Wertz
Wertz | Bitstrips and Storybird:Jessica
WritingA.
Development
in a Blended Literacy Camp
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Bitstrips and Storybird:
Writing Development in a
Blended Literacy Camp
T
oday’s young adolescents live
in a world that is continuously
mediated by the Internet. “No
previous technology for literacy has been
adopted by so many, in so many different
places, in such a short period, and with
such profound consequences” (Coiro,
Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008, p. 2).
In our society that is invariably mediated
by the Internet, today’s young adolescents are constant consumers and producers of text via the World Wide Web.
If our goal as literacy teachers is to prepare students for the demands of the 21st century, then
the ways in which we engage middle level students with literacy in school must be in concert with the ways they authentically engage
with literacy out of school (Xu, 2008). This article describes the integration of Web 2.0 technologies in writing instruction with upcoming
fifth- and sixth-grade students during a Summer Digital Literacy Camp; it also details how
the students and I learned alongside each other
as we “played” with digital literacy to write
persuasive comic strips and digital storybooks.
(To see a video about the Summer Digital Literacy Camp, go to http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=C08f0ccnzTY). Through these literacy
experiences, students used new literacies practices that emphasized multimodalities, socially situated practices, and their own identities and lived
experiences to learn key components of persuasive and narrative writing.
The Common Core English Language Arts
State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of
Chief State School Officers, 2010) mandate that
students in grades K–12 use a variety of digital
tools to produce and publish their writing. Meeting these Standards requires teachers to use and
teach with digital tools to mediate their students’
writing development. Furthermore, integrating
digital literacies in instruction affords an opportunity for teachers to engage students in authentic learning experiences that support the other
English language arts Standards. In the “Position
Statement on Multimodal Literacies,” NCTE
(2005) recognized that even young students are
often more literate in digital production than
many of their teachers. This dynamic changes
the traditional roles of teachers and students in
today’s classrooms, as teachers no longer hold all
the knowledge and expend it to their less knowledgeable students (Alvermann, 2002). As young
adolescents bring knowledge and expertise about
digital tools and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media
into our classrooms (Guzzetti, 2009), we must
adapt to our new roles as learners and become
“pedagogically nimble” (Vasudevan, DeJaynes,
& Schmier, 2010, p. 6) in order to foster literacy
learning with these young experts (Chandler-Olcott & Lewis, 2010).
Integrating new literacies into our teaching
requires “using” these digital tools in instruction.
Doing so may also involve shifting the ways participation and collaboration are valued so as to
create spaces in which students can share their
expertise (Hagood, 2009). It further requires
educators to understand the complex ways students engage with multimedia (Hagood, Stevens,
Copyright © 2014 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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& Reinking, 2004) and to revalue the power of
“play” in literacy learning (King & O’Brien,
2004; Vasudevan, DeJaynes, & Schmier, 2010).
Summer Digital Literacy Camp
To meet the needs of both a graduate-level reading certification program and the local school
district, a midwestern university created a summer digital program to provide literacy intervention for upcoming fifth- and sixth-grade students
who needed additional support in literacy. Following the research-based practices that seemed
to increase students’ interest and motivation
in literacy learning (Fingon, Frank, & Kawell,
2010; Haddix, 2012), our camp was designed as
a blended learning model, employing a “mixture
of synchronous and asynchronous techniques
by means of both face-to-face, online, and offline methods for instruction” (Massoud, Iqbal,
Stockley, & Noureldin, 2011, p. 1). Our blended
learning delivery included interactions between
students and tutors in both a traditional and an
e-learning environment using free software programs and the Internet. The eTutors (undergraduate teacher candidates) were facilitators
who contributed remotely from their summer
locations. The two graduate student tutors were
fulfilling their practicum requirement for licensure by facilitating the literacy camp on campus
and providing face-to-face instruction in writing
and guided reading.
For a period of three weeks, 12 upcoming
fifth- and sixth-grade students met daily on the
university campus from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Students were divided into three groups and rotated between three stations. The first station focused on face-to-face guided reading and was led
by a practicing third-grade teacher working to
earn a master’s in reading education. The second
station focused on face-to-face writing and was
led by myself, a practicing ninth-grade English
teacher working to earn a reading endorsement.
The third station offered individual instruction
online with undergraduate eTutors majoring in
early or middle childhood education. Individual
tutoring was mediated using iChat and various
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websites to engage students in interactive word
sorts, phonics and fluency activities, and vocabulary development.
Each student group Integrating new literacies
visited each station once
per day. At the start of into our teaching requires
the summer camp, the “using” these digital tools
university loaned each
student an iPad, provid- in instruction. Doing so
ing access to the Inter- may also involve shifting
net as well as apps for
literacy learning. In ad- the ways participation and
dition, each student had collaboration are valued so
access to a MacBook for
use while working in my as to create spaces in which
writing group. In the students can share their
following sections, I describe how students and expertise.
I explored persuasive and
narrative writing by “playing” with digital literacy in our face-to-face sessions.
Writing Persuasive Comic Strips
Our partnership school district asked us to focus on persuasive writing, in large part because
of the emphasis on argument in the Common
Core English Language Arts State Standards
(National Governors Association Center for Best
Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). The time constraints of the program limited our study of persuasive writing to
one week of 45-minute sessions with each small
group. Recognizing this wasn’t enough time for
most fifth- and sixth-grade students to develop a
quality traditional text, I looked to other genres
of digital texts that might help us meet the goals
of introducing a claim and stating a position, organizing reasons clearly, providing evidence, and
formulating a conclusion that follows from the
stated position. For these purposes, and from my
initial interactions with the students participating
in the camp, digital comic strips became the most
appropriate written genre.
To study persuasion, I started by adapting
lessons from the ReadWriteThink (http://www
.readwritethink.org) lesson: “Can You Convince
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Me? Developing Persuasive Writing” (Manning,
n.d.). The students and I viewed and then discussed a PowerPoint presentation that outlined
various types of persuasive strategies. We also
watched YouTube videos of television commercials to evaluate the marketing based on the persuasive strategies the students had just learned. As
the students remembered other especially persuasive commercials they had seen, we searched the
YouTube website for those clips and discussed
what attributes made them so persuasive. Stu-
dents became more engaged in the activity when
they could make connections to their own TV
viewing and then have them instantly validated
when we found their commercials on YouTube.
In another lesson, we brainstormed issues
the students felt strongly about and recorded our
ideas using the Notability app on our iPads. We
then narrowed the list down to one topic that
we could develop into a persuasive comic. One
group selected sibling relationships, another selected bullying, and the third selected playing
sports to stay healthy. Rather than printing out
the graphic organizer that accompanies the lesson, we imported the PDF
file into the Notability app.
We learned the annotating
functions of the app while
also exploring how we could
persuade someone to take
a position on a specific issue using various persuasive
strategies.
Figure 1 illustrates one
student’s development using
the app. He progressed from
writing with his finger on the
screen to inserting text into
a PDF document and highlighting boxes that would
not be effective strategies for
his issue. As students experimented with the new digital
tools, they shared with each
other (and me) the tricks they
discovered. Each activity became both a writing lesson
and an opportunity to explore a new digital tool.
To learn about each of
the selected issues, we consulted InfOhio (http://www
.infohio.org), an EBSCO
Host research database designed for elementary and
middle level students with
a kid-friendly interface that
Figure 1. Example of a graphic organizer completed with an iPad (IRA/NCTE, 2006)
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filters search results by Lexile ranges. Working
collaboratively, we tried various search terms
related to each group’s issue. After reading abstracts from several articles, each group selected
one article to read that would help build background knowledge and provide reasons to sup-
port the overarching claims. The members of
each group then collaborated on ideas to include
in the interactive “Persuasion Map” on the ReadWriteThink website (IRA/NCTE, 2010). Figure
2 shows an example of a file one student created
using the interactive tool.
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Figure 2. Persuasion map PDF file generated from student interactive (IRA/NCTE, 2010)
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Using the website Bitstrips for Schools
(http://www.bitstripsforschools.com), the students created digital comic strips by selecting
settings, characters, and props for each panel,
and writing captions and dialogue. They used
the information from their persuasion map to
write the text for each panel in their comic strip,
transferring ideas generated through the interactive tool to the digital comic strip platform. I
encouraged them to use settings and characters
to nonverbally represent ideas documented in
their graphic organizer that would persuade others to agree with their claim. The claim and main
points of their arguments became the captions
for the comic strip, while the dialogue between
characters and content in thought bubbles above
individual characters became the evidence that
supported their claim. Groups were encouraged
to use at least three persuasive strategies in their
comic strips. With the comic strips completed,
the groups came together at the end of the day
and each took a turn displaying and reading its
comic strip to the other groups. Figure 3 illustrates the comic created by the group that selected sibling relationships as its issue.
Through this process, students drew on multimodalities, socially situated practices, and their
own identities and lived experiences to learn key
components of persuasion that would help them
create more extended representations of persuasive writing in the coming school year.
Writing Narratives as Digital
Storybooks
Our next writing exploration focused on narrative writing. We discussed the common characteristics of a narrative, such as real and imagined
experiences, dialogue, description, and a predictable story structure (i.e., exposition, rising action,
climax, resolution). Once students understood
the idea of narrative, we began generating a list
of memories. I modeled by sharing a memory
from my list, and students were then invited to
share the memory that was most vivid in their
minds. After talking through the memory with
the group, students engaged in a five-minute
quick write to capture every detail they could remember (Kittle, 2008). I shared what I had written about my memory, and students shared their
writing.
The next day we visited the Storybird website (http://www.storybird.com), and students
logged into the accounts I had created for them.
This website makes it possible for students to use
artwork as a tool for storytelling; users select a
picture set to illustrate their digital storybooks
and then write text to tell their own stories using the images as inspiration. The artwork is
meant to aid in narrative writing by giving users
a source for plot, setting, characterization, and
descriptive details. Because we were coming to
the website with initial ideas for the stories we
would like to tell, we looked for picture sets that
related in some way to our ideas; however, we
also remained open to images that tapped into
new memories. Some students changed their
topics based on the images in the picture sets.
Once students had selected a picture set, they
chose art for each page of their digital storybook
and then wrote text based on their memories;
they used the art and their imaginations to fictionalize their stories as needed to blend their
memories with the artwork. For instance, one
student wrote about a trip to the zoo. As she described the animals she remembered, she also included details from the artwork she had selected
to represent her story. Figure 4 illustrates how
she began with her memory of seeing pandas, and
then used the details in the artwork to write descriptive details for her story. By interacting with
artwork she found on the Storybird website during her composing process, this student moved
beyond listing the animals she remembered seeing as a child to creating an engaging story detailing a little girl’s experience at the zoo.
Once students had written a first draft, I
modeled revising my initial draft. I demonstrated
how I revised by adding more details and descriptive words that would help my readers visualize
my story; in doing so, I used the images from
Storybird as inspiration and actively encouraged
students to help me craft phrases to add more
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Figure 3. Digital comic strip created by 5th- and 6th-grade students (Bitstrips, 2011)
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Figure 4. Sample page from a student’s Storybird (Storybird, n.d.)
vivid description. The students then worked collaboratively to add imagery to their own stories
and edited for grammar, spelling, and word usage. Once they considered their stories finished,
they published them to
Although the writing the Storybird website.
Our final step was to
concepts were grounded
transition each student’s
in traditional school-based creation from a digital stoliteracies, the ways the rybook to an act of digital
storytelling (Skinner &
students and I engaged Lichtenstein, 2009). Uswith these ideas were all ing the screen capture
feature of the MacBook,
mediated by technology. I captured pages from the
digital storybook and imported them into iMovie. Then each student and
I sat together as the student read each page of
the storybook while I used iMovie to record the
reading and time slides to coincide with the voice
file. The final product was a movie file including
the student’s recorded voice reading each page
of the digital storybook. Those files were burned
onto DVDs, along with other files created during the Summer Digital Literacy Camp, and
mailed to students and their parents shortly after
the program concluded. The use of these technologies allowed students to create, publish, and
share their words with their families and friends.
Beyond the Digital Literacy
Camp
In three short weeks, students used their personal
knowledge of issues, such as bullying and sibling
rivalry, while also drawing from personal experiences, such as vacations and trips to the zoo,
to explore persuasive and narrative writing in
authentic ways through the use of digital tools.
Although the writing concepts were grounded in
traditional school-based literacies, the ways the
students and I engaged with these ideas were all
mediated by technology. The students worked
collaboratively and individually to create digital
products that not only demonstrated their mastery of the Common Core Writing Standards but
also made it possible for them to create identities
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within their comic strips and digital storybooks
to give voice to their lived experiences.
The activities I used in this Summer Digital Literacy Camp can easily be adapted for a
classroom setting. Teachers with limited access
to a computer lab could have students plan their
comic strips or digital storybooks in the classroom before using the websites to create them.
Students could also work in groups and share
computers to create collaborative projects. My
youngest students had just completed fourth
grade and were able to learn and successfully
use both the Bitstrips for Schools and Storybird
websites. Both sites offer enough choices to make
them appropriate for older students as well. As
a ninth-grade English teacher, I have no doubt
that my freshmen would have enjoyed using the
websites just as much as the students I worked
with in this camp. Teachers could use these resources for short activities such as prewriting, or
they could design larger units of study around the
websites (e.g., a unit on ad campaigns to study
argument).
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they realized that the focus of the camp was
more about utilizing digital literacy tools and
less about remediating
their literacy skills, their When they realized that
perceptions of the camp
the focus of the camp was
quickly brightened. Those
of us who organized the more about utilizing digicamp knew we had created
tal literacy tools and less
something powerful when
a student said she was dis- about remediating their
appointed that she would
literacy skills, their percephave to miss a day of the
camp to attend a popu- tions of the camp quickly
lar amusement park with
brightened.
her family. By immersing
students in new literacies
practices and valuing collaboration and shared
learning mediated by Web 2.0 digital tools, we
changed the dynamics of literacy instruction; as
a result, students who had previously struggled
in the areas of reading and writing were given a
space in which to share their expertise and play
with literacy.
Final Thoughts
References
Students began the Summer Digital Literacy
Camp by equating it with summer school. When
Alvermann, D. E. (Ed.). (2002). Adolescents and literacies in a digital world. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
connections from readwritethink
Merging Research Skills with Digital Storytelling
“Digitally Telling the Story of Greek Figures” invites students to become engaged learners through this unit that prepares them for studying ancient Greece and combines learning basic research skills with digital storytelling skills. While
researching about Greek gods, heroes, and creatures, students learn how to find main ideas in sentences and paragraphs
in books and Internet articles, which they then learn to record in short phrases on index cards divided by topic. Working
with a partner, students turn these short phrases into the script for their digital story that includes music and pictures.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/digitally-telling-story-greek-30805.html
Interested in the Persuasion Map shared in the article? Visit the printout here: http://www.readwritethink.org/
classroom-resources/printouts/persuasion-a-30310.html and the online interactive tool here: http://
www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/persuasion-30034.html.
Lisa Fink
www.readwritethink.org
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Chandler-Olcott, K., & Lewis, E. (2010). “I think
they’re being wired differently’: Secondary teachers’ cultural models of adolescents and their online
literacies. In D. E. Alvermann (Ed.), Adolescents’
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Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D. J.
(2008). Handbook on research on new literacies.
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Fingon, J., Frank, C., & Kawell, S. (2010). Young
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.org/files/resources/interactives/persuasion_map.
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Kittle, P. (2008). Write beside them: Risk, voice, and
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Manning, E. (n.d.). “Can you convince me?”: Developing persuasive writing. Retrieved from http://
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Jessica A. Wertz is a former high school English teacher and a current doctoral student at the
University of Cincinnati, where she studies adolescent literacy and teaches educational technology
courses to teacher candidates. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
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