The above quote from chapter 3 of Digital Reading: What’s Essential 3-8?, defines digital authenticity. The quote is in reference to two girls who were doing an ongoing genius hour project about rocks. In this example, the girls were well-versed on how to use the variety of tools at their disposal and knew how and when to use them to benefit their learning. To me, this is the ultimate goal of integrating digital reading into literacy workshops. In another example, all students in this class were asked to make a book trailer over the same time period. Franki Sibberson shares her experience of trying to arbitrarily create a book trailer without having a real purpose for doing so, and how it made the work feel unnecessarily challenging and even frustrating at times. “In the midst of a big project, it is easy to get caught up, as I did, in tools.” (p.28). Sibberson cleverly juxtaposed this example against a vignette of a child who CHOSE to do a book trailer as a way of synthesizing his thinking and sharing it with others. In this example, the work that the student did for his book trailer was meaningful and authentic. So, what made the difference? What makes this boy’s book trailer and the two girls’ rock project authentic, but the whole class book trailer inauthentic? I believe that the key differences lie in the core aspects of the digital literacy workshop as stated on page 17 of chapter 2:
~Choice - In the authentic examples, students were not only able to choose their tools, but also their topic: it was meaningful work to them.
~Time – In the authentic examples, students did not seem to be under the same time- constraints that a whole group project would create; they were able to work at their own pace until THEY felt that their projects had been adequately completed.
~Response – In the authentic examples, students’ work would elicit teacher and peer responses that would be more student and learning-focused, whereas the other example would be “tool-focused”.
Reading the examples above, as well as others highlighted in chapter 3 and chapter 4, which emphasized the importance of being “intentional”, got me thinking about the project work that occurred in my kindergarten classroom last year, and the role that technology played in those projects. In my classroom, we started doing a genius hour for the first time last year. We started genius hour projects in October after routines were established, and did them periodically throughout the year. In the beginning of the year, students were limited in the choices that they made in tools for both doing the research and in sharing their findings. This was not due to a lack of availability or teacher-chosen-parameters, but rather just due to a lack of exposure and experience. They simply didn’t know what was out there and what the possibilities were. Their October projects were still, I believe, worthwhile; however, by our genius hour projects in May, we had greatly expanded our repertoire of digital options to include such tools as Edu creations, PicCollage, Pixie, videos, Padlet and more, and the work that they produced because of this was exciting. I noticed a similar trend during other times of the day, such as sharing thinking in math, or reading and writing workshop: despite having so many rich tools at their disposal from the beginning of the year, it took until about mid-year before students independently used tech tools to share their thinking or as a tool for gaining information. I am wondering now, how can I get students to the point that they were with using a variety of tools mid-year for day-to-day work and with genius hour in May much earlier in the year, and take their capabilities even further throughout the year? I believe that being intentional with the digital choices that I make with students, and being sure to incorporate them more often and more purposefully into my teaching may be the answer. If we make this the norm with our youngest minds starting in K, imagine the possibilities when they are in 3rd grade and beyond. I look forward to exploring this further with my learners in the fall…