The Access Gap at Home and at School

In reading about using media and digital literacy in the classroom, I began to think about all the issues with teaching with technology: the amount of access to technology the school provides, funding for technology, and something Henry Jenkins calls the "participation gap". Throughout this teacher education program, I have continually learned about the importance of using technology in the classroom not only to enhance a lesson and student learning, but also to provide tools for the students to use themselves in order to be prepared for life, work, and/or school after their secondary education. Personally, I really feel that using technology in the right way can be very beneficial to any classroom; I am hands down ready to jump on the digital literacy train and incorporate technology into my lessons and into the work students do. I agree that there are certain skills students need to master now that incorporate the use of technology, or are best simulated by technology, yet a few things always seem to get in the way.

In reality, not all students I work with will have equal access to computers at home. In no way can I assume all my students have that access. Some students may be able to use the school's facilities or a public library's, although for others who must work or take care of the family, that would be quite difficult. With this in mind, how can I mindfully incorporate technology into student tasks so that they gain exposure, access, and develop skills to specific technological tools?

Some might say to use the school's facilities. This is actually cases quite a similar issue; not all schools provide equal access. Some schools, depending on the funding they receive, simply may not have enough money to provide enough technological tools for the amount students in the school. In most school settings I've been in, there is a computer lab (or two) in which teachers must strategically plan for and discretely fight over the reservation of the space. Are you planning a big project involving technology? Then you might need a full week of computer lab time - a full week other classes go with out access. So, as a teacher should you spread the wealth and take little nibbles of time in media center? Or should you hoard all the computer time you can get?

With these two issues, the use of technology in classrooms will take up a lot of valuable classroom time. Students with little technological access at home, will need extra time in school to do any assignment involving digital writing or other technology. Because of this extra time, it may be difficult for a teacher to be able to allow for adequate class time to work on assignments utilizing technology and still cover everything the class need to cover. With this in mind, it seems students may be merely exposed to digital learning. In order for students to develop the skills that digital media and technology can develop, the students need to be introduced to the tool, have time to play around with the tool, and be immersed in a project that involves the tool. With less than desirable availability of technology in schools and students with varying levels of access to technology outside of school, I begin to question, is mere exposure to these tools enough? It seems the students without access at home will need to most time or access within the school so they can be properly prepared. The limited access within schools makes this task very difficult.

It think this issue of technological access will be ongoing yet it will come increasingly important over the years that students gain access to and build skills that certain technologies are able to do. I guess I will have to wait for the day that I can actually use technology and digital learning in the way I have been taught throughout this program. Until then I have two options: keep all this information and ideas on the back burner, incorporating what is crucial when I can, or hoard all the computer time I can get.

Link of the Week:

Challenges and Strategies in Using Technology to Promote Education Reform

This site, a part of ed.gov, talks about some of the issues I posted above, as well as equalizing technological access, and the importance that most teachers embrace technology and use it effectively. Though it is brief, this website provides another, yet similar, viewpoint to this issue.

Differentiation for One; Differentiation for All

Throughout the course of this teacher education program, I have continually come across the topic of differentiation in all aspects of teaching and teaching English. The most important thing I have learned about differentiation is that what you do for one student, a type of student, or a particular group of students, you essentially do for all your students. By doing something like reading aloud in front of the class to help a student who has difficulty reading, you also help ELL students, auditory learners, and all learners as the instruction is reinforcing and comes in different forms. I have encountered this bit of information yet again in reading about teaching writing to students who speak with different dialects in "Dialects and Writing" from Dialects in Schools and Communities written by Carolyn Temple Adger, Walt Wolfram, and Donna Christian. This text discusses the paradox many students of English face: talking is a different language than writing.

Most speakers of English, no matter what their background, will speak differently than they write. In turn all students of English need to learn the language of written English, or rather Standard English, as this English is used in the workplace and higher education. In order for a person to navigate and properly communicate in our society, they must have a handle on Standard English. This can often be troublesome to students who grow up with different vernacular dialects where the syntax of their words, or the structures of their stories are often different than the boundaries set by Standard English. The article mentioned above discusses the importance of student from different vernacular dialects to be fluent in the Standard English form in writing. I would argue that all students have some difficulty in the differences between written and spoken English, as they are indeed different, and all students need fluency in Standard English, but it is no doubt that speakers of certain dialects will have much more difficulty than a student who grew up speaking close to Standard English.

In finding ways to help students from vernacular dialect backgrounds with their writing, the article mentions different key factors in teaching writing to these students. This differentiation the article suggests for these students will not only help the group of students they are directed for, but the variation in instruction will help all students. One suggestion the article mentions is "regular and substantial practice in writing, aimed at developing in fluency in writing" (Adger et al., 118). This is no doubt an important aspect for students of vernacular dialect backgrounds, but it will also help ELL students in their English skills, and any student in the classroom to strengthen their writing. The article also mentions strategies like teaching the different stages of writing (pre-writing, drafting, and revising), teaching writing strategies and techniques, and reading various writings of published literature to the writings of peers.

All of these strategies mentioned here and noted in the article are things I think a teacher would want to do for all of her students. It seems the important lesson here is that a teacher needs to do more than just stand in front of the class filling heads with knowledge; the teacher needs to instruct the students in a variety of ways to better reach all students despite their dialect, background, or learning style. Providing a variety of instructional methods to your students is one of the best things you can do for them. Differentiation doesn't have to mean doing one activity for ELL students, another for a student with a writing disability, and yet another for a student from a vernacular dialect. Differentiation means providing different forms of instruction and learning for your students, i.e. not doing the same activity/learning mode every day. I'm sure there are times when providing a very specified form of instruction for students of different needs will be needed, but I don't think differentiation needs to be as daunting as it seems. Providing different modes of instruction will be exciting for students and the teacher as well.

This leaves me with a couple of questions to ponder:

If teachers were to really focus on teaching in multi-modal ways, will there still be students who are left out? students who are not receiving the instruction they need?

Is it possible to reach all the different needs of students by simply providing them with different instructional modes, or do we need to tailor differentiation to specific types of students? Can we really direct our instruction to all learners and yet reach all students?

And now for the link of the week:

Center for Applied Linguistics

This website talks about communication, and making communication effective through the study of language and culture. The website talks about ELL's, dialects, foreign language learners, immigration, and more. One specific article that caught my eye is one on vernacular dialects in schools. This article talks about guidelines for teaching standard dialect, the issue of dialect, and the opportunities dialects provide. This website seems to be a useful tool for any teacher with a diverse student body.

The English Dichotomy

In reading Chapter 4 of Within and Beyond the Writing Process, by Reade W. Dornan, Lois Matz Rosen, and Marilyn Wilson, I found the multiple definitions of grammar to be quite interesting. The authors see grammar as being much more complex than a set of rules, but rather grammar is a set of rules that revolves around the speaker, the observation of language, and the ideal form of the language. Dornan, et al, defines grammar with three distinct definitions:

• Grammar I: "Linguistic knowledge that speakers of a language operate with, for the most party unconsciously -- the internalized system of rules by which we operate in our production and comprehension of language" (p. 79-8).

• Grammar II: "The descriptions of those rules that linguist have constructed from observing language in use" (p. 78).

• Grammar III: "The study of usage -- table manners of language -- that focus on 'correctness' of usage, that prescribe some feature and proscribe others. Correct usage [in this sense] primarily reflects the language patterns of some idealized version of 'Standard English' and the non-stigmatized usages of dialect patterns of middle-class speech, even though few speakers of any dialect operate with all the usage rules of 'Standard English' consistently" (p. 78).

These three distinct definitions make me think about how our language can vary so much day-to-day depending on certain social situations. I have thought about these different definitions and roles of grammar in different social situations and have come up with three places why may be more likely to use each grammar. Grammar I seems to be a definition of grammar of daily speech. These are the rules we come to be familiar with and are expected by the speakers of the same English/dialect. These are the rules that come naturally to us -- what sounds right, and are often different and more informal than say rules applied to writing. Grammar II seems to be the definition of grammar as it is studied and used in school such as: sentence diagramming, labeling parts of speech, etc. This form of grammar is the actual looking at and using of the rules of grammar that have developed. Grammar III seems to be referring to the most formal and strict use of grammar. This definition seems to be in play during times of writing, where often how we say something on paper is different than how we would say it in person. This idealized form of grammar, or "Standard English" is what we all strive for in writing because it is supposed to be a more universally understandable form of English, and the "correct" way to communicate in English. Grammar II and III seem to have a lot of overlap, and I'm sure you could say that grammar III is the one most studied in school, I feel it is a little bit of both II and III as how we speak differs from how we write.

Thinking about the "correct" English described in Grammar III, in context of the diversity of spoken English that you can find, some questions come to mind: What is the basis for these rules? Who or What determines what the English is we all strive for or conform to in our writing? These questions are definitely worth discussion. Exploring these questions with students will no doubt help students to better understand why their spoken language can differ from the written language expected of them in school and the real world. I'm sure many student share a frustration in this dichotomy of English. By bringing these issues alive to the classroom may help to alleviate that frustration and help students see the value and purpose of learning the Grammar III.

In closing, I leave you with two questions that this topic always brings up -- two questions I have difficulty finding answers to:

• Is this issue of the possible vast differences in spoken English versus written English unique to the English language? Are there any other languages with one common written form, and a multitude of spoken forms?

• Will English always have one standard/idealized form such as Grammar III? Or will the varying dialects of English become further and further removed from each other that new languages will emerge?

Link of the Week:

Do You Speak American?

This portion of the PBS Teachers website provides a unit plan for looking at how spoken and written language differs. This unit also explores the issues surrounding norms of language in both written and spoken forms as well as how current technologies may be influencing a change in the English language.

THE Debate

I can see the debate over the teaching of the Five Paragraph Essay (FPE) to be as long standing, but maybe not as provocative, as the teaching of Evolution/Intelligent Design vs. Creationism. As an English teacher with this looming debate, I may have to come to terms with the fact that many teachers may continue to teacher the FPE consistently. This makes me wonder how bad the FPE could really be. Is it that the FPE is bad, or the instruction, implications, and application of the FPE that is bad? In reading and thinking about this issue, I have come to the conclusion, the same conclusion I have come to continually throughout my teacher education, that there is a need of balance.

Teaching the FPE and only the FPE can be a dangerous thing as can never teaching a structured form of writing. I think confining students to the rigid structure of the FPE has its place in the English classroom, as does using a more free form of writing. Essentially, I think students need to be exposed to more than just the FPE due to its constrictive nature and consequence of dull robotic writing.

If a student goes through his entire secondary education only experiencing the form of the five paragraph essay, he will surely develop a distaste for writing, one that may be difficult to reverse. Even though writing in constricted form may have worked, and even been inspirational for Shakespeare, I don't think a student can find what works for them being constricted to one form only (Novick, 12). The FPE has its place in instruction as a basic, primary, and introductory form of writing. I really think the FPE should only be used in the beginning stages of writing as a way to aid students in practicing how to write and essay and learning the qualities of essay writing. Such qualities are: an attention grabbing introduction that defines the topic/problem and puts the reader in perspective, a thesis, a body that supports the thesis not in any set number of points, but enough to convince the reader of the writer's stance, and conclusion to bring everything together and give meaning (Wesley, 60). In order for a student to learn this through the instruction of the FPE, the student must be explicitly shown these qualities of essay writing in the form of the FPE.

When learning and developing something new and difficult, such as writing an essay, it helps to have a lot of structure and organization in order to "get it down". If students, in the early stages of writing development, were told to just write and include aspects of essay writing, I'm sure teachers everywhere would be overwhelmed with the varying and incoherent, pieces of writing they received. Using the FPE to aid students in developing their writing skills will give students a basic idea of how an essay is written, how to organize their thoughts, and what is expected of them in academic papers. On the other hand, using this framework for writing as the one and only framework can be quite dangerous. In only using this frame of writing, students and their writing will become as bland and robotic as the soma induced Beta's of the World State. Not only that, students themselves will become extremely bored with writing, as would anyone confined to one format. Students need the FPE to get started in their development as writers, but they also need to go beyond those restraints to help their writing to grow.

Teachers need to show students how the ideas of the FPE transfer to longer, less restricted essays. Students need to understand their learning of the FPE and see how they can use those acquired skills towards other writing. Students need to understand how certain writing needs a thesis, supporting evidence, and closure in any number of paragraphs needs to develop the ideas. Allowing students to play with essay form and structure will really help their writing to grow and expand. If students are only taught the form and structure of the FPE but not explicitly shown what the FPE means, of course the students won't be able to transfer those skills. When taught in such a way that students see the purpose and value of the form of essay they are learning, and ultimately explicitly told what essays entail, then I see no harm in teaching the FPE.

It seems the main issue with the FPE is students being taught this form with little guidance as to what skills the students learn from it how those skills transfer to other forms of writing. Personally, my distaste for the FPE lies in this aspect. I don't find anything wrong with the FPE if it is used as a way to help students be introduced into essay writing, become comfortable with the qualities of an essay, and are later encouraged and shown other forms of writing. I think having this structure to writing in the beginning stages of writing can be greatly beneficial to students, but teachers everywhere need to realize that too much of one thing is bad. Giving students other forms of writing, and variations/expansions to the FPE will help students to grow as writers and find the style that works best for them.

Site of the Week:

http://www.ttms.org/

This website, Teaching That Makes Sense, is a great resource for teaching writing. There is a link on the side bar that I particularly like called, "What makes Good Writing." The document talks about what writing is good, without saying much of anything about a set number of paragraphs. I think it is a good resource for teachers wanting to show students and other teachers essay writing beyond the five paragraph form.