Recent research has found that students interacting with paper text have greater comprehension than students interacting with electronic text--that is, text on a screen of any of a host of devices. With the movement to paperless classrooms and one-to-one devices, what can teachers do to mitigate this loss? We will explore practical solutions to actively engage students in text and provide resources to teachers that will help them make the most of student technology, not just to match the expectations of paper and pen, but to exceed those limitations in terms of student comprehension, analysis, and production.

1. BRIDGING THE DIGITAL
DIVIDE
Connecting Students to Electronic Text
Terry.Maxwell@hesperiausd.org—English Department Chair, Hesperia High School
David.Cain@hesperiausd.org—Secondary Literacy Coach, Hesperia USD
Presentation URL: http://www.slideshare.net/dfcain/_____________________

2. READING AT THE CROSSROADS

3. READING AT THE CROSSROADS
• SAMR Model and its implications
•S—Substitution
• A—Adaptation
• M—Modification
• R—Redefinition

4. READING AT THE CROSSROADS
• SAMR Model and its implications
• S—Substitution
•A—Adaptation
• M—Modification
• R—Redefinition

5. READING AT THE CROSSROADS
• SAMR Model and its implications
• S—Substitution
• A—Adaptation
•M—Modification
• R—Redefinition

6. READING AT THE CROSSROADS
• SAMR Model and its implications
• S—Substitution
• A—Adaptation
• M—Modification
•R—Redefinition

8. ELECTRONIC TEXT
• Strengths
• Convenience
• Immediacy
• Limitless library
• Relevancy
• Search/Find ability
• Textual correlation
• Range of vocabulary, visual, and
auditory accommodations
• Weaknesses
• Absence of tactility and
dimensionality—haptic
dissonance
• Limited control
• Limited visual scope
• Increased distraction
• Emphasizes hyper
reading, not deep reading

9. ETEXT AND COMPREHENSION LOSS
• Although initial studies in eText, as early as 1998, suggested little
difference between reading on paper and reading on a screen, a
host of more recent studies have demonstrated significant
comprehension discrepancies, suggesting that paper text is the
preferred medium for communication of complex ideas.
• "Hypertext structure tends to increase cognitive demands of
decision making and and visual processing and this additional
cognitive load, in turn, impairs reading comprehension
performance.” (DeStefano & LeFevre, 2007)
• “[S]tudents who read texts in print scored significantly better on
the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts
digitally.” (Mangen, Walgermo, & Bronnick, 2012)

10. WHY WOULD THAT BE?
• “Nevertheless, cue the scary music from your couch,
or wherever you read: Can you concentrate on
Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or
give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy
while Twitter beckons? People who read e-books
on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book
in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is
straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu
of distractions that can fragment the reading
experience, or stop it in its tracks.” Jenn Doll, The
Wire
•

11. SHOULD WE STOP THE ROLLOUT?
• Even though study after study highlight the differences in reading comprehension
and analysis based on the use of paper or etext (content v. container debate), few
had attempted to monitor student comprehension and analysis when the tools of
paper text were accommodated and then enhanced by technology.
• “[T]he introduction of an interactive annotation component helped improve
comprehension and reading strategy use in a group of fifth graders. It turns out that
they could read deeply. They just had to be taught how. […] We cannot go
backwards. As children move more toward an immersion in digital media, we
have to figure out ways to read deeply there.” (Konikova, The New Yorker, July
2014)

12. SHIFT HAPPENS
• New standards (CCSS, ELD, and NGSS, etc.) emphasize
developing students’ abilities to use language in academic
settings for complex purposes. The new standards specifically
describe the importance of understanding complex texts,
critiquing the reasoning of others, and using evidence to support
ideas orally and in writing. This focus on constructing and
communicating complex ideas is a major shift for many schools
that have focused on teaching discrete facts and vocabulary
items for multiple-choice tests. (Stanford University, 2015)

13. THE DIFFERENCES IN READING
• What do we read for and what devices do we use for those
types of reading?
• Samuel Johnson, 1723-1792, distinguished four types of
reading:
• Hard study—with pen in hand
• Perusal—searching for information
• Curious reading—engrossed in a novel
• Mere reading—browsing and skimming
• Deep reading vs. Hyper reading (Katherine Hayles, How We
Think)
• Levels of reading—0, 1, 2

14. WHEN TO USE PAPER…WHEN TO USE ETEXT
• What percentage of college students are
more comfortable with etexts than with paper
texts?
• According to the research of Naomi Baron
(2015), 92% of college students polled
preferred paper text to etext when they were
expected to concentrate on textual ideas.
• However, financial constraints dictated that
students purchased an increasing percentage
of etexts.
• Additionally, the percentage and number of
words read by college students has grown
dramatically in the last ten years—solely
because of electronic media.

15. WHEN TO USE PAPER…WHEN TO USE ETEXT
(Educause, 2011)

16. CAN TECHNOLOGY HELP?
• Chen & Chen (2014) found that electronic annotation abilities that overlaid etext
resulted in nearly identical textual comprehension with paper formats with the same
activities—however, when they added collaborative electronic written response,
similar to blog entry and responses, etext comprehension and analysis, resulting in
the experimental group significantly outperforming the control group in direct and
explicit comprehension, inferential comprehension performance, and use of reading
strategy.
• Moreover, the experimental group, but not the control group, had a significantly
improved reading attitude in the total dimensions and in the behavioral and affective
sub-dimensions. Additionally, the experimental group showed positive interest and
high learning satisfaction.

17. Student comprehension
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
No Suports
Annotation
Annotation+
Physical
Collaboration
Annotation+ Digital
Collaboration
Paper
eText
STUDENT COMPREHENSION

18. Individual
Freedom
Private/Student
to Teacher
Public Post
and
Collaboration
Student to
Student
STUDENT INTERACTION

21. As the teacher, I can quickly
“hide” all annotations and leave
only those that might require
further attention.
Then I can leave a comment to
prompt the student for more detail

22. Create a Google Form with the
desired information as questions
Form can be linked to a class
page or emailed directly to
students

23. All students’
annotations
come to one
place
Can be sorted by
period or name
Ssfs

24. CLOSE READING
• It is not cloze reading, or closed reading—it is
thoughtful and careful attention to the text,
moving from the intention to the interpretation
through deliberate process
• Bob Probst—”Read it again, and likely again”
• It is a conversation with the text and author—
an transactional exchange of ideas.
• Close reading is text-dependent—what does
the text say about itself, how does it say it,
how does it connect to other texts, and why is
it significant?

25. CLOSE READING
• A significant body of research links the close reading of complex text—whether the
student is a struggling reader or advanced—to significant gains in reading
proficiency and finds close reading to be a key component of college and career
readiness. (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers,
2011, p. 7)
• Take a look at your standards, not in isolation, but for student activity.
• For example, ELA 11/12.RI4, “…how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key
term or terms over the course of a text…”

26. CLOSE READING
• According to former International Reading Association president, Tim Shanahan,
close reading in the CCSS era must:
• Utilize short text selections—what can be surface-read by students in no more than 10
minutes.
• Focus on text meaning
• Minimize background preparation/explanation
• Minimize text apparatus (marginal notes, vocabulary, ancillary information, etc.)
• Students must do the reading and interpretation, not teachers
• Teacher’s role is to ask text dependent-questions and encourage student generation of
text-dependent questions
• Build stamina—multi-day, multiple-read approach to text
• Practice purposeful rereading, each with a separate purpose

27. CLOSE READING ACTIVITY

28. READERS AS WRITERS…
WRITERS AS READERS
• Readers are writers and writers are readers—some of those who promoted
marginalia:
• S.T. Coleridge (coined the term, marginalia)
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Alan Jacobs—Literary Critic
• Mortimer Adler
• W.H. Auden
• P.B. Shelley
• Mark Twain
• Charles Dickens
• Thomas Jefferson—his marginalia comments have been the basis of Supreme Court
decisions
• We must write as we read and read as we write—the two are symbiotic

29. THE MOST ANNOTATED AUTHORS

30. SOLUTIONS
• Do what we have always done, just
change the medium

31. http://genius.com/Maxwellscorp-herman-melvilles-moby-dick-chap-12-biographical-annotated#-herman -
melvilles-moby-dick-chap-12-biographical-annotated#
So let’s begin by finding a digital text to annotate.
• SAMR Model and its implications
•S—Substitution
• A—Adaptation
• M—Modification
• R—Redefinition

32. Now let’s grab our digital highlighter . . .
http://www.scrible.com/ And paint some lines . . .
• SAMR Model and its
implications
• S—Substitution
•A—Adaptation
• M—Modification
• R—Redefinition

33. • SAMR Model and its implications
• S—Substitution
• A—Adaptation
•M—Modification
• R—Redefinition
By overlaying the Scrible platform over the
LitGenius page, we’re modifying the learning
experience.

34. https://todaysmeet.com/pluggedin
Now let’s add the collaboration piece . . .

35. SOLUTIONS
• www.notablepdf.com

36. SOLUTIONS
• Skitch (Evernote)

37. SOLUTIONS
• https://emargin.bcu.ac.uk/

38. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN
•The tools available to us are always changing, and
never get locked in to a particular one.
•Look at new technology through the lens of best
practice.
•Does the technology support student comprehension
through:
•Student autonomy
•Student freedom
•Collaborative analysis of text
•Collaborative analysis of peer’s text comments
•Systems that support students to significant
production

39. SOLUTIONS
• www.litgenius.com