Learning and Leading - December 2008/January 2009

ties shaped and were shaped by this form of digital literacy. The researchers found that IM literacy outside of school was related to desired school literacy practices. Youth changed the tone, voice, word choice, and content of their messages to fit their communication needs. Moreover, they used this form of communication to build their social status and social connections, which in turn enhanced their language use.

The implications of these findings are not that we must necessarily integrate IM into school lessons, although that may be appropriate in certain situations, but that we engage students in “metadiscussions” of their literacy practices in and out of schools, helping them to become more aware of the affordances of different kinds of writing and “how to shift topic, writing style, and voice from audience to audience,” the authors wrote.

A second qualitative study, “ Learning Designs: An Analysis of Youth-initiated Technology Use” by Donna DeGennaro, also looked at student-initiated IM practices, but between students and their teacher within an informal learning context (an after-school computer lab management club).

The mission of the club was to “involve students in assisting with technical support and ongoing technology-related decision-making in the high school,” DeGennaro wrote. Three themes in teacher–student IM participation emerged from the data collected: 1) negotiated goals: initial teacher-dominated goals for assignments were reshaped through IM conversations in which students articulated and advocated for their interests, resulting in negotiated goals; 2) co-constructed problem-solving: students and teachers used IM to troubleshoot technology problems from remote locations and arrive at co-constructed solutions; 3) collaborative argumentation: the

students and their teacher “argued to learn,” using IM to disagree over technology-related decisions, provide evidence for perspectives, and, ultimately, generate a decision that incorporated both agendas.

In a third study, “Student Perceptions of Using Instant Messaging Software to Facilitate Synchronous Online Class Interaction in a Graduate Teacher Education Course,” L.C. Wang and W. R. Morgan analyzed how K– 12 teachers participating in a master’s-level educational technology course perceived their use of IM for structured weekly online discussions of their course textbook chapters.

Using a questionnaire designed according to principles for good practice in undergraduate education ( encourages student–faculty contact, develops cooperation among students, encourages active learning, and gives prompt feedback), they specifically sought to examine if the 43 teachers enrolled in the course perceived their use of IM as encouraging these four quality practices. The subjects were to mentally compare specific aspects of their current IM-using class to similar aspects of other non-IM-using classes. The results indicated that the teachers rated their IM experience as being significantly different, with all differences in the positive direction, for all four principles. That is, they felt a heightened sense of contact with their instructor, of cooperation and reciprocity among their peers, of wanting to be active participants in the online discussion, and of getting immediate feedback.

These snippets of recent studies dealing with instant messaging offer several messages for education.

First, deep understanding of the new competencies and digital literacies we need to teach will likely derive from studying, building upon, and extending the range of “participatory media” practices young people are engaging in.

Second, as educational research strives to catch up with these emerging structures of participation, educators and administrators must stay critically open to and aware of youth-initiated technology use and the situational literacies they may be developing, without necessarily understanding yet how the decisions we make today will (or will not) prepare our students for tomorrow.

Resources

Central issues in new literacies and new literacies research. Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lanks-hear, C., & Leu, D. Handbook of Research on New Literacies. (2008). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Examining the intersections of online social networks, pedagogy, and engagement among low-income students. Greenhow, C., Robelia, E., & Kim, S. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, New York, New York. (March 24–28, 2008).

Instant messaging, literacies, and social identities. Lewis, C., & Fabos, B. Reading Research Quarterly, 40( 4), 470–501. ( October/Novem-ber/December 2005).

Learning designs: An analysis of youth-initiated technology use. DeGennaro, D. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41( 1), 1–20. (2008).

NETS•S and Performance Indicators for Students. ISTE. (March 2008).

NETS•T and Performance Indicators for Teachers. ISTE. (2008).

Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13( 1), article 11. (2007): http://jcmc. indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/ boyd.ellison.html

Status: Looking for work on Facebook. Rosen-bloom, New York Times. (May 1, 2008).

Student perceptions of using instant messaging software to facilitate synchronous online class interaction in a graduate teacher education courts. Wang, L.C. & Morgan, W.R. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 25( 1), 15–21. (2008).