technology is largely taught in isolation. Computer rooms grow in our schools while other classrooms are lucky to house one or two
computers. This Sex Edification of
technology contributes to an educator’s fear or resistance. Rather than synthesize digital tools
with real-world applications and core curriculum, the digital tools sit on
tables like $1,000 encyclopedias or typewriters. Just like Sex Ed, we tend to believe "someone else will
teach it" and do so in isolation.
The fact is, we are online.
We are digital readers. We
are digital writers. All roads intersect and we have redefined Digital Reality
with people. Within the last
decade Digital Reality shifted from a game played on an LED battlefield to a
way of life. In many ways, we live
every moment of our lives in a digital reality because the world is
making more land—a digital landscape.
Yet instead of training educators, young and old, to engage inspiration
and inventiveness, American politics burns the digital landscape right from
under our feet, almost as fast as it can be created, with the oversights of the
Common Core.
The axiom good writing is good writing will never be displaced. Whether we teach with chalk, white
board markers, or Smartboards (which some will consider outdated by the way), the fundamental truths of reading, writing, and
arithmetic remain among the few constants in education, yet we stand on the
frontier of a Digital Revolution and the national plan is fragmented and
weak...actually, there is no plan. With only a too casual yawn
and nod at technology, the Common Core nudges educators to rewrite curriculum
built on international testing standards.
We can’t just leave using technology and digital literacy to the whim of
individual teachers—yet this is what the Common Core establishes.
Common Core Oversight #1: No
specific mention or acknowledgment of digital literacy
Without the appropriate level of
leadership and training, computer labs can best be labeled technology dumps as
educators are left to decide for themselves—depending on their school’s budget
and climate—how best to incorporate technology in the classroom. For what we do and produce in our
American classrooms, Underwoods, hardback encyclopedias, and tri-folds are
currently just as effective as computers—given two classes, one with technology
and one with typewriters, books, and cardboard, we would see little difference
in the products between the classes.
Until there is a common training
program and goal built on digital literacy, educators will continue to use new
technology in old ways because the old ways are rooted in the financial soil of
testing and achievement. What
message is reinforced when our schools receive Race to the Top funds and
selective waivers from the No Child Left Behind requirements all in the name of
carrying the torch for the Common Core?
What incentive exists to grow with the technology? How will we ever expect educators to
see new technology as anything other than a digital poster, encyclopedia, or
way to type and print?
In reality, we will fail our students
when it comes to digital literacy and this new access to power.
Education is failing—we are
failing to be led. We are failing
to be supported. We are failing to
be recognized for all that we achieve with technology in spite of the “you’ll
figure it out” model. Buttressed
by the financial obligations of Achieve, Inc., the ACT, and the College
Board, the Common Core supports
the testing business. Who is in
the business of supporting, leading, and recognizing educators? Who is in the
business of supporting and leading technology use in education? Educators. I assure you, we will figure it out. Yet, along the way, we fight district
by district for what we need, to overcome the inequities from school to school,
and only if we’re lucky and blessed some of us fight to bring American
education into the Digital Renaissance.
Common Core Oversight #2: Reading
The Common Core does little to
encourage adequate growth and progress of technology use in the K-5 Reading
Plan.
Listing no formal digital reading
expectations among its Foundational Skills, the Common Core mentions in its
Reading Standards that students should analyze how writing is affected by
different modes, particularly multimedia.
A modest, but promising start considering “multimedia” does not
explicitly mean digital.
Multimedia can mean photography, a poster, a set of slides. Depending on the whim, comfort, or
training of the teacher, an informed exposure to digital reading may never
occur for many students.
Additionally, and equally as
distressing, in the Common Core Reading Plan, from the 6th through 8th grades, students are asked to compare and contrast different
forms, including multimedia. Even if I imply “multimedia” as digital and
online, it does not mean others teachers will—education outgrows that word on a
daily basis.
Digital reading for citizens and
consumers in our society is a non-negotiable skill. It is a must-have. Perhaps
this dearth of digital reading is a reflection of the comfort level that our
Common Core designers have with the K-8 age range handling costly digital
hardware. Perhaps they have
well-founded fears of elementary and middle school students seeing pornography
or graphic violence on the internet.
Perhaps the focus in K-8 should be more on the skill of analysis than the
digital vehicle through which the analysis occurs. This is plausible until we consider the next phase in the
Common Core progression.
Sadly, from 9th-12th grade there are no digital (or multimedia) reading
expectations. There are no
expectations for students to interact with what they read digitally. There are no expectations to instruct
students in how to be a savvy digital reader and consumer. None. Zero. Digital
reading, disguised or misinterpreted as multimedia, ends at the 8th grade. In our Common Core, digital literacy may never develop for
some of our students.
Is this plan driven by pedagogy and
the needs of an emerging societal shift?
Or is it the architecture of a financially asphyxiated team regarding
education through test-colored lens?
Common Core Oversight #3: Writing
Heroically, the anchor standards for
writing in the Common Core ask students from the fourth grade through high
school graduation to “use technology, including the Internet, to produce and
publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.”
The focus words are produce, publish,
interact, and collaborate—no explicit mention of achieving these things
digitally other than through use of the Internet. While the Internet is one important acre of the emerging digital
landscape it does not cover everything.
Suggesting Internet equals digital literacy is already an old-fashioned
understanding of technology; I’m reminded of Rupert Murdoch sounding out of
touch recently as he railed against Google as an Internet pirate. An illustration of just how confused
people in power can become; we so often mistake the size of someone’s bank
account for the breadth of one’s knowledge.
Educators are forced to imply the
word “digitally” within the expectations of the Common Core—but what happens
when that is not implied? The
problem with the language in the Common Core is that “digital” is implicit and
therefore this aspect of the Common Core is open to the vagaries of a teacher’s
digital comfort level.
For example, if I show my students a
sample of an essay (on the internet), and then students brain storm ideas face
to face while hunting for topic ideas (on the internet), then type a paper on a
laptop while checking my requirements for the assignment on our school website
(on the internet), then save the essay to the school server (on the internet)
and print it wirelessly in order that I might tack their essays across the
walls in my classroom, haven’t I then fulfilled the expectations of the Common
Core: produce, publish, interact, and collaborate? I included the internet and I can complete that assignment
in less than a week.
Fundamentally, I’d hope the Common
Core meant to express that our students also digitally produce, digitally
publish, digitally interact, and digitally collaborate. Embedded in what it means to be alive
in 2012, much of the world communicates through digital means—if we leave these
emerging digital tools to the next Angry Birds or just to keep in touch with family
and friends then we lose—and you can point your fingers right at us, the
American educators, because we will be working in a system which fails all of
us.
It is not too late for American
education to right itself and become active participants in the digital
literacy renaissance. We belittle
the tools of technology when we do not actively reach to train our teachers and
then our students to use them.
Otherwise, computers are little more than toys, typewriters,
encyclopedias, or delivery systems for web-based supplemental tools such as
Study Island (which provides little more than supplemental worksheets and
activities on-line). Technology in
education often suffers beneath the yoke of simply pulling the same lessons
built on the same expectations of tools-gone-by.
Why? Because that is all we know—it’s what we were raised
on. A computer works like a
typewriter, works like an encyclopedia, works like a tri-fold; therefore, that
is all I’ll expect of it.
It is no longer enough to put
computers in schools and roundly call it a success. Educators need training in digital literacy, but that takes
having a plan. Currently, teacher
training programs such as the National Writing Project are under the gun to
have its funding eradicated. If we
ever really want to see our young people grow into creators and innovators,
then we need teachers trained and constantly practicing and talking all aspects
of the art of teaching—added to this is the digital component all teachers need
training in digital literacy.
We seem to be working backwards—the
talk is that teacher training is a target of upcoming economic cuts and yet we
roll out a Common Core entrenched in testing. Write your Senators and Congressmen to take a long hard look
at the Common Core and then at the digital landscape. They won’t have to look far to see it—its inspiration is
burning all around them.
Common Core Oversight #4:
Assumption
Now there is a caveat for the Common
Core—intended as merely a guide it assumes that districts can add and modify as
they see fit. This is a big
assumption by our best and brightest.
Irrespective of neglect born from pedagogy or finance, we as educators
can’t in good conscience leave this emerging and critical skill to the hope and
discretion of “do as you see fit.”
Digital literacy skills are a must have for every child. We can’t assume that it will get
done. We can’t assume that
all kids have access to it at home—we have to demand training, resources, as
well as the leadership. We need to
demand a better plan—we can measure training. To the educational leadership, raise up your teachers,
expect more—and arm them with the tools to do more.
Today, the Common Core leaves our
young people digitally unarmed.
Students will file out of graduation and into a world milling and
seething with technology…and we will have barely touched on it unless a rogue
teacher exhibits the comfort and expertise to use it and teach with it.
The one thing that education should
have going for it is technology—the depth and quality of our nation’s education
should rise along with the continued evolution of technology. We’re in the infant stages of a Digital
Renaissance— and while our biggest and brightest sleep on this issue, we have a
professional responsibility as educators to make ourselves digitally
literate.
I also hold the mirror up to
myself. We need to take the
responsibility for the digital literacy that this generation will need to
thrive and survive not only in the workplace, but in the family unit. Digital literacy has infiltrated our
television screens, our smart phones, and in our daily moment to moment
communication with our family and friends—all of which sits in many of our
pockets or bags.
Digital literacy is about more than
recognizing the Twitter or Facebook icon at bottom of a commercial, it is
bigger than the fear of graphic imagery that our young people could be exposed
to on the internet. You know they
print pornography with paper and ink too, but that never stopped us from going
to the library, bookstore, or handing out paper and pencil. Avoid the luxury of excuses—make
yourself more digitally literate.
Common Core Oversight #5: All
Teachers Left Behind
Recently I wrote a grant for
technology so that my students could be digital writers and readers more
consistently and found myself presented with a concern that technology would
replace pencil and paper. The insinuation
slanted technology more towards fun or idle time and pencil and paper as the
emblem of diligence and getting our knuckles dirty with graphite. Every adult in education is responsible
for that perception.
Digital writing still requires that
writers move through the recursive phases of planning, reflecting, drafting,
and revising—the skill is still the skill, and, no, technology is not essential
to the core of that skill, but we can't simply bring only traditional mindsets
to current literacy practices. The
day is coming when reading and writing on paper will not be good enough in our
world. The definition and cultural
concept of a textbook is about to be exploded by Apple and its
competition. Digital
technology creates new skills and redefines old skills—life is about growth and
change. Depending on your
perspective I suppose it is also about withering and dying…and being left
behind.
I came across the anecdote that a
group of teachers, instructed on some advancements to school email, learned
students would also have their own school email accounts. A concerned teacher questioned why we
would give middle school kids this kind of access—how could we possibly trust
them? Can’t they abuse this? What about if one kid cyber bullies
another through the email we handed to them? The teacher leading the group retorted, “Why would we ever
trust them with pencil and paper?”
These concerns illustrate the
boogeymen that can be conjured without the proper exposure and training to just
what these tools are, what they can do, what they can’t do, and how they
improve education and our collective quality of life. It also demonstrates how far behind some of us are—eh,
Rupert?
If we allow the innovations of technology to serve merely as
distractions or vehicles of our social lives then that is all we are going to
get out of them.
Digital tools aren’t used in schools
because they are cute or the latest thing or a vehicle to produce a sexier
reproduction of a tried and true lesson, but they should be used because they,
and only they, address the specific and unique skills emerging in today’s
world.
We underwhelm ourselves sometimes.
Politicians, parents, and educators
need to share in a common core.
Our core should be built on the recognition that the digital age is here
and it is a renaissance that we need to engage. We can’t continue to be so casual about it. We need to expect more of each other
and become active members of the current Digital Renaissance in order that our
students have a chance to grow into active creators and innovators who network
professionally and socially as easily as they speak.
If we want measurable results, train
your teachers with an eye on the specific needs and evolution of society. Being an adolescent in the early stages
of the 21st century looks little like the early
stages of the 20th century—when typewriters, the New
England Primer, and paper flourished.
You cannot teach what you have not
made your own. You cannot inspire unless you too are inspired. Quite frankly, the Common Core does
little to inspire any of us, and in the end, may only serve to leave all us
behind.
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| art by Sarah Louette |
Chasing Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson
