summer camp, has posted. It shows what is clearly an abused and very sad looking puppy. Amy shares the photograph with her friends, with a caption “DisGUSTing! Share if you agree.”
Later that morning, Amy enters Ms. Russell’s classroom, her 7th
grade language arts teacher, just as the bell rings. As the last couple students enter the classroom, Ms. Russell projects a PowerPoint slide identifying the language arts objective for today’s class on the board: “Students will be able to analyze the role of the protagonist in texts.” She asks the students to take out the book they have been reading, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit. As she advances to the next slide, Ms. Russell reminds the students that they have been studying character development and that today they should be paying attention to the way that Winnie, the main character, changes in this chapter. She asks the class what they have already learned about Winnie. Maya says that Winnie was someone who liked adventure so she left her home; and Patrick says that she is brave. A few more students raise their hands and Ms. Russell acknowledges their responses with an enthusiastic head nod while she documents their comments on a slide on the PowerPoint presentation. Ms. Russell summarizes, “ So we know that Winnie is someone who isn’t afraid of adventure and that her curiosity has been stirred by the Tuck family. Today, I want you to continue reading through Chapter 8. Pay attention to what Winnie does that makes her a protagonist. What decisions does she make in these chapters that really change things for her? When you finish reading, take out your reading response journals and write 1-2 paragraphs about what you have learned.” Several students groan with disappointment, but most quietly open their books and begin reading. After 30 minutes have passed, Amy has completed the reading. She takes out her reading response journal and writes a brief paragraph explaining what she noticed that Winnie did in these chapters. Amy gets a bit distracted and checks her cell phone that is hidden in her Ugg boots. She pretends that she is scratching her calve as she swipes open her phone to check her text messages and Facebook. Just as Amy finishes a text message, the bell rings. Ms. Russell reminds students to turn in their journals because she will be reviewing them tonight. Amy tucks her cell phone back into her boot and tosses her journal into the bin marked 1st door.
hour as she exits the
Amy’s story is fairly typical for students in the middle grades. What is striking about Amy’s story and the story of most students in the middle grades is that their skills using mobile devices are tapped for social purposes alone. Academically, these skills are completely untapped. The second vignette portrays Bevin, a 7th
grader who has been able to use her mobile device inside and outside of her language arts classroom for learning.
Vignette 2 – Bevin
Monday morning at 6:50am, Bevin’s cell phone begins to play Lady Gaga, Bevin yawns, turns over in her bed to see her fully charged cell phone playing the “Born This Way” music video. She lets the song continue to play but swipes to open her text messages. Her friend Brooke has texted her “u up??? What u wearin 2 skl?” Bevin texts back “hoode.” Before Brittany gets
MACULJOURNAL |
out of bed she swipes her Facebook app to see if any friends have commented on her post last night “What character did you talk about for your homework?” Bevin notices that many commented that they talked about “Tuck.” Bevin decides that she needs to make some quick adjustments to her homework. She sends a mass text message to her friends from Language Arts asking, “Y do u think Tuck is more signif than Winn?” Within minutes she receives text messages back from five friends. Marcus texts, “He is the main chcter of the bk.” Kayla texts, “He is mysterious”. Bevin quickly swipes her Google Docs app on her phone and opens up her homework paper. She immediately begins to change her vook for class. She then swipes her vook of Tuck Everlasting and skims chapter 3. She loves how the vooks include video and text so she can get a nice visual of the literacy experience. She uses the iHighlight app on her phone to highlight the evidence in the chapter related to the “mysterious” character of Tuck. Next she copies and pastes those quoted highlights into her Google Doc. She then swipes her EasyBib app, and creates a proper citation for the quotes she selected, pasting the MLA citation into the bottom of her Google Doc.
Bevin enters Ms. Russell’s class and immediately puts her phone on vibrate, following the expectation that Ms. Russell set at the very beginning of the year. She uses her cell phone to scan the QR barcode on the door. She immediately receives the ice breaker activity for the day and the homework assignment for tomorrow on her phone. She sees that the ice breaker is a short video from the movie Tuck Everlasting. In addition, Ms. Russell has asked that the students annotate the video as they watch, using the YouTube annotation tools. They are to look for aspects of the movie that are the same or very different from what they read in the book. Bevin enthusiastically begins to watch the movie, she starts and stops it at different points to mark places in the movie where she sees comparisons. She writes several annotations: “In the movie, Winnie is older than she is in the book. I think she was only 10 in the book!!” In her next annotation, she writes, “Miles seems much more angry in the movie than he was in the book. I wonder why they changed his character this way.” After watching the video, Ms. Russell begins class by projecting the video and showing all the students’ annotations. Bevin really likes that the annotations are anonymous. She feels more comfortable taking a few educated guesses and is curious about what other kids wrote. She sees that a few other kids wrote that Winnie is older in the movie but no one else wrote about Miles’ personality. A few kids wrote comments about the movie being set at an earlier date, and Emma wrote that Winnie’s gravestone in the movie says that she died in 1999, but in the book the gravestone says she died in 1948. How weird! Bevin makes a mental note that she wants to go back to that scene and look for that gravestone. Ms. Russell then asks the students to talk in their table groups. They are to discuss one of the annotations that they hadn’t thought of and locate evidence in the book to substantiate the claim. Ms. Russell asks that one member of each group record the conversation with their mobile device. Bevin volunteers and swipes her AudioMemos app and starts the recording. After five minutes of table talk, Ms. Russell convenes the group and facilitates
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