How New Technologies are Changing What a Literacy Program Should Be

The same kinds of digital technologies that are repositioning listening among the literacies of the 21^st century are changing the classrooms in which literacy is learned. While many of the early promises of computers in the classroom have not been achieved, it is apparent that new technologies for the classroom have at least two agreed upon advantages.

First, new technologies are an important component of any pedagogy that prepares students for living in the 21^st century. New technologies are obviously essential in teaching students how to be literate with the tools that they will need for their futures. Computers are not very good at teaching students how to use blackboards, but blackboards are essentially useless at teaching students how to use the multimedia digital tools of reading, writing, listening, viewing, composing and communicating that are essential for their future.

View Video — New technologies help us meet the challenge of individual differences in the classroom. In this video, a boy with cognitive challenges audio records himself reading a picture book. Then he and his teacher listen to the audio playback to evaluate how well he sounded out the words.

In particular, the flexibility of digital media is an essential component in Universal Design for Learning (UDL; Rose & Meyer, 2002), an approach to curriculum design that seeks to maximize learning across a wide spectrum of students with and without disabilities. By designing to support the needs of students with disabilities, the curriculum is strengthened in a way that supports all students. Within UDL, the flexibility of new technologies is an essential foundation for meeting the challenge of individual differences:

• To support individual differences in learning to recognize the world, provide multiple, flexible methods of presentation
• To support individual differences in learning strategies for action, provide multiple, flexible methods of expression and apprenticeship
• To support individual differences in what is motivating and engaging, provide multiple, flexible options for engagement (Rose & Meyer, 2002)

By helping us to recognize obstacles in the curriculum, technology can enrich the curriculum for all students. As Meyer and Rose (2005) write, by helping us “… to appreciate the full extent of learners’ diversity and the variety of ways in which they can be unique, it will become apparent that the curriculum itself can be improved to the benefit of all students” (p.30).

It should be noted that increasing the opportunities for listening to learn in the classroom is an essential component of a UDL approach to literacy. Through that approach we increase the likelihood that diverse learners will have access to standards-based literacy and the learning strategies needed to master that literacy. Further, we increase the probability that many students will remain engaged in literacy learning, especially those for whom text presents a barrier.

In the following sections, we describe two scenarios that illustrate some of the many ways in which new technologies and the universal designs that they allow can support learning through listening in an overall literacy program.

In Plato’s time, speeches were ephemeral; words and diction could be lost almost immediately and entirely. With the development of writing, the logic of a speech could be recorded and remembered, but not the rhetoric, power or voice. With analog recording, the full power of speech could be recorded and saved, but in highly vulnerable and limited media. In the digital era, the full power of speech can be recorded (along with visuals) and stored in media that offer many kinds of display and allow the kinds of power and flexibility needed for teaching and learning.

For example, consider children of today listening to a digital audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. With digital playback they may slow down or speed up the rate of narration, pause to reflect or replay a segment or skip to various sections of the speech. The user rather than the speaker is now in control and may play back the speech in flexible ways to suit his or her goals for listening, preferences and needs. Consider three students, each listening to the same digital audio recording:

• Elena, a Spanish-speaking student, is listening to the speech for the first time. She slows down the narration rate so that she can more easily understand the language.
• Desmond, who is preparing for a test on the civil rights era and is familiar with the speech, speeds up the narration, stopping and pausing to take notes on critical points.
• Tanya, who is designing a multimedia presentation about King, skips directly to phrases of the speech that she has previously bookmarked, selecting the items that she will include in her multimedia report.

While this ease of navigation, ability to vary narration rate and option to place audio bookmarks are obvious advantages of digital versus analog audio, digital audio that is integrated with text, media and interactivity options offers additional affordances to the learner. To consider these affordances, and how they change the nature of the listening experience, let’s consider some other options for learning with the “I Have a Dream Speech,” using the UDL principles as a guide.

Provide multiple means of representation

For some listeners, access to the meaning and the spirit of the speech is impeded by underlying difficulties with language. Some students may lack the vocabulary to comprehend, while others may be unfamiliar with King’s syntactic style and rhetorical structures, such as the use of repetition and refrains. The speech also assumes a certain level of background knowledge. Today’s students may have limited or no knowledge of the civil rights movement. For English language learners, issues of language, history and culture may be compounded, making the speech even more challenging for them as listeners.

However, in a digital context, the speech can be transformed so that students have multiple entry points into meaning-making. Many audiobooks now offer both text and audio narration so that students may listen to and view a print version of the text. In some cases, synchronized highlighting is offered to encourage students to attend to the text while listening. Vocabulary and background knowledge can be supported via hyperlinks to glossaries and other informational resources, including access to experts and online communities with a special interest in this topic.

View Video — A demonstration of a universally designed digital picture book created by CAST that helps build vocabulary and background knowledge via an audiovisual glossary. The video shows a computer screen where a user clicks on the word "bake." A narrator gives a definition of the word, then describes the kinds of things we might bake, and, finally, uses the word in a sentence.

Further, English language learners may be provided with access to audio and print translations of the speech in their first language. For Elena, Desmond and Tanya, the learning options have been expanded. Elena listens to the speech in Spanish first, then in English. Then, as she studies the printed text more closely, she reads the text in English, clicking on multimedia glossary hyperlinks in Spanish and English to help her understand key terms and concepts. She also views a hyperlinked news video of the march on Washington to understand the larger context. Desmond reviews key points he has marked in the audio and text versions in preparation for his test. Confused by a reference made in class to Mahatma Gandhi’s influence on King, he follows a link to a website that provides multimedia coverage of King’s meeting with Gandhi in India. Tanya reads and listens to the speech again, this time focusing on the accompanying photos and eyewitness accounts of the march on Washington to help her develop a deeper understanding of this seminal event that she can bring to her multimedia presentation. Layering additional information and media onto the speech has multiplied options for understanding and learning the “content” of this speech and event. In other words, each of the students is benefiting from multiple representations.

Provide multiple means of expression 

In addition to offering students multiple means of representation, digital texts offer options to support strategic learning and expression. This is often the more challenging task, since it requires a more detailed and comprehensive view of the learner, the text, and the goals and activity. Listening to a speech, reading a text, viewing a graphic, animation, or video, or carrying out a combination of these activities, requires both knowledge and strategies. To support strategic learning, prompts to apply relevant strategies, such as stopping to summarize key points or to note a question or confusion, can be embedded in the learning environment. Pedagogical agents can provide models and thinkalouds, as well as feedback to the learner. Online experts can mentor students in ways of thinking and knowing within their discipline. The flexibility of digital environments makes it feasible to vary the level and type of support in relation to the task demands and the learner’s needs and strengths.

View Video — Bridget Dalton, chief officer of literacy and technology at CAST, describes how audio supports in the form of pedagogical agents who speak to the reader, providing models and "think-alouds" as well as feedback, support the development of reading strategy skills.

Consider again our three students, Elena, Desmond and Tanya. Imagine a digital environment that supplements the speech, text, and other representational supports for learning about the man, the speech, and the larger historical context, with embedded supports for strategic learning and expression.

View Video — Further evidence of how powerful digital technologies help us meet the challenge of individual differences in the classroom. The video shows a CAST Folktales™ digital book with an animated coach who talks to struggling readers, helping them think through what they are reading.

For example, before listening to the text, Elena clicks on a “Listening Coach” who points out that King will increase the volume and intensity of his voice to draw attention to key points. As Elena is listening to the speech, she periodically encounters an audio prompt that asks her to stop and think about what she is hearing and to apply strategies, such as summarizing key points, visualizing or making a prediction about what will be addressed next in the speech. She types a response into her online notepad. Because she is still learning to express herself fluently in English, she stops and audio records a note in Spanish to expand what she has written.

View Video — A demonstration of an animated coach who provides reading strategy support in Spanish language for those whose home language is Spanish.

Meanwhile, Desmond is focused on studying for his test. He listens to the highlighted main points that he bookmarked in a previous section, then clicks on a self-check quiz to monitor his understanding. When Desmond misses an item, he is prompted to listen again to a particular section of the speech by clicking on a link. The link takes him to the relevant section so that he can listen at a slower pace. It also highlights the corresponding segment in the printed speech to further focus his attention on the salient information. Desmond continues through this guided review until he is satisfied that he understands the core information needed for the class test.

Tanya becomes increasingly interested in the topic of civil rights as a result of her exploration of Internet resources. She chooses to complete a multimedia slide show that illustrates the audio recording of “I Have a Dream” with still and moving images of protest marches, examples of discrimination and other visual aids that enhance the experience of listening to the speech. With multimedia options for expression, Tanya blends text, video and audio media to reinforce the important points and emotion of King’s speech as it unfolded on that momentous day.

At the heart of learning is engagement—engagement with the process, with the content, with ourselves as learners, designers and communicators. Centered in the affective networks of the brain described earlier, engagement is individually based and, for the most part, socially constructed. Recent studies on how human beings become experts in fields as diverse as sports, business, science and the arts suggest that while talent is important, even more essential to developing expertise is a high level of interest and commitment (Feltovich, P.J., Prietula, P.J., & Ericsson, K.A., 2006). Goal-setting and practice, guided by feedback, are essential to the development of expertise. And, not surprisingly, they conclude that the level and amount of practice that is required to excel is more likely to happen if one is interested in whatever it is that he or she needs to practice.

Yet all too often in school, students have little freedom to set their own goals and pursue interests. In fact, many stumble at defining an interest that is academically related. Further, despite the acknowledged need to differentiate instruction and provide guided practice, it is quite difficult to achieve in today’s diverse classrooms without additional teaching support and, we would argue, without flexible multimedia, such as audio books and digital texts, which can open up the learning process in ways that inspire more interest and instill a sense of ownership.

Let’s revisit Elena, Desmond and Tanya as they finish learning about, with, and through “I Have a Dream,” and accompanying digital learning supports and resources. The students set learning goals and made choices about how they were going to accomplish them. They took advantage of all that the digital literacy tools afforded, including audio options. For example, Elena—who might have become discouraged by a language barrier if learning about “I Have a Dream” was restricted to print alone—now finds it easier to persist in studying the topic. The topic is still challenging, but the multiple means of tackling the subject hold her interest, especially since she can use her Spanish knowledge to support her English comprehension. Desmond also increases his investment and interest since he is able to control the pace of his review of the audio recording and access crucial background knowledge that he knows will help him accomplish his goal of performing well on his test. Tanya, too, thrives in a learning environment where she can make choices and be creative in fulfilling the assignment.

Consider a second example of digital capacity in the classroom. Interactive storybook reading has long been a cornerstone of beginning literacy instruction in pre-K and primary classrooms. Teachers model how to read with expression, while drawing attention to how to read. Read-alouds continue to play an important role with older students, where expressive reading of an excerpt, or on occasion a whole text, entices students into book worlds that might be otherwise unexplored. In the digital classroom, audiobooks and digital texts with read-aloud functionality are expanding opportunities to listen to, and learn from, text.

While there has long been a place for audiobooks in the classroom, in recent years they have become increasingly popular in the home and school, as evidenced by a 350% increase in the number of books transformed into audio format in the last 15 years (Wysocki, 2005). This is attributable, in part at least, to the vast improvements in audio technology and the creation and distribution of audio products. Audiobooks can be downloaded on the Internet, checked out of the local library, purchased at the supermarket or borrowed from an educational library. Organizations such as Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D, http://www.rfbd.org) are a primary source of audiobooks for individuals with print disabilities. RFB&D’s library includes approximately 109,000 titles recorded with human voice.

Education policy has also had an impact. U.S. federal law (IDEA 1997) mandates that all children have access to the general education curriculum, including their textbooks and other core texts, and audio books are one means to improve access. Recorded speech can serve a compensatory function for students with decoding or fluency problems, much as wearing glasses compensates for weak vision (Edyburn, 2002; Strangman & Dalton, 2005). As such, it indirectly supports students’ learning of the content. Once students have access, learning is dependent on other factors, such as background knowledge and vocabulary, reading strategies, engagement and instruction. For the fourth grade child reading on a second grade level, or the  grade student reading on a sixth grade level, listening to text is essential if they are to learn from (and enjoy) the same content as their peers. The passage of IDEA in 1997 increased the use of audiobooks by students who have print-related disabilities, such as students with visual impairments, limited physical mobility or dyslexia.

Digital texts with read-aloud functionality also meet the critical need for improved access to the curriculum and are playing an increasingly important role in the classroom. Digital texts can be read-aloud using human voice or synthetic speech (or a combination). Human voice requires audio recording of the specific text, while synthetic speech is not linked to a particular text, but rather is produced word by word via a text-to-speech (TTS) engine that typically relies on strings of phonetic and prosodic symbols. Each form has its own advantages and limitations. Human voice is superior in its ability to convey emotion and tone, to pronounce words correctly, and to use appropriate phrasing and pausing. It not only provides a richly expressive listening environment that may hook even the most reluctant reader, it also offers a strong model of oral language usage, something of particular relevance to young children and children who are English language learners. However, from a practical standpoint, human voice has important limitations, including the demands of recording, production, distribution and file storage. Further, with recorded narration it is not possible to provide audio access to the enormous volume of text encountered on the Internet, much of which changes from day to day. The vast majority of digital content on the Internet is not supported by human voice narration.

In this regard, the advantage of TTS tools that can read any content in digital format “on the fly” is obvious. There are many TTS tools available commercially and as freeware. Once acquired, there is no additional cost for audio support, whether the student reads 10 words, 100 words, or 10,000 words. TTS can also read words that the student is producing in a Word document, on a web page, or in an e-mail message. There are no audio files to store, and synchronized highlighting of the text is more easily accomplished than with human voice narration. Finally, since there are speech engines in various languages, it is possible to read Spanish text with a Spanish speech engine, French Canadian text with a French Canadian speech engine, and so forth. However, the flexibility of TTS is also its major weakness. Synthetic voice, despite technical improvements, is still a poor model of oral language. There is minimal oral expression; words are produced in a stream, with frequent mispronunciations and awkward phrasing. Still, TTS is generally intelligible, and, for individuals with visual impairments who have high levels of listening comprehension, the TTS narration rate can be substantially increased without loss of intelligibility. Ideally, students should have access to both types of listening experience: core texts with human speech to realize the benefits of accurate, rich expressive reading, and use of a TTS tool that gives them the freedom to read any text that is in digital format.

Research suggests that in addition to providing basic access to content, audiobooks and TTS may also support the development of basic literacy skills. While TTS research is complicated by tremendous variation in research design, technology application, duration of intervention and student reading achievement, there is promising evidence for its effectiveness, particularly for older students in the middle grades and above. In an earlier review of the literature on TTS for students with disabilities we identified several studies investigating the impact of read-aloud support (TTS or human speech) on literacy skills that found a positive effect on comprehension and two demonstrating transfer to reading contexts that did not involve TTS (Dalton & Strangman, 2006). There is reason to believe that audiobooks can also improve literacy skills. A study investigating the effectiveness of RFB&D’s AudioPlus books as a component of language arts instruction for students in inclusive settings in grades 4-8 demonstrated significant gains in student reading rate and accuracy (Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2006b). Students using the audiobooks moved from the frustrational reading level (94.4%) to the instructional reading level (96.3%). Moreover, teachers felt that use of the audiobooks increased students’ motivation and confidence. Thus, speech support may be an important means to not only support individual differences in recognition, providing access to the curriculum and strengthening literacy skills, but also support affect by boosting confidence and motivation.

View Video — Research suggests that in addition to providing basic access to content, audiobooks and text-to-speech technology, or TTS, may also support the development of basic literacy skills. This video shows how TTS can increase access to an informational webpage about logging.

The potential to integrate listening activities with effective instructional frameworks is great. The RAVE-O (Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary, Engagement and Orthography; Wolf, Miller, & Donnelly, 2000) reading program is a research-based literacy program for children in grades K-4 who have difficulty reading. The program includes daily direct phonological instruction, reading comprehension strategies, writing and library visits. Two studies have investigated the effectiveness of using RFB&D’s AudioPlus text with the RAVE-O reading program. Following a four-week program, students showed significant increases in standard scores for listening comprehension, phonological analysis and blending, rapid naming and reading comprehension (Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2006a). In a subsequent study, children listened to RAVE-O stories using RFB&D’s AudioPlus text at a slightly faster rate than their normal reading rate and followed along with the text. Students with poor phonological and naming skills showed significant gains in phonological skills, listening comprehension and reading comprehension (Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2006a).

Footnotes for this section

• S—Set up your player.
• L— Look ahead to preview the text by using the player feature that navigates from title to header.
• C—Comprehend what you are reading by using the bookmark capability of the player to note important points, slowing down the text to focus attention on a particular segment and/or resolve text confusions, re-listening to text to aid comprehension and taking notes on key words to use in drafting an initial summary of the text.
• K—Keep it all together by using your individual summary as a basis for discussion and collaborative construction of a group summary.

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