A conceptual analysis of how multimodal interactive ...
A preliminary analysis of how multimodal interactive content-area websites align with emerging theories of new literacies and technology use in school classrooms
Julie Coiro, University of Rhode Island (jcoiro@)
Jay Fogleman, University of Rhode Island (fogleman@mail.uri.edu)
Introduction
New information technologies are rapidly changing the nature of literacy and learning (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear & Leu, 2008; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). 93% of online teens use the Internet for school research and learning (Lenhart, Simon, & Graziano, 2001) and in 2005, 93% of all K-12 classrooms in the United States had Internet access (Parsad, Jones, & Greene, 2005). In addition, multimodal resources have become a key feature of educational websites (Eagleton & Dobler, 2006; Unsworth, 2008) and the Rand Reading Study Group (2002) reported that "electronic texts that incorporate hyperlinks and hypermedia...require skills and abilities beyond those required for the comprehension of conventional, linear print (p. 14).
It makes sense then that several literacy and learning organizations are now demanding that teachers are prepared to guide and support students in learning about and with appropriate new technologies (American Library Association, 2007; International Reading Association, 2002; National Council of Teachers of English, 2008; Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2008). Unfortunately, despite many efforts, recent research indicates that teachers lack the skills and knowledge to teach with technology successfully or model how to learn with new technologies effectively (e.g., Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya, 2007; Neiss, 2008). In addition, little attention has been paid to how these new technologies might demonstrate the potential to mediate or complicate how students comprehend and use online information.
In our own work as secondary teacher educators of students enrolled in a content area literacy course (Julie) and a science methods course (Jay), we were especially frustrated with the realization of how many preservice and inservice teachers lacked the basic skills and knowledge needed to capitalize on the potential benefits of new technologies for literacy and content-area learning. Thus, in this study, we sought to build on our individual areas of expertise (e.g., Coiro, 2007; Fogleman, Fishman, & Krajcik, J., 2006) to collaboratively examine how perspectives of new literacies (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004) and effective technology use in specific areas of teaching (Koehler & Mishra, 2008) might be useful for helping teachers learn how to assess the utility of multimodal interactive websites for facilitating content-area learning. Research in this area can inform future work designed to foster pre-service and in-service teachers’ integrated knowledge of effective technology use in school classrooms.
Theoretical Frameworks
In the spirit of new literacies research (see Coiro et al., 2008), this study was informed by our interest in studying aspects of literacy and content-area learning across multiple theories and lines of research. Consequently, at least four theoretical lenses shaped our thinking in the current study. First, this study was inspired by an emerging line of research that argues effective educators need to have a deep understanding of how their knowledge of students, content, pedagogy, and technology interact to support content-area learning with digital technologies (AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology, 2008). Koehler & Mishra (2008) build on Shulman's (1986; 1987) descriptions of pedagogical content knowledge to propose that a teacher's knowledge about content, pedagogy, and technology, and the relationships between these three knowledge types, is at the core of good teaching with technology. Koehler & Mishra's framework, known as the TPCK framework, (or technological, pedagogical, content knowledge framework), represents a dynamic interaction of these overlapping knowledge types. In this study, as a first step in considering how to facilitate TPCK among pre-service teachers, we sought to more closely consider the specific types of knowledge that educators might need to effectively use existing informational websites as part of their content-area instruction.
A second body of work that informed this study contends that language-based literacy pedagogies must broaden their conceptions of text to address a range of nonlinguistic modes, such as images, movement, and sound, that are gaining dominance in online environments (e.g., Kress, 2003; Unsworth, 2008). Rather than solely looking at print forms of communication, several scholars have argued that we must account for other semiotic systems as well (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Lemke, 1998). Hypertexts on websites introduce new forms of informational and design complexity that must be considered in discussions and analysis of hypertext design (Lemke, 2002). Several researchers have noted that recent websites for adolescents, in particular, demand a better understanding of the visual representations that are gaining dominance in online texts (Bull, 2005; Stone, 2006; Unsworth, 2008). Thus, content-area educators should be expected to include these multimodal literacy pedagogies in their repertoire of instructional strategies for facilitating disciplinary learning in a digital age.
Third, our study was loosely informed by a pedagogy of multiliteracies that seeks to prepare teachers and learners as both consumers and designers of information (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). From a multiliteracies perspective, educators in a global information age need to rethink their conceptions of what students need to learn and how to design appropriate instruction that integrates new technologies. One key tenant of this perspective is that educators are viewed as designers of learning processes and environments (Brown & Edelson, 2001). Consequently, Cope & Kalantzis argue, educational research should help teachers better understand "how different curricular, pedagogical, and classroom designs motivate and achieve different sorts of learning" (p. 19). We drew from these ideas to inform our thinking about the new pedagogies where teachers use multimodal, interactive representations of content-specific information to enhance student understanding.
Finally, our study was informed by a new literacies perspective of online reading comprehension (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004) that argues new reading comprehension skills, strategies, and dispositions may be required to generate questions, locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information on the Internet. This perspective posits that traditional reading skills are necessary, but not sufficient, to read and learn from information on the Internet. In our study, we drew from this perspective to help frame the ways that students (or readers) might actively participate in online inquiry-based informational reading and learning. That is, we wanted to investigate whether or not content-specific informational websites contain features that support students in their use of online and offline reading comprehension strategies (see Coiro & Dobler, 2007) or those that actively invite, engage, or support students who want to individually or collaboratively: (a) ask their own questions about the content; (b) search for information about related topics; (c) compare or evaluate topics from a range of perspectives; (d) synthesize information gleaned from topics with their own interpretations; and (e) share their ideas about the topics with classmates, subject-area experts, or a global audience.
Current Research
Recent work in this area has revealed a series of key findings upon which we designed the current study. First, Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya (2005) described their initial attempts to trace the development of teacher knowledge as an integrated understanding of content, pedagogy, and technology. They found that masters students, working with faculty members to develop online courses as part of a fifteen-week design seminar, could be supported in ways that fostered movement away from thinking about technology, pedagogy, and content as independent constructs towards a richer conception that emphasized connections among the three knowledge bases. However, Koehler and his colleagues reported that this process involved a "multigenerational and reflective process of developing deeper understandings of the complex relationships between content, pedagogy, technology, and the learning contexts in which they function" (p. 740). Other researchers report the complexities involved in fostering TPCK among college students (see, for example, Hughes & Scharber, 2008; Schmidt & Gurbo, 2008; Neiss, 2008). This body of work suggests the task of supporting the development of TPCK among undergraduate pre-service teachers, the population in which we were interested, may be especially challenging.
More recently, Angeli & Valanides (2009) investigated the impact of an adapted TPCK model on student learning among 215 first- and second-year students enrolled in a pre-service primary teacher education course. They found that pre-service teachers can be taught how to: (1) recognize the affordances and constraints of particular information & communication technologies (ICTs) in particular disciplines and (2) employ TPCK to transform difficult topics/concepts with technology in ways that augment conceptual understanding. Notably, Angeli & Valanides (2009) used technology mapping (TM) methodologies (Putnam & Borko, 1997; 2000) to further refine the TPCK framework in ways that better inform development and assessment. In their study, technology mapping was used to help pre-service teachers identify the dynamic transactions among the overlapping knowledge bases, while emphasizing context-specific factors (i.e., affordances of technology, content, pedagogical strategies, anticipated learner difficulties, teacher beliefs, and school culture) that should be considered in increasing detail through the iterative design process. For their purposes, the construct of affordances was defined as the actual and perceived properties that indicate latent action possibilities (Gibson, 1977; Norman, 1990). Thus, the technology mapping process involved establishing connections among the affordances of a tool, content, and pedagogy (components of Koehler & Mishra's TPCK model) but also linked the affordances to who would be using the technology and for what purpose.
According to Angeli & Valanides, "it is very important that teacher educators explain in detail who - the teacher or the learner or both - will be using these powerful representations in the classroom, for what purposes, and why" (p. 162). The outcome of this complex instructional decision process was that teachers gradually became more experienced in assessing the added value of computers in teaching and learning. Figure 1 below illustrates an example of how the connections among technology affordances, content, and pedagogy can be made explicit to teachers to foster early levels of TPCK while learning how to use a particular software program.
Figure 1. Mapping software affordances onto content representations and their pedagogical uses (adapted from Angeli & Valanides, 2009)
|Software Affordance |Content Representation |Pedagogical Uses |
|Pictures |Visualize concepts |Teachers can… |
|Visual pairing of text & image |Images dynamically transformed | |
|Record & hear sound |Auditory representation |Students can… |
|Hyperlinks |Multimodal representation | |
From this finding, we began to consider the viability of applying a similar technology mapping process to help pre-service teachers assess the affordances in existing informational websites they might wish to include in their content-area lesson plans. However, the urgency with which interactive multimodal learning environments have emerged alongside more static online information environments (Moreno & Meyer, 2007; Unsworth, 2008) caused us to wonder how the affordances of new technologies may be changing in ways that Angeli and Valanides (2009) had not considered. In addition, we were struck by Polman's (1998) work with inquiry-based activity structures that found different disciplines required teachers to think differently about how to effectively foster and support inquiry and expression. Consequently, we also wondered about the implications for pre-service teachers studying to consider the affordances of new technologies across different content areas. Would (or could) the process of mapping technological affordances to specific pedagogical uses look the same for teachers working in different disciplines (i.e.., science versus history versus language arts) or did the consideration of particular affordances need to be adapted to address the forms of inquiry and expression unique to each discipline?
Further exploration of studies emerging in this area led us to Moreno & Mayer's (2007) work that outlines the ways in which interactive multimodal learning environments should be designed to promote students' learning. Moreno & Mayer described five common types of interactivity in multimodal learning environments, including dialoguing, controlling, manipulating, searching, and navigating. They also found evidence of a continuum of interactivity in learning environments "ranging from highly interactive multimodal learning environments - which allow for strong communication between the learner and the instructional system, to non-interactive - which do not allow for communication between the learner and the instructional system" (p. 311). Finally, in a set of experimental studies, Moreno & Mayer found that students interacted more effectively with multimodal learning environments when they received pre-training on how to interpret and use interactive technologies and when the interface was embedded with opportunities for guided support, reflection, and feedback. Again, these findings caused us to wonder whether or not pre-service teachers were aware of these different levels of interactivity or how those levels might influence the range of affordances or constraints (e.g., learning supports or potential challenges) offered by the multiple modes of information contained within content-specific websites. And again, we found related work associated with digital media and the TPCK framework that offered ideas for helping teachers effectively map the affordances and constraints of different technologies for the specific pedagogical challenges faced by today's content area instructors (see Bull, Bull, & Hammand, 2008; ISTE, 2005).
This series of studies, with complex but promising results, prompted a number of questions geared more specifically to our own research interests with new literacies, content-area learning, and the possibilities of online participatory technologies. Informed by notions of teachers (and learners) as consumers and designers of information (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), we embarked on this initial pilot study with the following questions in mind:
How can we help content area teachers design lessons that integrate new technologies for learning?
How can we help content area teachers design effective online learning materials?
How can we help content area teachers use and/or transform existing informational websites into resources that deepen students’ inquiry, learning, and expression in a particular discipline?
How can we begin to develop pre-service teachers’ technological content knowledge (TCK) and technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) (in addition to more traditional notions of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technological knowledge) in our methods courses (reading and content-area) as a means of working toward TPCK?
Can our research methods also become a practical tool for teachers?
Refining components of the TPCK framework to promote teachers' practical use of the constructs
While we certainly agree with most of Koehler & Mishra's (2008) explanations of the knowledge types that make up the TPCK model, we sought to consolidate their explanations of each component into more precise and practical language for our purposes. Because we eventually hope to incorporate these definitions into our pre-service teacher courses, we thought it best to use wording that linked closely to ideas that were familiar to them, whenever possible. These definitions also reflect our thinking that the knowledge types concretely build on each other, suggesting there may actually be a particular developmental order in which the knowledge types are taught as part of a curriculum. At this early stage, the following definitions reflect our current conceptions of each knowledge component:
Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) = knowledge of five parts of any good lesson for a particular group of students
Content Knowledge (CK) = knowledge of concepts and relationships of a particular discipline that are indicated by state and/or national standards
Technological Knowledge (TK) = knowledge of how particular technology tools work and how they can be applied to information processing, communication, and/or problem-solving
Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) = knowledge of how to help students learn particular disciplinary concepts
Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) = knowledge of the affordances and constraints of each technology relative to a particular content-area, learning purpose, and group of students
Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) = knowledge of how to plan lessons and design effective learning materials that incorporate new technologies for a range of learning purposes and a particular group of students
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) = the pedagogical reasoning behind selecting, utilizing, and/or designing a particular technology that deepens all students' content-specific inquiry, understanding, and expression
Research Questions
In our first steps to explore this new territory, we refined our general purposes to explore two research questions:
RQ1: How might we begin to characterize the range of multiple sign systems and pedagogies used to represent and teach conceptual information on existing websites within and across the disciplines? (TCK and TPK)
RQ2: How might emerging perspectives of new literacies, multiliteracies, and TPCK be useful for helping teachers: (a) assess the utility of interactive multimodal websites in their curriculum? (TPCK) and (b) capitalize on these digital resources for teaching and learning?
While we recognize the overlapping and dynamic relationship between each of the components in the TPCK model, this study sought to tease out more of the details associated with two particular components. Our first question was intended to learn more about how domain-specific concepts are represented on content-specific informational websites and whether or not these representations demonstrated the potential to engage content-area learners. We hoped that answers to this question might help begin to pinpoint what educators need to know (TCK) and do (TPK) with multimodal representations of content to make existing informational websites useful in their curriculum. In turn, these insights can inform how we, as pre-service teacher educators, might help develop these knowledge types in our methods courses. Our second question was intended to spark initial thinking about whether or not our selected theoretical frameworks are useful lenses for framing the ways we foster pedagogical reasoning (TPCK) among content-area teachers in a digital information age. Figure 2 illustrates our focus on these three aspects (shaded in dark and light blue) in relation to the larger TPCK heuristic. In this paper, we report two levels of initial findings that address Research Question 1. We are currently in the process of addressing Research Question 2, and at the end of our paper, we share preliminary insights about this process.
Figure 2. Locating our interests in the larger context of TPCK
[pic]
Methods/Analysis
We began our inquiry by informally reviewing a set of content-specific interactive informational websites to get a sense of how key concepts are represented in multiple modes and with varying levels of pedagogical support. The websites we reviewed were compiled as part of a previous presentation (Coiro, 2008) given to secondary school teachers attending a conference for the International Reading Association (see ). The purpose of the presentation was to provide teachers with examples of how they might use multiple and diverse online texts to support adolescent readers and writers in each of the main content areas, including language arts, social studies, science, and math. These examples were intended to spark inservice teachers' interest in using multimodal websites and to provide models of online interactive resources that could be used to enrich content area learning, particularly for struggling readers.
During this initial review, we encountered evidence of the range of modes and interactivity levels described by Moreno & Mayer (2007). We also observed that different websites appeared to be designed for different audiences and different purposes, and they offered a range of levels of both breadth and depth of coverage relative to their content area. We report these findings as an initial layer of analysis to address research question 1.
Next, we used these initial observations to inform a preliminary framework for how we, as two educators, might assess informational websites on a series of levels. We began by developing a homepage summary outline (shown in Figure 3) to organize key information teachers and students should know about an informational website when considering its use for educational purposes.
Figure 3. Example of observational form used to organize pertinent information about a content-specific informational website
Homepage Summary
Website Title: _________________________________________________
URL: ________________________________ Content Area: __________
1. Overall breadth of content: ______________________________________________
2. Target audience: ______________________________________________________
3. Purpose of website: (explicit and implicit) _________________________________
4. Breadth and/or depth of the website’s links: (internal and/or external connections)
5. Presence of strategies/techniques for inviting learners to engage with the content as a consumer and a designer
Next, we adapted the technology mapping process for assessing software affordances (see Angeli & Valanides, 2009) to consider how we might map multiple sign systems embedded into informational websites with accompanying educational affordances in a manner that might be useful for pre-service teachers. After much discussion, we narrowed down our particular interests to two questions: (1) What kinds of content-specific representations or phenomena does the website provide? and (2) What on the website engages learners with the content and how does it engage learners?
For this early stage of inquiry, we used a simple table (see Figure 4) to record our observations in three categories: (a) content representation, which provided a specific description of how a concept or domain was represented on the website; (b) media type(s), which provided a general label for the mode(s) and interactive nature of the content; and (c) intended effect or learning purpose, which provided a description of the potential influence of the content representation on a learner’s interpretations, actions, and affect. While recording our observations, we realized that many of the website features contained elements of good pedagogical practice that seemed to overlap with our observations about intended effect or learning purpose. Because, in many cases, they were closely aligned, we decided to add these interpretations about pedagogical design to the third column (when appropriate) rather than isolate them into a separate column. We found it interesting that these paired observations provided information about how a particular content representation might almost simultaneously be considered in relation to both teaching and learning.
Figure 4. Table used to organize our observations about each content-specific website
|WEBSITE: SUBSECTION |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design?) |
|A specific description of how a |A general label that identifies|Learning: A description of the potential influence of content |
|concept or domain is represented |the mode(s) and interactive |representation on a learner’s interpretations, actions, and affect. |
|on the website |nature of the content | |
| | |Teaching: A description of the representations’ potential to prompt, |
| | |support, or augment conceptual learning |
We then explored the viability of using such a table to help identify the presence or absence of each category’s features on four content-specific informational websites that we considered useful resources for content-area teachers (two in language arts and two in science). The websites analyzed included:
Knowing Poe () provides interactive experiences about Edgar Allan Poe, including (a) the person; (b) the writer; and (c) his library. There are also lesson plans, primary source documents, and links for further research.
The Big Myth () provides information about nine creation myths from around the world through a set of Flash animated stories. There are also related activities and a teacher’s guide.
Discover Magazine () provides information and conversation around topics related to science, technology, and the future for adult readers and science enthusiasts.
National Geographic () provides information about a wide range of topics related to exploration, conservation, and/or education.
As we explored each website, our observational process was loosely informed by Lemke’s (2002) conception of hypermodality that suggests there are many scales of visual organization embedded into a hyperlinked multimodal representation of a concept. Lemke wrote, “Meaning is made through the nested embedding of structures on different scales…We move our attention along different pathways through the image until we have exhausted these possibilities and made provisional interpretations” (p. 305-307). Further, he suggested, analysis works best if you begin with the visual-organizational composition of the whole page and then follow the paths of cohesion chains embedded into the text and images found within and among the pages.
With these ideas in mind, we worked our way across and down the website’s homepage and two or three subsections of the website, following a "traditional reading path" from left to right, through the rows of text, hyperlinks, dynamic images, animations, and icons. Upon arriving at each representation of information, we followed a path embedded within multiple layers or levels, stopping to note the content representations and multimodal affordances offered at each point (see columns 1 and 2 in Figure 4), as well as the ways in which we believed these affordances might foster conceptual learning and student engagement (see column 3 in Figure 4).
During and after our exploration of the four websites, we engaged in discussions that focused on the utility and practicality of using such a framework with teachers to foster aspects of technological content knowledge (TCK) and technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK). We also discussed the extent to which emerging perspectives of new literacies, multiliteracies, and TPCK might be useful for helping content-area teachers assess the utility of interactive multimodal websites in their curriculum and capitalize on these digital resources for teaching and learning.
Findings
In this section, we report our findings from two phases of analysis that addressed Research Question 1: How might we begin to characterize the range of multiple sign systems and pedagogies used to represent and teach conceptual information on selected websites within and across the disciplines? First, four levels of websites emerged from our analysis to broadly characterize the diverse levels of multimodal interactivity and pedagogical support observed in a set of content-area informational websites. Second, we constructed a preliminary “practical coding system” and used it to more closely examine the characteristics that emerged within and across four specific content-area informational websites.
RQ1 - Phase 1: A New Framework for Categorizing Educational Websites
In our initial review of content-specific informational websites, we encountered four levels of websites that ranged both in the multiple ways that content was represented and in the levels of pedagogical support. We found it useful to sequence these levels by the types of multimodal representations and levels of pedagogical support.
Level 1: Content-Specific Informational websites (CSI)
The first level of websites we called Content-Specific Informational websites (CSI). These websites present information about specific content-area topics and/or concepts either in print or picture form. Information is organized by topic or section; it looks and feels much like a printed newspaper with photographs; and readers navigate through the information guided only by their interest in or need to obtain information about the content-area. In most cases, CSI websites appear to be designed as "information systems" for readers as opposed to "instructional systems" for learners. By this, we mean that, there appears to be no pedagogical supports or explicit attempts to direct or support students' (or teachers’) attention within the website. From a lesson design perspective, teachers and students who arrive at the homepage of these websites are, for the most part, left on their own to read and navigate the content at their leisure. Two examples of content-specific informational websites include Discover Magazine () and a subsection of a collection of resources from Annenberg Media titled Math in Daily Life (). Screenshots of the homepage for each of these websites are provided in Figure 5 and 6 respectively.
Figure 5. Screenshot of the Discover homepage ()
Figure 6. Screenshot of the Math in Daily Life section sponsored by Annenberg Media ()
Level 2: Content-Specific Informational website (CSI) with Multimodal/Interactive Features (CSI-MIF)
The second type of website we encountered was categorized as a Content-Specific Informational website (CSI) with Multimodal/Interactive Features (CSI-MIF). These websites represent information about specific content-area topics and/or concepts in a range of print, picture, multimodal and/or interactive features beyond static print and images. Sometimes, these multimodal and interactive features offer opportunities to manipulate objects, determine the pace and/or order of presentation, and interact with information in ways that prompt knowledge construction as opposed to information acquisition (see Mayer, 2001). One example of a Content-Specific Informational Website with Multimodal/Interactive Features (CSI-MIF) is The History Place: Sounds of History () [see Figure 7]. The website features a series of thumbnail photographs of several U.S. Presidents alongside brief bulleted annotations and a hyperlink to a short audio recording of a noteworthy presidential speech.
Figure 7. Screenshot of Presidential Sounds of History hosted by The History Place at
[pic]
A second example of a website with multimodal/interactive features can be found in an online book chapter about World War II, sponsored by Amazing Stories, titled Auschwitz, A Place of Horrors (). At this website, readers can click on textual hyperlinks embedded in the book chapter to view, for example, virtual reality movies, maps, photographs, and interactive timelines. However, for the most part, there is little in the way of pedagogical supports available within either of these websites that focus on how to use, learn from, or teach with these new forms of technology and literacy. Figure 8 provides multiple screenshots that illustrate the multiple representations of content found within this website.
Figure 8. Screenshot of the multimodal supports accessed through hyperlinks embedded into the online book chapter, Auschwitz: A Place of Horrors, hosted by Amazing Stories at
[pic]
Level 3: Content-Specific Informational websites with Multimodal/Interactive Features and Pedagogical Features (CSI-MIF/PF)
A third type of website we encountered belongs to the category of Content-Specific Informational websites with Multimodal/Interactive Features and Pedagogical Features (CSI-MIF/PF). These websites represent information about specific content-area topics and/or concepts in a range of print, picture, multimodal and/or interactive features and they also contain links to related pedagogical features (e.g., lesson plans, quizzes, activities, games). However, most of these pedagogical features are typically separate from the content-specific information offered at the website.
One example of a CSI-MIF/PF can be found at Science News for Kids (). At this website (see Figure 9), readers can navigate content specific categories arranged alphabetically down the left side of the menu (e.g., animals, behavior, chemistry, human body, or plants) and subsequent subcategories found within the index that is generated once you click on a hyperlink, or they can explore the links across the top of the homepage designed to connect learners or teachers with interactive pedagogical resources such as PuzzleZone, GameZone, LabZone, or Teacher Zone.
A second example of an interactive website containing pedagogical resources is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (). While almost all of the resources involve simulations or manipulations with mathematical phenomena, each simulation sites in a different location on the website and the pedagogical supports for how to use the resources are separate from the simulations (as shown in Figure 10). This format still requires students and teachers to make their own decisions about what to use, when, and for what purposes.
Figure 9. Screenshot of two of the interactive pedagogical resources associated with the Science News for Kids informational website -
[pic]
Figure 10. Screenshot of a series of interactive pedagogical resources paired next to, but not embedded within, the algebra simulation activities at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives ()
Level 4: Content-Specific Informational websites with Multimodal/Interactive Features in a Pedagogical Interface (CSI-MIF/PI)
A fourth type of website we encountered was Content-Specific Informational websites with Multimodal/Interactive Features in a Pedagogical Interface (CSI-MIF/PI). These websites represent information about specific content-area topics and/or concepts in a range of print, picture, multimodal and/or interactive features that are embedded within one cohesively designed pedagogical interface (e.g., simulation, interactive game or book, virtual environment). Typically, the interface resembles more of a themed virtual environment (akin to a separate software program with a unique background) than a series of interlinked resources and activities. The interface is often designed to simulate an authentic event, location, or experience that is more like an intentional "instructional system" for learners as opposed to an "informational system" for readers.
One example of a content-specific website that presents information embedded in a pedagogical interface is Knowing Poe (). This website (see Figure 11) was created especially for students in a collaborative effort between Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education (CTE). The Knowing Poe interface actively engages learners in an exploration of the life and times of Edgar Allan Poe while embedding pedagogical supports directly within the texts and activities. For example, students can select text-to-speech features, use optional pop-up hints to guide their navigational inferences through the website, or try their hand at customizing tasks and integrating Poe's texts with their own ideas; all while navigating within a virtual interface designed to simulate one wandering through Edgar Allen Poe's house.
Figure 11. Screenshot of the Knowing Poe pedagogical interface within information about Edgar Allan Poe is embedded ()
A second example of a website embedded within a pedagogical interface is Ease History (see Figure 12). Intentionally designed to support flexible and adaptive thinking (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991; Spiro, 2004) and the learning of difficult material, EASE stands for Experience Exceleration Supportive Environment. This website is a rich online environment that supports the learning and teaching of U.S. History with over 600 flash videos and photographs. The interface can be formatted in three different learning modes that give learners more control of the environment as they become more comfortable with the advanced thinking required. In our experience, teachers who have visited sites like this are quite pleased by their interactive nature and high levels of pedagogical support, but they are still are not sure how to capitalize on these types of online resources as part of their content-area instruction.
Figure 12. Screenshot of four windows of multimodal content representations organized within the interactive interface of Ease History ()
To summarize, we encountered four types of content-specific informational websites that could be used to enhance comprehension and learning across disciplines. We have demonstrated how these four types of websites can be sequenced along a continuum of interactivity and pedagogical support ranging from highly interactive learning environments - embedded with a range of intentional and multimodal pedagogical supports to relatively static print-based informational resources - with no pedagogical supports. Yet, all four types of informational websites can be useful educational resources for content-area teachers.
From these initial observations, we have learned two important lessons. First, each type of website offers affordances and constraints for representing and manipulating subject-specific concepts. Understanding this type of information aligns to a teacher's level of technological content knowledge (TCK). Second, each type of website will require teachers to provide and/or design different types and levels of pedagogical support to accompany these informational resources as an integral part of their curriculum. Knowing how to create these different types of support can be described as one aspect of a teacher's technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK). Together, these findings provide important preliminary insights into the complex knowledge required to make decisions about: (1) which informational websites are most valuable for certain content-area curricular needs and (2) how to effectively capitalize on the affordances offered by new technologies and information presented within each level of pedagogical support.
RQ1 - Phase II: How might we begin to characterize the range of multiple sign systems and pedagogies used to represent and teach conceptual information on selected websites within and across the disciplines?
Identifying Types of Multimodal Learning Supports on Content-Specific Informational Websites
Once we had developed an initial language for talking generally about the diverse nature of content-specific informational websites (i.e., the four levels of websites), we continued with our attempts to more specifically characterize the multiple sign systems and levels of interactivity being used to represent the content within a particular website. For this part of our analysis, we selected four websites (one at each level of our proposed framework outlined in Phase I):
Discover Magazine (Level 1)
National Geographic (Level 2)
The Big Myth (Level 3)
Knowing Poe (Level 4)
We selected one website at each level in an attempt to learn more about the range of representations and supports that are present or absent in informational websites that secondary content-area teachers might encounter on the Internet. For each website, we recorded our notes and interpretations in an organizer that summarized information from the homepage followed by a series of tables that categorized our observations relative to content representation, media type(s), and intended effects or learning purposes. (See Appendix A for a more detailed description of each site and the content pages used in this analysis).
Through these initial stages of analyses, we found that the content across these four informational websites was represented in a range of modalities that are not typically addressed in traditional literacy or science education programs. As illustrated in Table 1, all four websites included some combination of text, images, video, and auditory modalities (with the exception of the Big Myth website that only featured dynamic cartoon images rather than live video footage). These data suggest that readers need to know how to negotiate content in multiple modalities to effectively make sense of the information provided on these four websites. Consequently, teachers who include online informational websites like these in their instructional materials need to know: (a) how best to facilitate students’ sense-making of multiple representations and (b) how to determine which, if any, representation best promotes particular aspects of students’ learning of content-area objectives.
Table 1. Range of modalities used in interactive content-specific informational websites
|Website |Print |Static |Dynamic Images |Video |Audio |
| | |Images | | | |
|Discovery Magazine |X |X |X |X |X |
|National Geographic |X |X |X |X |X |
|The Big Myth |X |X |X | |X |
|Knowing Poe |X |X |X |X |X |
In addition, when we looked across the four websites for evidence of educational support features, it became evident that while each website appeared to include features intended to stimulate interest and broad reading (e.g., provocative headings, dynamic photo galleries), the websites varied greatly in their apparent types and levels of pedagogical support designed to explicitly facilitate learning, comprehension, or online inquiry (see Table 2). These differences were not surprising, given that the four websites were intentionally selected to represent the four website types described in phase one. Nevertheless, the specific nature of these differences provide an initial window into particular types of pedagogical supports that are naturally embedded into some websites and the types of supports teachers may need to design to facilitate students’ productive use of other informational websites.
For example, the Discovery Magazine website used color photographs, dynamic photo galleries, and provocative headings that cast scientific issues in layman’s terms to attract readers to the text-based articles, blog posts, and featured departments. In addition, hyperlinked connections on the homepage led readers to a wide range of topics and a list of related articles accompanied each reading selection. However, the website did not appear to explicitly activate readers’ prior knowledge or set an authentic context in which particular learning objectives would be introduced. In addition, there were no digitized comprehension supports such as text-to-speech capabilities, dynamic vocabulary supports, or explicit prompts to elicit higher-level thinking. The Discovery Magazine website, did however, feature an internal search engine, blog space for critical reflection, and embedded social bookmarking tools such as Digg (), StumbleUpon (), and ShareThis (). These types of technologies can be used to facilitate online inquiry and information exchange from a new literacies perspective (e.g., searching, critiquing, synthesizing, and communicating).
National Geographic, the Level 2 website, also included features such as an index of topical hyperlinks, dynamic sequences of color photographs, and short annotated headlines to stimulate interest in their broad range of topical offerings. Yet, the annotated headlines were typically framed as a suggestion for what visitors might do or view as opposed to what they might read. We interpreted these features as representative of attempts to set a context for learning or to provide gentle guidelines for how visitors might interact with the information they will encounter should they follow a particular pathway through the website. In addition, while much of the information at the site was represented in images, audio, or video, there did not appear to be any intentional features designed to foster reading comprehension. This website fostered some online inquiry with access to an internal search engine and a one-stop research location that compiled categories of maps, facts, photos, and games related to search topics. There did not appear, however, to be digital tools available for exchanging ideas with others.
The third website, The Big Myth, used music, animation, visual images, and two essential questions: “How did it all begin?” and “How do people from different cultures view themselves, the world around them, and their origins”? These features appeared to represent an explicit attempt to not only stimulate interest in the topic (e.g., to elicit more clicks on several parts of their website), but to draw visitors into the content and frame the learning experience with key questions to consider. In addition, this website provided explicit comprehension supports such as text-to-speech features that read the stories aloud; animated images designed to correspond with the timing of the narration; embedded pop-up text that was paired with navigational icons, and leveled questions designed to prompt varying levels of thinking and response. Notably, the website did not include an internal search engine or opportunities for visitors to share their ideas and responses in an open online forum. Instead, invitations to post responses or share writing samples were framed in a much more traditional framework in which students were directed to submit their work privately to the website designers and a few select pieces were chosen to publish on the website. Thus, although The Big Myth website contained a wider range of pedagogical supports and higher levels of interactivity than the previous two websites, it offered fewer opportunities for visitors to engage in authentic online inquiry facilitated by digital search tools and social networking technologies.
Finally, the Knowing Poe website included a range of features to stimulate interest in Poe’s life, home, and writing. Dynamic imagery, sound effects, embedded hyperlinks, and video were all woven together to foster exploration, anticipation, and active engagement within a simulated virtual reality experience. Flash-animated icons with pop-up directions, navigational hints, dynamic images, scrolling pathways through virtual locations, text-to-speech support, interactive writing activities, and options to print out transcripts of the videos provide explicitly designed supports for both content-area learning (i.e., Poe’s biography and famous work) and reading comprehension. Yet, like the Big Myth website, other than a list of links to external websites, this website offered few opportunities for open-ended inquiry and conversation using emerging information and communication technologies.
Table 2. Range of intended effects or explicit learning supports observed in four interactive content-specific informational websites
|Level1 |Website |Stimulate interest |Provide explicit content |Provide explicit reading |Tools to facilitate online|
| | |and broad reading |learning support & |comprehension support |inquiry & information |
| | | |direction | |exchange |
|1 |Discovery Magazine |X | | |X |
|2 |National Geographic |X |X | |X |
|3 |The Big Myth |X |XX2 |XX | |
|4 |Knowing Poe |X |XX |XX | |
1This level corresponds with the category of websites defined in Phase 1.
2XX indicates a higher level of supports than symbolized with a single X
Discussion
This small sample of informational websites and our associated preliminary findings illustrate several important issues in need for further investigation for developing TCK, TPK, and TPCK among content-area teachers. First, these data suggest that each of the four websites have educational value, but they raise the bar in terms of what counts as teacher knowledge and expertise. Access to new media appears to offer new dimensions to pedagogical design capacity not yet considered by most classroom teachers or faculty in pre-service teacher programs.
Second, we saw that existing informational websites were not necessarily aimed at learners, and consequently, might require teachers to mediate students’ experiences more aggressively. Thus, educators in the 21st century must not only know how to negotiate content represented in multiple modalities (TCK) but they must also learn how to recognize multiple and diverse levels of pedagogical support that are either embedded into an online learning environment or missing and in need of development (TPK).
Third, the wide range of informational websites designed to lure in visitors and keep them at their website requires that teachers develop the ability to objectively assess what these informational websites offer that is not offered from other published learning materials more readily available (and affordable) in their classroom. Likewise, in an age of accountability and standards-based instruction, the lack of any explicit links to particular content-area standards at any of the websites indicates that educators will need to know how to look beyond dynamic, multimodal affordances to wisely consider what the information’s purpose has to do with the learning that should be taking place in their content-area curriculum.
These findings also prompt many new sets of questions. One thing we learned from this study was that there are a variety of possibilities on websites that warrant distinguishing between learner-oriented websites and information websites. An important question now becomes what should a new teacher be able to know and do with these different types of content-specific website? What type of knowledge is realistic to expect from pre-service teachers who are often concerned more with mastering the content and managing classroom behaviors? Does the acquisition of TPCK require a developmental progression of experiences before teachers can truly understand the complexities involved? If so, what experiences or activities might represent realistic first steps for new teachers learning how to integrate content, pedagogy, and technology? What types of activities might be more appropriate for experienced educators with more mature levels of knowledge about content, pedagogy, and/or technology?
A second cluster of new questions is prompted by the apparent irony that the more pedagogical supports a website provides, the fewer opportunities there seem to be for authentic online inquiry. Perhaps it is intended to be this way by design; to protect learners from the distractions and diversions that often accompany the use of Internet technologies while scaffolding their comprehension of difficult texts and keeping them focused on the primary learning goals. Yet, our findings introduce another fork in the road relative to designing experiences that appropriately address learning objectives. The question then becomes to which sites should teachers direct students to learn new online inquiry and communication skills and which sites are more appropriate for learning experiences with important content? Are there websites that effectively do both? If so, what are examples of productive learning designs for these websites? How much should teachers focus on literacy skills and online inquiry skills and content knowledge development as part of the whole learning experience? What can/should teachers create to mediate engaged learning within a particular website that is missing some of these features and what knowledge is required to design these activities?
These musings lead to a third set of questions. If we suggest an important starting place is to help preservice teachers identify the key understandings that warrant a visit to a particular multimodal interactive website, how precisely do we teach teachers this as part of our more traditional literacy and content-area methods courses? How do we prepare new teachers to appreciate the value and affordances of a particular concept if they are still learning what makes learning about that concept so difficult with traditional resources? At what point in our curriculum, as educators of pre-service teachers, do we introduce the element of pedagogical design capacity? How do we help new teachers begin to consider questions such as: What are the warrants for this tool (e.g., search engine, blog, wiki, social networking program) or for this media (e.g., print, audio, video, movement) in my lesson? What additional questions or tasks might I use to focus or enrich learning with these diverse tools and media? How do I organize my materials and in which order should I use particular tools or media? How do I group my students with these resources and how should I structure periods of online interaction with periods of offline discourse? Essentially, what knowledge do teachers need (and how should it be developed) for teachers to be able to interpret the educational value(s) of multimodal interactive online resources and effectively link them to specific learning purposes?
Certainly, our initial exploration has led us to more questions than answers about the complexities of developing teachers’ integrated knowledge of content, pedagogy, and technology. As we continue to explore these ideas, we plan to contextualize our thinking in ways that consider how emerging theories of new literacies (Coiro et al., 2008; Leu et al., 2004), multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), multimodal texts (Kress, 2003; Lemke, 2002; Unsworth, 2008), and TPCK (Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya, 2005; Angeli & Valanides, 2009) might (or might not) be useful for informing our analysis of informational websites and our instruction with preservice teachers. We are in the very early stages of this thinking, but we will conclude with a sample of our progress thus far in developing a framework (see below) that aligns the affordances offered by a content-specific website with aspects of these emerging theories. By doing so, we hope to move one step closer to identifying the language and knowledge necessary for the conceptualization and development of TPCK in our pre-service teacher education programs.
Next steps
RQ2: How might emerging perspectives of new literacies, multiliteracies, and TPCK be useful for helping teachers: (a) assess the utility of interactive multimodal websites in their curriculum and (b) effectively capitalize on these digital resources for teaching and learning?
Might the following framework be useful and practical for helping pre-service content-area teachers identify the key understandings that warrant a visit to a particular multimodal interactive website?
Multimodal/Interactive Feature (Affordance): a general label that identifies the mode(s) and interactive nature of the content [Example: Animated Image with embedded hyperlinks]
Content Representation: a more specific description of how a concept or domain is represented and its potential influence on a reader's interpretations and actions - or its potential to foster or augment conceptual learning. [Example: Embedded links to real objects on an image of the author's desk (reference books, crumbled up paper, feather pen, notepad) creates authenticity and invites readers to interact with or use each object]
Pedagogical Knowledge (PK): Does this website present the content in ways that reflect any of the five component of an effective lesson plan?
Introduce/Set Context for Learning
Activate/Assess Prior Knowledge
Engage Students with Key Concepts
Make Connections Between Key Concepts
Provide Closure and Apply to Real Life
Content Knowledge (CK): Does this website present the content or multimodal features in ways that reflect specific knowledge related to...
Content Knowledge of the Topic (CK-T): Key aspects of expected understandings about the specific content or topic - these will vary for each domain and/or topic-specific purpose and should link to state/national standards
Content Knowledge of Comprehension Strategies (CK-CS): Five key metacognitive reading strategies that enhance content area comprehension (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995; Keene & Zimmerman)
Ask own questions
Make connections to prior knowledge or life experiences
Make inferences and/or predictions
Visualize key concepts
Summarize important ideas
Content Knowledge of New Literacies Functions (CK-NL): Five key functions of online inquiry that invite readers to actively use the Internet to solve content-specific problems (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004). To what extent are learners offered an opportunity to use online technologies to individually and/or collaboratively:
Generate their own questions about the content
Search for and locate related information
Compare or critically evaluate topics for relevance, validity, and/or perspective
Synthesize information gleaned from topics with their own interpretations
Communicate with or express ideas to others (e.g., classmates, teachers, subject-area experts, or a global audience)
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APPENDIX A
Title: Discover Magazine
URL: Content Area: Science and Technology
1. Overall breadth of content: The website provides information about topics related to science, technology, and the future. The particular topics include: health and medicine, technology, mind & brain, space, human origins, the living world, environment, physics and math. News articles are organized in overlapping categories that include: (a) latest news; (b) most popular news; (c) blogs; and (d) departments (which presents information similar to the regular featured sections in a monthly magazine). There are also “media” categories of information, including short videos, photo galleries (some with dynamic images embedded with informational captions, and weekly podcasts.
2. Target audience: The website appears to be designed primarily for readers - adults in particular - and science enthusiasts.
3. Purpose of website: implicit or explicit: The website appears to be designed to attract readers and encourage people to subscribe to the print version. The articles are about particular phenomena and real-life issues across a few different researchers’ work. The authors bring in research that supports the organization by summarizing the state of the field and presenting issues as interesting topics to explore.
4. Presence of strategies/techniques for inviting learners to engage with the content:
Provocative headings that cast scientific issues in layman's terms are used to attract readers to the information.
Most articles include a toolbar with links to external social networking tools that enable readers to rank, comment on, and share the article with others. Tool options include: Digg, Stumble 2, Yahoo Buzz, and ShareThis.
Other strategies are described in the table below.
|DISCOVER MAGAZINE: HOMEPAGE |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose |
| | |(Pedagogical Design) |
|When the viewer first reaches the page, he or she sees a large banner |Text-based hyperlinks |Provocative headings that cast scientific issues in layman's terms are used promote attract |
|title below an ad-ribbon. The right 1/3 of the page includes |Dynamic color photos and images |readers to the information. |
|advertising for science-related businesses (e.g. ConocoPhillips and |Embedded advertisements | |
|Energy Prize) and subscription opportunities | |- Stimulates interest |
| | |- Poses question to invite exploration |
|Below the title are three columns including a scrolling window of links| | |
|to news articles on the left, a dynamic visual window showing a | | |
|sequence of compelling images with engaging titles and questions in the| | |
|center, and a column of science-related ads in the right-most column. | | |
|Below the first row of three columns, there are three sets of links to |Text-based hyperlinks |Categories of information summarize the main topics covered within the site |
|blogs, articles, and departments. |Color photos and images | |
| | |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate browsing |
|Each link includes a picture, a title, and a single line of text | |- Poses question to invite exploration |
|providing information about the destination page | | |
|Text-based hyperlinks across the top of the page offer links to the |Text-based hyperlinked menu |Hyperlinked menu invites readers to learn more about the topics |
|following topics: health and medicine, technology, mind & brain, space,| | |
|human origins, the living world, environment, physics and math. | |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate browsing |
|Separate links connect to videos, photo galleries, and podcasts. | | |
|DISCOVER MAGAZINE: ARTICLE |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose |
| | |(Pedagogical Design) |
|Text of article occupies left two thirds of page, with right-most third containing|Several paragraphs of informational text |* The articles are meant to inform, entertain, and engage the reader in a |
|ads and a list of hyperlinks to other news articles. |written at a high level of readability |scientific topic. In these articles, findings around a particular topic, |
| |Text-based hyperlinks |e.g. anesthesia, are summarized. These articles rely on text, containing |
|Articles are typically comprised of a single un-annotated photograph and |Color photographs |few if any visual representations. |
|relatively long paragraphs. Within these paragraphs are hyperlinks to names of |Hyperlinks to social networking tools |* The annotation/ranking tools invite readers to share their interests and |
|scientists or unfamiliar terms. These links do not lead to an organized resource,| |opinions with other online readers. This tool also links readers to |
|but instead often take the reader to a related (external) website. | |additional topics (likely to be unrelated to science) and recommended |
| | |readings from others. |
|Most articles include a toolbar with links to external social networking tools | |Use hyperlinks and multimedia to encourage breadth of reading/learning about|
|that enable readers to rank, comment on, and share the article with others. Tool | |related and unrelated concepts |
|options include: Digg, Stumble Upon, Yahoo Buzz, and ShareThis. | |Provides opportunity for readers to communicate, critique, and exchange |
| | |ideas with a global audience |
|DISCOVER MAGAZINE: BLOG |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose |
| | |(Pedagogical Design) |
|The Discover Blogs provide personalized views, perspectives, and reactions to a |Text-based posts are typically 2-3 |The blogs are meant to spark a reaction and are often followed by a long |
|range of science-related topics. The website hosts eight different blogs ranging |paragraphs |progression of thoughtful comments. For example, a blog entry soliciting |
|from topics such as “The Intersection…where science collides with life, slams into|Forms to post a blog |definitions of the term "science literacy" results in a long progression of |
|culture, crashes with politics, and gets totaled” to “Discoblog…with quirky, |Embedded video clips |comments about different people’s opinions and definitions. |
|funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe” and |Color photographs |- Presents diverse issues and opinions while inviting critical response |
|“Cosmic Variance…random samplings from a universe of ideas.” Some blogs contain | |- Provides opportunity for readers to communicate, critique, and exchange |
|photos and/or video clips that accompany the text-based posts and comments. | |ideas with a global audience |
|DISCOVER MAGAZINE: DEPARTMENT |
|The Departments feature a relevant article or blog entry followed by a |Text-based hyperlinks |The Departments are intended to provide regular locations where readers can visit to |
|list of related articles. |Color photographs |explore topics sorted by a general common theme. |
|Departmental topics currently include: (1) 20 Things you didn’t know |Paragraphs of informational text | |
|about… (2) The Brain; (3) What is this? – a mystery image; (4) Discover| |Some of these features might help teachers seeking enrichment activities or trivia fun for|
|Interview; (5) 5 Questions about…; (6) Future Technology; (7) Think | |students (e.g., What is this? 5 Questions About…) |
|Tech; (8) Reviews; (9) Field Notes; and (10) Vital Signs. | | |
| | |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate inquiry |
| | |- Provides themed connections and a common textual structure among texts |
Title: National Geographic URL: Content Area: Climate, Nature, and Geography
1. Overall breadth of content: This website contains links to information ranging from animals, daily news, and the environment, to history, kids, maps, music, photography, science & space, and travel & culture. There is a separate link to video, with a subsection heading titled Video: Animals, Travel, and Kids. Some links on the website connect to other National Geographic outlets such as the magazine, the TV channel, and the newsletter. Most of the topical menu items connect readers to a more focused list or index of topics where content is shared via a scrolling list of daily news stories, videos, photographs, quizzes, and occasional surveys. Many of the topical pages also provide an internal search function that enables readers to scroll through the topics using a “quick find” feature.
2. Target audience: The website appears to be designed primarily for general viewers, students, and potential magazine subscribers.
3. Purpose of website (implicit or explicit):
A visit to the “Mission” link indicates the organization focuses primarily on “inspiring people to care about the planet”. Most of the information falls under the category of exploration, conservation, and/or education. The website also appears to introduce readers to geographical literacy, including earth/geoscience-related stories.
There is a commercial slant to the website, as from most pages, including the homepage, readers are connected to the National Geographic online store and various subscription options. Similarly, they are given opportunities to “help the next generation of researchers, explorers, and conservationists” by donating money to the organization.
The “Kids” section of the website contains a more glitzy interface with larger and more colorful photographs, activities, and games, but for the most part, these appear to be more geared toward home exploration of the topics for younger elementary aged students than intentionally designed with the interests of secondary students or their content-area teachers in mind.
Presence of strategies/techniques for inviting learners to engage with the content:
The website uses full-color photographs and video to draw readers in.
Attempts are made to engage readers with dynamic visuals, compelling questions, and suggested activities. Several other strategies are outlined in the table below.
|NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: HOMEPAGE |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design) |
|The National Geographic Seal |Background image and National Geographic Logo. |The logo helps the organization establish an online identity and connect |
| |Hyperlinks to different site areas on sidebar. |to a brand name. |
|Organized alphabetically. In addition to "departments," the menu|Animated, dynamic sequence of photographs in center of page. | |
|includes links to other National Geographic outlets, e.g. | |Sidebar, Photo sequence, and "Daily News" sections provide a snapshot of |
|magazine and TV channel. | |the site's offerings. |
| | | |
|Each image includes a headline, a subtitle, and a suggestion for | |Engage reader with dynamic visuals, compelling questions, and suggested |
|what the browser can do at the linked page. | |activities. |
| | | |
| | |- Sets a context for learning |
| | |- Stimulates interest |
| | |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate exploration of |
| | |content |
|NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: ARTICLE PAGE (SCIENCE AND SPACE) |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design) |
|Upon selecting “Science and Space” from the homepage menu, |Text of article arranged in short newspaper-like paragraphs. |Engage, inform, and in some cases educate the reader. |
|browsers are brought to an index of more specific hyperlinks |Photographs are represented as a clickable sequence of | |
|embedded into a rotating sequence of images along the top center |thumbnails in the margin next of a single large version of |- Fosters engagement with content |
|of the page or a series of “related features” listed vertically |one of the photos. |- Highlight learning through “doing and viewing” activities as opposed to |
|down the page. | |“reading” activities |
| | | |
|Each feature is displayed in still photographs annotated with a | | |
|headline, subtitle, and a suggestion for what the browser can do | | |
|at the linked page. | | |
|Some features lead to content displayed in photos, videos, or |Full color photographs |Embedded hyperlinks lead readers deeper into a particular topic or more |
|dynamic images with embedded menus that lead to more content on |Dynamic photograph images |broadly to related topics. |
|the same subject (e.g., an image of the solar system is embedded |Embedded hyperlink menus | |
|with menus for topics related to the inner solar system and outer|Streaming videos |Interactive images and videos invite readers to explore content in |
|solar system). The streaming videos typically provide audio | |multimodal formats with little reading involved. |
|narration and are structured like short documentaries about the | | |
|topic. | |- Provides multiple formats for accessing the content |
| | |- Stimulates interest and deeper/broader reading |
| | |- Fosters engagement with content |
|Other features lead to an article (republished from the Nat’l Geo|Text-based article |News articles make connections in several ways, including hyperlinks |
|magazine) that consists of text, a series of photographs, and a |Color photographs |within articles, links to related stories, and links to stories from the |
|list of links to related articles. Often, viewing one photograph |Dynamic images and informational captions |past. |
|in its “enlarged” view provides access to a related list of photo| | |
|galleries about the topic. | |Photo galleries represent content visually. |
| | |- Provides multiple formats for accessing the content |
| | |- Stimulates interest and deeper/broader reading |
Title: Knowing Poe: The literature, life, and times of Edgar Allan Poe...in Baltimore and beyond
URL:
Content Area: Language Arts
1. Overall breadth of content: The website provides information about Poe (a) the person; (b) the writer; and (c) his library. In addition to these interactive experiences, there are lesson plans created by Maryland teachers, primary source documents, links for further research, and materials for fun family activities related to Edgar Allan Poe.
2. Target audience: The materials were created especially for Maryland students in middle and high school, but they are available for free to anyone with access to the Internet.
3. Purpose of website: Implicit or Explicit
This website invites readers to explore the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly relative to Baltimore, MD, through a set of professionally designed, very interactive features.
At "About us" page (if you follow back to “About Thinkport”): The website was created by members of Thinkport, the product of an on-going partnership between Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education (CTE). CTE is dedicated to improving the quality of life for all children and youth, particularly those who have special needs, through teaching, research, and leadership in the uses of technology. Innovations developed at CTE are shaping the future of the ever-expanding relationship between media and education.
Most of the links are connected internally to other links within the website, although there are a few links to outside supplementary websites (e.g., a playright who wrote a play about Edgar Allan Poe)
4. Presence of strategies/techniques for inviting learners to engage with the content
On the welcome screen, animated image of a raven with sound effects of a heartbeat and raven crowing that ends with a writer's desk with objects hyperlinked to parts of the website (e.g., timeline of author's life, collection of his writings, an interactive secret writing activity, and information about the author's writing techniques.
Throughout the site, students are told to "watch for the Random Raven to give you some inside information and little known facts about Poe the person and Poe the writer".
Several other strategies are outlined in the table below.
|KNOWING POE: HOMEPAGE |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose |
| | |(Pedagogical Design) |
|When the viewer first visits the page, an animated image of a raven reveals itself in |Animated clip with sound|Offers authentic feeling of visiting a writer's house and the feel of reading/using |
|the middle of the screen with sound effects of a raven crowing and a person’s |effects and embedded |objects on his desk (books, papers, feather pen, wrinkled up paper) |
|heartbeat. The animation ends with the raven landing at a window. In front of the |hyperlinks |- Stimulates interest and feeling of authenticity |
|window is a writer's desk with pictured objects hyperlinked to parts of the website. | | |
|Background color sets a dark, eerie tone for exploring Poe’s home, life, and writing |Use of color |Prompts an awareness of the eeriness of Poe’s writings |
| | | |
| | |- Stimulates interest and feeling of authenticity |
| | |- Sets the context for learning |
| | |- Fosters learning about author’s writing style |
|As learners progress through the website, Random Raven icon lights up on the page when|Icon with rollover |Highlights facts and trivia about Poe’s life and writing |
|special inside info or facts about Poe is available |pop-up directions and/or| |
| |hints |- Offers optional guidance and/or support |
| | |- Fosters learning about author biography and writing examples |
|Text-based hyperlinks along left frame of website with fancy font and rollover pop-up |Text-based hyperlinked |Clusters key concepts into real-life themes |
|menu of choices to explore - Links to main content of the website: Poe (a) the person;|topical menu | |
|(b) the writer; (c) the library | |- Organizes main categories of learning topics to facilitate exploration of key concepts|
| | |- Connects to real-life |
|Text-based hyperlinks along the bottom of the page offer links to: (a) Classroom |Text-based hyperlinked | |
|Connections; (b) Family Resources; (c) About this site; (d) a sitemap; and (e) |resource menu |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate teaching and inquiry |
|internal search engine | | |
|KNOWING POE: THE PERSON (Subsection) |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose |
| | |(Pedagogical Design) |
|Introduction |Short text-based phrases |Fosters connections between Poe’s life and student’s life with snippet examples |
| |Short video segment |of Poe as young boy and adolescent |
|Short interesting tidbits about Poe’s life followed by |Companion printed transcript | |
|text-based hyperlinks to the five related sections of the |Thumbnail photo of actor who played Poe |- Entice with snippets and then use hyperlinks and multimedia to encourage |
|website |Hyperlink to more text-information about actor |breadth and depth of reading/learning about the concepts |
| |Hyperlink to actor’s website | |
|Poe’s Baltimore: (prompt) What did Baltimore look like when Poe|Text-based paragraphs |Sets a reading/learning purpose by beginning with an interesting question |
|lived here? Find out in this activity. |Short video segment | |
| |Companion printed transcript |Hyperlinks encourage breadth of and depth of reading about the topic |
|A separate window opens to a Flash interactive to explore |Thumbnail photo | |
|Baltimore in 1830 and today (explore sites on the map over time|Hyperlink to more text-information about actor |Hyperlink annotations and pop-up interactives |
|series or read more about particular sites with or without |Interactive: Dynamic map images with zoom and panning | |
|text-to-speech support) |functions; color-coded highlights; embedded hyperlinks|- Highlight learning through “doing and viewing” activities as opposed to |
| |and related pop-up labels and optional text-to-speech |“reading” activities |
|Some links embedded in the text connect to other locations in |support | |
|the website | | |
|KNOWING POE: THE WRITER (Subsection) |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design?) |
|The Poetic Principle: (prompt) Do your ideas of what makes a poem perfect coincide|Static text-based quotations |Prompts and choices provide opportunities to: (a) make personal |
|with those Poe thought was important? Try this activity to see. |Interactive checkboxes |connections to poet’s style; (b) gather, synthesize, revise, and |
| |Embedded pop-up vocabulary supports in |customize own thoughts; |
|Poe quotations that reflect his “principles of a good poem” are paired with short |poems |(c) add, reflect, and revise as aspects of meaning construction. |
|explanations and prompts to agree or disagree – either way, the learner’s choices |Open text boxes to type additional ideas | |
|are compiled into a list of poetry principles similar to or different from Poe’s | | |
|principles. Then learners review the list, customize the list if they desire, and| | |
|apply their self-generated list to evaluate one of Poe’s poems or read Poe’s | | |
|examples of a good poem by other authors. | | |
Title: The Big Myth: How do people from different cultures view themselves, their world, and their origins
URL: Content Area: Language Arts
1. Overall breadth of content: The website provides information about nine creation myths from around the world through a set of Flash animated stories (although you can order a CD-ROM with 25 myths from the homepage). In addition to the myths, the website provides links and a bibliography for further research, a write-your-own creation myth section for students, a teacher's guide, and a discussion forum where an off-line debate is held over the material. All of the information at this website is made available in English and Dutch.
2. Target audience: The materials have been created especially for primary school students in Europe but are available for free to anyone with access to the Internet.
3. Purpose of website: Implicit or Explicit
At the bottom of the homepage the following text appears: "The Big Myth is a new experimental learning module designed for use in European primary school classrooms. It is a sociology textbook for the comparative study of world creation mythology. The myths are told using Flash animation and are accompanied by an overview of the culture, the pantheon of the gods and a series of exercises based on that culture. The Big Myth combines the internet and Flash animation as a presentational medium with a highly progressive group learning method known as complex instruction. Teachers are advised to start in the teacher's section for more complete instructions".
The creators of the website are four individuals working for Distant Train, a creative Internet design company. Three of the four have backgrounds in teaching. Two designers are affiliated with the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE) and are co-editors of the academic journal Intercultural Education. The Mythic Imagination Institute hosts the website.
The Teacher's Guide offers directions on how to use the website; a guide for how to create effective learning environments for students when they need to share computers; general information about group learning and interaction, and a staffroom that supports peer-networking and dialogue among teachers using the website with students (a minimal number of comments are posted on a "rolling basis" - this part of the website does not look very active).
Most of the links are connected internally to other links within the website, although there are a few links to outside websites in the resources/bibliography section.
4. Presence of strategies/techniques for inviting learners to engage with the content
The website was designed to prompt interaction, discussion, and problem solving. The authors write in the teacher's section: "Assignments can only be completed if students work together, and the presentation of results occurs in front of the class or they are communicated to students at other schools (in principle anywhere in the world). The computer provides the "input" for a learning process, and offers the opportunity to present results via the internet. But the actual learning process takes place when students are engaged in discussion with each other, when they are solving problems and when they are preparing a presentation. In this manner, The Big Myth fits into the tradition of cooperative learning. Other strategies are described in the table below.
|THE BIG MYTH: HOMEPAGE |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design) |
|When learners first visit the page, they are prompted with the questions “How |Flash-animated hyperlinked icons |Music, animation, and an essential question draw learners into the|
|did it all begin” and “How do people from different cultures view themselves, |Visual map of major continents and origins of creation |content and frame the learning experience |
|the world around them, and their origins?” Then 25 animated dots fly in with |myths | |
|popping sounds and situate themselves on a black and white world map in the |Text-based hyperlinks to protected section |Visual cues help learners make connections between literature, |
|geographical location of country from which the myth originated. Roll-over | |culture, and geography |
|pop-up boxes for each dot indicate the name of the country from which each | | |
|myth originated. | | |
| | |- Stimulates interest |
|9 myths are available from the website; the remaining 16 are available on a | |- Sets context for learning |
|CD-ROM that can be purchased for one year’s use. | |- Poses question to invite inquiry |
|The background color and themed icons provide a cohesive themed feel |Use of color |- Stimulates interest |
| | |- Sets context for learning |
|Text-based hyperlinks along the bottom of the page links to: (a) reviews; (b) |Hyperlinked icons with text labels along bottom of page |Hyperlinked menu invites learners to extend or enrich their study |
|discussion forum about common themes across the myths; (c) links to external | |of the content |
|resources sorted by continent; (d) a teacher’s guide; (e) space to write own | | |
|creation myth; and (f) order the CD-Rom. | |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate teaching, |
| | |inquiry, and expression |
|THE BIG MYTH: INDEX PAGE FOR THE REGION (Subsection) |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design) |
|Index page for each region: |Flash animated text-based hyperlinked menu |Hyperlinked menu invites learners to extend or enrich their study |
|Once a dot is selected, the map zooms in to that region and three animated textual | |of the content |
|hyperlinks scroll into view to provide four choices for exploration: (1) Creation | | |
|myth; (2) cultural information about history, religion, and society; (3) a “Pantheon”| |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate teaching, |
|temple with facts about gods; and (4) leveled questions and tasks about the region | |learning, and response |
|Additional resources: |Hyperlinked menu of icons with text labels |- Organizes main categories of resources to facilitate teaching, |
|At the bottom of the page, you can link to "Exercises" and a hyperlink menu |Text based questions and leveled prompts or tasks|learning, and response |
|connecting to menu choices from the index page. The information at each link | |- Provides multiple formats for accessing the content |
|(including the text from the flash animated myth) is displayed as a single page of | | |
|text with an option to download and print the text from a word document. | | |
|THE BIG MYTH: VIEWING THE CREATION MYTHS (Subsection) |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design) |
|Viewing the creation myth. |1-2 sentences of text read aloud automatically by|Content about myths are represented in multiple modes |
|Once the region is selected, short text passages on each page are read aloud by a |natural voice | |
|"mythical" sounding female voice. Animated cartoon images accompany text to visually |Flash Animated cartoon images |Animated icons offer pop-up textual hints (next, back) to guide |
|display meaning as the text is read. |Flash Animated screen transitions |students’ navigation at their own pace. |
| |Flash Animated directional icons with embedded | |
|As learners progress through the “story”, animated transitions are designed to |pop-up text (for next and back) |- Provides multiple formats for accessing the content |
|sometimes turn the page and other times simulate a moving camera that view the scene | |- Presents options to revisit content and control speed through |
|from different angles to simulate virtual movement through the setting of the story. | |the content |
|THE BIG MYTH: WRITING AND RESPONSE ACTIVITIES (Subsection) |
|Content Representation |Media Type(s) |Intended Effect / Learning Purpose (Pedagogical Design) |
|Write-Your-Own. This section invites learners to write and publicly share |Hyperlink option to download and print text |Provides models of quality work, an authentic prompt and audience |
|their own creation myth by creating an imaginary country and telling how |Text-based writing prompt |for learners' writing, and opportunities to respond creatively |
|their world began. The best ones are selected by the website creators to be |Text-based artifacts of student work | |
|posted online. Many high-quality examples are displayed in the Gallery of | |- Invites learners to personally connect with and respond to |
|Myths. | |content |
| | |- Provides opportunities to share work with others |
| | |- Provides models for differentiated support |
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