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MICDL’s first project on digital literacy, which involves the specialized skills needed to navigate and learn from the internet, occurred during in the spring of 2009. At the request of the original cohort of 17 science and English teachers, this project is continuing on an informal basis during 2009-2010. In addition, we have submitted a grant proposal to the federal Institute for Educational Studies (IES) to expand this work school-wide into two Maine middle schools starting in 2010-2011.

Primary Researchers: Don Leu, New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut, David Silvernail, University of Southern Maine

Funding for MICDL’s role: Lunder, Osher, and King Family Foundations

FMI: http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/index.html

In 2009 the project worked to integrate online learning skills into the English and Science classroom. The project is structured in a team approach, where each colleague has an important voice and insights to share as they build the professional development model together through action research. The team will collectively build a new model of professional development that will prepare teachers, around the world, for teaching in 1-to-1 laptop classrooms, preparing students for their future in an online world of learning and work.

This project uses a collaborative approach to create a professional development model for supporting the acquisition of online literacy and learning skills within 1-to-1 laptop classrooms. The collaboration will include exemplary classroom teachers, university researchers, and school leaders, each bringing their special insights to answer the question, “How do we build the most effective professional development model possible to help teachers integrate the new literacies of online reading comprehension and learning into the classroom?”

The project will develop a pilot professional development model, which will be used to seek federal research grant funding for the State of Maine to evaluate and improve digital learning on a wider basis. The content will focus on developing expertise with the use of Internet Reciprocal Teaching (IRT) (Leu, et al, 2008), a research-based model for teaching online reading comprehension skills in 1-to-1 laptop classrooms.

We will evaluate three different types of job-embedded professional development approaches:

1. A literacy coaching approach, where literacy coaches work collaboratively with classroom teachers to improve implementation of the IRT model.

2. A peer coaching approach, where two teachers in the same school support one another with the implementation of the IRT model.

3. An online coaching approach, where teachers and outside experts support the implementation of the IRT model with bi-weekly, isight videoconferences and an ongoing email discussion group.

The project began by selecting exemplary classroom teachers at the middle and high school levels. A two- day professional development session at the beginning of the second semester, will be followed by pilot implementation in classrooms during the remainder of the spring semester. Mid-semester there will be a one-day professional development session followed by additional implementation. Immediately after school is out for summer, a two-day debriefing session will be used to both evaluate and revise the initial model. Pre and post tests of online reading comprehension, Internet dispositions, and school success will be administered to both students and teachers to measure changes during the course of the project. These data, with names, schools, and classrooms removed, will be available to participants as we evaluate the model together and make revisions.

Central to this collaborative venture will be the insights, experiences, and recommendations of the classroom-teaching participants. We believe that participating teachers possess the most important information for building this innovative, collaborative model for professional development.

March 11, 2010 22:15 UTC