According to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, parents believe their children spend 21 hours online. The reality is that students in twelve countries reported spending 39 hours online. Don’t tell me these kids don’t have time to finish their assignments or clean their rooms.

Multitasking. Researchers for the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, found that our students aren’t just watching YouTube or downloading from iTunes. When they’re on the ’Net, they’re likely to be IM-ing, texting, watching TV, or listening to their music players.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s researchers found that rates of teen media use (TV, cell phones, computers, video games, audio, print, and movies) are up an hour and 17 minutes over teen media usage five years ago. A teen’s cell phone, smart phone, or gaming device is never out of arm’s reach.

“[…] cell phones and iPods have become true multi-media devices,” the study’s authors wrote. “In fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33).”

The authors of the Norton Online Living Report found that, “[…] six in 10 adults worldwide say kids spend ‘too much’ time online, and what’s more 45% of kids agree.”

Students as digital trailblazers. In another study from the Speak Up National Research Project, researchers disagree with parents and kids: students aren’t spending too much time online; students are the early adopters and adapters of new technology. Our students are not wasting time, they’re innovating. The authors write that our students are the “digital advance team,” the people who will lead educators and other adults into the technology age.

“The findings illustrate how K-12 students are leading the way in re-thinking education delivery and career exploration,” the study’s authors wrote. “These insights can be used to inform our nation’s education leaders in communities all across the United States, as they plan on how to use the stimulus funds for education effectively.”

The researchers believe that our students are ready and able to show adults how to use technology in innovative and educational ways; it’s our responsibility to take notes and make the kids’ 21st century technology ideas happen.

Online use and academic success. The problem is that when kids are online, they’re not likely to be doing school work. The Generation M2 report’s researchers found that students from all races and from all family education backgrounds spent an average of just 16 minutes online working on classroom assignments. Most of the time (25%), they hang out on social network sites, play online games (19%), watch YouTube or other videos (16%), and IM one another (13%).

The good news from these studies is that all of this online time and short hand text message language isn’t rotting students’ brains as much as we might think. The Generation M2 report’s researchers did find that 8- to 18-year-olds are spending five fewer minutes reading hard copies of books, magazines, and newspapers for pleasure than they did in six years ago. However, they’ve made up about two minutes of that deficit with online magazine or newspaper reading.

They also found that the same number of students who read for pleasure six years ago is about the same number who do so today. It’s also an activity that prohibits a lot of multitasking. Students might glance at the TV or play music in the background, but for the most part, when they read print, they are focused on their reading.

The Generation M2 report’s researchers also found that the time students spend online doesn’t affect their reading time. Heavy screen media users (16 or more hours a day) and light screen media users (less than two hours a day) read about the same amount of time: about 41 minutes a day. Even kids who watch TV all night long read about as much as those who don’t tune in much at all.

Students who have a TV in their bedrooms or live in homes where the TV is always on read less than other students, by about 10 minutes. Ten minutes might not seem much, but it’s a significant number that correlates to classroom achievement.

“Contrary to what is found for other media,” the Generation M2 report’s researchers wrote, “young people who are heavy readers (those who spend an hour or more per day with print media) are substantially more likely to say they earn high grades than those who are light readers (those who report no print reading on a typical day): 72% of heavy readers report high grades, compared to 60% of those in the light-reading group.”

Media use and well being. Not only do the heavy media users earn lower grades, but they’re not as happy as the kids who are offline. Of the light media users (fewer than three hours per day), 22% reported that they have a “high level of personal contentment,” the Generation M2 researchers found. On the opposite side, 20% of the heavy media users (more than 16 hours per day) reported that they had a “low level of personal contentment.”

Twenty-one percent of 8- to 18-year-olds are heavy media users. The problem is that we need to teach these kids to channel their media use. According to the Norton Online Living Report’s authors, parents know that they’re responsible for their children’s media use, but just 7 in 10 kids have rules. Thirty-three percent of the parents in the survey said that it’s hard to make media rules because so much new technology wasn’t around when they were kids.

The Norton Online Living Report researchers found that one in five students admitted they did something online that their parents wouldn’t approve. One-in-five students reported that their parents caught them, too.

“Supervision is inherently difficult when it comes to the online world,” the study’s authors wrote. “Not only is the Web’s content available to anyone with a search engine, it’s easy for kids to bypass parents altogether by logging on from outside the household.”

Educators have the tough job of balancing the curriculum with the students’ digital obsession, of incorporating 21st century skills with 21st century safety, and encouraging academic success in a world of media excess. I think we’re up to the challenge, but our role will be more to guide the digital natives with their technology use while they lead the way.

References:

“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year Olds.” (2010) Kaiser Family Foundation. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf Accessed January 26, 2010

“Norton Online Living Report.” (2009) Symantec Corporation. http://www.nortononlineliving.com/documents/NOLR_Report_09.pdf Accessed January 21, 2010.

“Selected National Findings: Speak Up 2008 for Students, Teachers, Parents and Administrators.” (2009.) Project Tomorrow. http://www.tomorrow.org Accessed December 8, 2009.

Do you have students who have difficulty understanding assigned readings? Do you have students who don’t complete the readings or don’t even bother bringing their books to class? A better question might be how many? Many college students struggle with their reading assignments.

As a teacher educator with expertise in reading development and disability, I find it useful to model effective reading strategies and provide immediate feedback on those strategies frequently used by students. One versatile method I use with undergraduates involves examination of their text underlines – most of those who read do underline. Throughout the semester, I ask students to refer to their assigned readings and share with the class passages they underlined and reasons for their selection. In this way, the types of thinking that accompanies purposeful, active reading become more apparent.

Students underline passages in the reading for a variety of reasons. They may underline based on prior knowledge. Fro example, a student might highlight text that relates to a personal experience or something they already believe. In these cases, my feedback explicitly encourages them to make these connections and prompts them to draw upon what they know as they read in all their classes. Other times, students underline what they think is an important point. I see this as an opportunity to build content knowledge. My feedback often takes the form of questions and aims to help them examine concepts and relationships expressed in the text in greater depth or from a different perspective.

Sometimes students underline what they don’t understand. They might highlight secondary points or, more typically, they highlight too much, leaving few sentences untouched. On these occasions, I try to demonstrate how I approach the text. I think aloud as I read and make my thinking visible as I switch back and forth from actually reading phrases, sentences, and passages to interpretation. I make predications and confirm or revise them as I read on. I paraphrase and evaluate my own ability to infer the author’s points. In this way, students observe a model of active meaning construction. When it’s apparent that several students are having difficulty, I might parse a complex sentence and analyze its relationship to the passage or chapter, or clarify an abstract concept or position through use of surrounding context. Through my demonstrations and feedback, students learn to become more purposeful and selective about what they underline. They become more aware of their level of understanding, knowing when to reread and seek clarification.

I use material from the text selectively but consistently, and the approaches I demonstrate evolve across the course. Passages selected for class examination relate to essential content. Thus, reading demonstrations and discussions are targeted and kept short, usually lasting less than 20 minutes. At the beginning of the semester, an examination of text underlines is used as a review; later it is a previewing strategy before a reading assignment is completed. After a few demonstrations, I ask students to work with a peer and compare passage underlines, noting what was of interest, of importance, or would benefit from clarification. The approach includes other reading comprehension strategies, such as self-questioning. Following instructor modeling, students write questions that they have about the text in the margins or on sticky notes. Through repeated practice, students become more independent and confident readers.

By semester’s end, there are fewer students who fail to bring the assigned reading material to class and even fewer with clean texts, free of markings and notes. Students quickly learn that assigned readings are an integral part of class and become more accountable for their own learning. They are willing to take more risks and seem to better understand that comprehension is a dynamic process. I interpret these changes as evidence of positive growth. It reminds me that today’s college students benefit from models of good reading and feedback that informs their efforts.

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Laura Schiller is the literacy consultant for the Oakland Schools. She offers four techniques that you can use right away to boost student motivation and literacy in your classroom.

Metacognition. Schiller said that the most important tool that students need is the ability to think about what they read, or metacognition. Teachers explain their thinking while reading a text aloud, using the Think Aloud strategy.

“A teacher models her thinking while she’s reading the text,” Schiller said. “You don’t read a biology textbook like you would a novel, but teachers don’t always make this apparent.”

When modeling metacognition for students, Schiller said that teachers should use the word “I.”

“As soon as teachers say ‘you,’ it’s like a lesson,” Schiller said.

Comprehension. As teachers, we need to think about the kinds of questions we’re asking kids, Schiller said.

During a teacher training, Schiller gives participants a gibberish sentence. The words are nonsense, but syntactically it’s an English sentence. She asks participants factual questions about the sentence and everyone in the group can answer them, even though the sentence is meaningless.

Those meaningless answers are like the answers teachers receive when they assign questions at the end of a chapter, Schiller said. Questions at the end of a chapter require the student to parrot answers, not perform inferential thinking.

“It’s the inferential thinking questions that are important,” Schiller said. “Literal questions don’t get a student to comprehend the material.”

Writing. Writing is the other half of the literacy equation. To communicate well, students need to both read and write. Like reading, writing looks different in the math classroom than in the English classroom.

To illustrate this point, Schiller places a plastic flower on each table in a teacher training session. She asks teachers from all disciplines to write about the flower from the standpoint of what they teach. Math teachers write about the flower in terms of math, science teachers write about the flower in scientific language, and English teachers might write about how the flower is really a symbol.

This activity hits home with content area teachers, Schiller said. Writing is different in each subject and teachers need to offer students instruction about how to write for each discipline.

Discourse. Students love to talk. This natural, social instinct can be harnessed to improve motivation and learning.

Schiller said that researchers have found patterns in teacher questioning that follows a model of “Guess what’s in the teacher’s head.” Teachers use the same pattern of initiating a question, waiting for a response, and evaluating the response to find out how much students know.

The problem, Schiller said, is that usually only one kid in class responds to the question. That leaves 24 students who haven’t demonstrated their knowledge.

Schiller recommends what she calls the Turn and Talk method. Every kid has a partner and partners discuss open-ended questions. See what they come up with and share with the rest of the class to improve student engagement and motivation.

“English Language Learners benefit from this extra rehearsal and kids you otherwise don’t hear from benefit, too,” Schiller said.

Research coming soon. Schiller’s literacy efforts go beyond these four techniques. In her district, students take a reading assessment. Based on the scores, students who are reading below grade level are placed in a small group of six students. For one semester or less, the small group works with a highly skilled teacher to improve reading comprehension. At the end of a short amount of time, they’re reading at grade level and join the regular student population.

The evidence that students are learning in these small groups is anecdotal, Schiller said. That anecdotal evidence is good, though, and it looks like the literacy program is working. In January 2009, Schiller will gather the raw data on these students to see if the numbers support what classroom teachers are seeing.

“We don’t have years to catch kids up,” Schiller said.

But, in Oakland County Schools, a semester might just be enough.