Overcoming Low Digital Literacy among Teacher Education

Faculty The Virtual Collaborative Model

REBECCA J. BLANKENSHIP, PH.D.ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ESOLDIRECTOR OF TESOL PROGRAMS

FLORIDA AGRICULTURAL & MECHANICAL UNIVERSITYrebecca.blankenship@famu.edu

SITE_2015

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5SESSION SUMMARY

In order for the 21st century teacher to acquire the necessary professional skills to effectively instruct today’s digitally native students, institutional constraints must be lifted such that the institution does not impede the ability of the pedagogue to grow beyond what is expected to that which is instructionally transformational.

After examining current trends in teacher preparation programs, there is a noticeable gap between the digital literacy of faculty and the digital literacy of students.

Because of this deficiency, digitally literate teacher candidates have looked to social media to form their own "secret" communities of learning external to the university classroom.

The purpose of this round table discussion is to offer a hybrid training model to assist teacher education faculty in increasing their digital literacy skills.

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5DIGITAL NATIVES –

ARE THEY REAL?

The Myths and Realities of Teaching “Digital Natives”

Before postulating that teacher candidates are in need of a set of culturally responsive digital literacy skills to effectively instruct the 21st Century student, a consensus must be reached as to whether this need actually exists.

While calls for the transformation of 21st century teacher training programs to be more reflective of the modern student’s digital literacy skills, it is important to situate this need in the definitional terms of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.”

However, it was not until the turn of the 21st century that a specific label was applied to students born after 1980 at the precipice of the personal computing and mobile revolution.

Here, it is important to emphasize that students born prior to 1980 were exposed to varying technologies as well, but a specific classification was not postulated until 2001 by Marc Prensky.

Prensky (2001) labeled students born after 1980 as digital natives.

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5DIGITAL NATIVES –

ARE THEY REAL, CONT.?

The Myths and Realities of Teaching “Digital Natives”, cont.

Adding to the definitional issues surrounding who should be identified as a “digital native” is the lack of empirical research-based evidence that such a generation of students actually exists.

Further complicating the definitional arena is the suggestion in some studies that, while students use different technologies for different educational and social purposes, those uses may not translate to classroom practice, thus the case for the argument here that they form “secret communities” specifically to address this gap.

Waycott, et al. (2010) suggest that students tend not to intermingle the technologies they use for personal use versus technologies they associate with classroom instruction further complicating the conclusions of studies that have suggested that the digital native learns best only when immersed in an instructional setting that maximizes currently trending technologies.

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5DIGITAL NATIVES –

ARE THEY REAL, CONT.?

The Myths and Realities of Teaching “Digital Natives”, cont.

In order to arrive at a justification for a pedagogic paradigm shift driven by currently trending technologies, there must be some consensus in basic terminology moving forward.

Taking into consideration the fact that the empirical evidence of the true existence of a digital divide among so-called natives and immigrants is still emerging, for the purposes of the writing here, the postulation will be that there is a distinction.

As such, Prensky’s terminology will be referenced while keeping in mind that the definition is problematic and does not necessarily account for the myriad of cultural, economic, psychological, and social nuances that factor into the technology choices made by the 21st century teacher candidate.

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5THE EFFECTS ON TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS

OF LOW DIGITAL LITERACY AMONG FACULTY

While digitally literate students are embracing and integrating new technologies into their course work, faculty and university programs are lagging behind.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that universities often minimalize the importance of digital literacy and marginalize its integration into existing curriculum.

The situation is so incongruent that many students have taken to forming, via social media such as Facebook, what has been characterized by Kim (2013) as “secret groups”.

Waycott, et al. (2010) characterized this notion as a distinction between technologies that students and faculty use for “living” and those they use for “learning” and how the two can be seamlessly blended to provide the most optimal learning platform.

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5A NEW MODEL

FOR FACULTY TRAINING

As more digitally literate teacher candidates enter teacher education programs, they expect their candidate training programs to reflect a digitally rich environment as the technologies they use change.

These digital natives crave interactions and simulations that mirror activities in daily life, and this is evinced by the increase in the use of social media cites such as Facebook and Twitter as external learning opportunities.

This is particularly noted with the rise in use, especially in the last decade, of the personal computer, mobile devices, and social media (Prensky, 2010; Horizon Report, 2014).

The transition from face-to-face to hybrid and virtual pedagogy must reflect the alleviation of institutional constraints and sufficient allocation of resources so that the participant experiences positive socio-cognitive movement (Freire, 1990).

At Levels 1 and 2 of the socio-cognitive scale (Lantolf & Aljaafreh, 1994), the ZPD is closed and remains closed until some interaction between the novice and master enables the ZPD to open.

Once institutional constraints are lifted so that the interactions become more implicit, the novice then experiences level 3.

Through these iterative progressions, the novice moves from an intermental to an intramental state as the ZPD opens and self-regulation can occur .

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5A NEW MODEL

FOR FACULTY TRAINING, CONT.

As Rosen (2010) pointed out, there has not been a study conducted to suggest if or how teachers are using virtually based programs, such as popular social media sites, to supplement their training that they perceive as non-responsive to their preferred “anytime, anywhere” learning preferences.

Therefore, in considering the technical skill set of the 21st-century teacher, teacher education faculty must respond in kind by filtering their existing face-to-face models through a model such as the Virtual Collaborative Model to enable the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to open and salient training can occur among teacher education candidates (Vygotsky, 1978).

External to the institutional setting, many teacher candidates are regular users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

If the efficacy of using social media is filtered through the VCM, not only will this facilitate digital literacy among faculty but also enable the acquisition of pedagogic knowledge for the preservice teacher candidate.

However, caution is suggested before radical changes are made. Simply relocating existing face-to-face training to a hybrid or virtual environment does not necessarily suggest that faculty will internalize a new set of digitally infused pedagogic skills.

Learning objectives for any training must be made abundantly clear and simulations of how to incorporate trending technologies into existing course frameworks is crucial.

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5THE VIRTUAL COLLABORATIVE MODEL

Virtual collaborative model of sociocognitive iterations from the face-to-face to virtual environments.

Overcoming Low Digital Literacy among Teacher Education

Faculty The Virtual Collaborative Model

REBECCA J. BLANKENSHIP, PH.D.ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ESOLDIRECTOR OF TESOL PROGRAMS

FLORIDA AGRICULTURAL & MECHANICAL UNIVERSITYrebecca.blankenship@famu.edu

SITE_2015