Bitstrips and Storybird: Writing Development in a Blended Literacy Camp
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Wertz | Bitstrips and Storybird:Jessica
WritingA. Wertz
Development in a Blended Literacy Camp
page
24
Bitstrips and Storybird:
Writing Development in a
Blended Literacy Camp
T
oday’s young adolescents live The Common Core English Language Arts
in a world that is continuously State Standards (National Governors Asso-
ciation Center for Best Practices & Council of
mediated by the Internet. “No
Chief State School Officers, 2010) mandate that
previous technology for literacy has been students in grades K–12 use a variety of digital
adopted by so many, in so many different tools to produce and publish their writing. Meet-
places, in such a short period, and with ing these Standards requires teachers to use and
teach with digital tools to mediate their students’
such profound consequences” (Coiro,
writing development. Furthermore, integrating
Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008, p. 2). digital literacies in instruction affords an oppor-
In our society that is invariably mediated tunity for teachers to engage students in authen-
by the Internet, today’s young adoles- tic learning experiences that support the other
cents are constant consumers and produc- English language arts Standards. In the “Position
Statement on Multimodal Literacies,” NCTE
ers of text via the World Wide Web.
(2005) recognized that even young students are
often more literate in digital production than
If our goal as literacy teachers is to prepare stu-
many of their teachers. This dynamic changes
dents for the demands of the 21st century, then
the traditional roles of teachers and students in
the ways in which we engage middle level stu-
today’s classrooms, as teachers no longer hold all
dents with literacy in school must be in con-
the knowledge and expend it to their less knowl-
cert with the ways they authentically engage
edgeable students (Alvermann, 2002). As young
with literacy out of school (Xu, 2008). This ar-
adolescents bring knowledge and expertise about
ticle describes the integration of Web 2.0 tech-
digital tools and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media
nologies in writing instruction with upcoming
into our classrooms (Guzzetti, 2009), we must
fifth- and sixth-grade students during a Sum-
adapt to our new roles as learners and become
mer Digital Literacy Camp; it also details how
“pedagogically nimble” (Vasudevan, DeJaynes,
the students and I learned alongside each other
& Schmier, 2010, p. 6) in order to foster literacy
as we “played” with digital literacy to write
learning with these young experts (Chandler-Ol-
persuasive comic strips and digital storybooks.
cott & Lewis, 2010).
(To see a video about the Summer Digital Lit-
Integrating new literacies into our teaching
eracy Camp, go to http://www.youtube.com/
requires “using” these digital tools in instruction.
watch?v=C08f0ccnzTY). Through these literacy
Doing so may also involve shifting the ways par-
experiences, students used new literacies practic-
ticipation and collaboration are valued so as to
es that emphasized multimodalities, socially situ-
create spaces in which students can share their
ated practices, and their own identities and lived
expertise (Hagood, 2009). It further requires
experiences to learn key components of persua-
educators to understand the complex ways stu-
sive and narrative writing.
dents engage with multimedia (Hagood, Stevens,
Copyright © 2014 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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& Reinking, 2004) and to revalue the power of websites to engage students in interactive word 25
“play” in literacy learning (King & O’Brien, sorts, phonics and fluency activities, and vocabu-
2004; Vasudevan, DeJaynes, & Schmier, 2010). lary development.
Each student group Integrating new literacies
Summer Digital Literacy Camp visited each station once
To meet the needs of both a graduate-level read- per day. At the start of into our teaching requires
ing certification program and the local school the summer camp, the “using” these digital tools
district, a midwestern university created a sum- university loaned each
mer digital program to provide literacy interven- student an iPad, provid- in instruction. Doing so
tion for upcoming fifth- and sixth-grade students ing access to the Inter- may also involve shifting
who needed additional support in literacy. Fol- net as well as apps for
lowing the research-based practices that seemed literacy learning. In ad- the ways participation and
to increase students’ interest and motivation dition, each student had collaboration are valued so
in literacy learning (Fingon, Frank, & Kawell, access to a MacBook for
2010; Haddix, 2012), our camp was designed as use while working in my as to create spaces in which
a blended learning model, employing a “mixture writing group. In the students can share their
of synchronous and asynchronous techniques following sections, I de-
by means of both face-to-face, online, and of- scribe how students and expertise.
fline methods for instruction” (Massoud, Iqbal, I explored persuasive and
Stockley, & Noureldin, 2011, p. 1). Our blended narrative writing by “playing” with digital litera-
learning delivery included interactions between cy in our face-to-face sessions.
students and tutors in both a traditional and an
e-learning environment using free software pro- Writing Persuasive Comic Strips
grams and the Internet. The eTutors (under- Our partnership school district asked us to fo-
graduate teacher candidates) were facilitators cus on persuasive writing, in large part because
who contributed remotely from their summer of the emphasis on argument in the Common
locations. The two graduate student tutors were Core English Language Arts State Standards
fulfilling their practicum requirement for licen- (National Governors Association Center for Best
sure by facilitating the literacy camp on campus Practices & Council of Chief State School Of-
and providing face-to-face instruction in writing ficers, 2010). The time constraints of the pro-
and guided reading. gram limited our study of persuasive writing to
For a period of three weeks, 12 upcoming one week of 45-minute sessions with each small
fifth- and sixth-grade students met daily on the group. Recognizing this wasn’t enough time for
university campus from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. most fifth- and sixth-grade students to develop a
Students were divided into three groups and ro- quality traditional text, I looked to other genres
tated between three stations. The first station fo- of digital texts that might help us meet the goals
cused on face-to-face guided reading and was led of introducing a claim and stating a position, or-
by a practicing third-grade teacher working to ganizing reasons clearly, providing evidence, and
earn a master’s in reading education. The second formulating a conclusion that follows from the
station focused on face-to-face writing and was stated position. For these purposes, and from my
led by myself, a practicing ninth-grade English initial interactions with the students participating
teacher working to earn a reading endorsement. in the camp, digital comic strips became the most
The third station offered individual instruction appropriate written genre.
online with undergraduate eTutors majoring in To study persuasion, I started by adapting
early or middle childhood education. Individual lessons from the ReadWriteThink (http://www
tutoring was mediated using iChat and various .readwritethink.org) lesson: “Can You Convince
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26 Me? Developing Persuasive Writing” (Manning, dents became more engaged in the activity when
n.d.). The students and I viewed and then dis- they could make connections to their own TV
cussed a PowerPoint presentation that outlined viewing and then have them instantly validated
various types of persuasive strategies. We also when we found their commercials on YouTube.
watched YouTube videos of television commer- In another lesson, we brainstormed issues
cials to evaluate the marketing based on the per- the students felt strongly about and recorded our
suasive strategies the students had just learned. As ideas using the Notability app on our iPads. We
the students remembered other especially persua- then narrowed the list down to one topic that
sive commercials they had seen, we searched the we could develop into a persuasive comic. One
YouTube website for those clips and discussed group selected sibling relationships, another se-
what attributes made them so persuasive. Stu- lected bullying, and the third selected playing
sports to stay healthy. Rather than printing out
the graphic organizer that accompanies the les-
son, we imported the PDF
file into the Notability app.
We learned the annotating
functions of the app while
also exploring how we could
persuade someone to take
a position on a specific is-
sue using various persuasive
strategies.
Figure 1 illustrates one
student’s development using
the app. He progressed from
writing with his finger on the
screen to inserting text into
a PDF document and high-
lighting boxes that would
not be effective strategies for
his issue. As students experi-
mented with the new digital
tools, they shared with each
other (and me) the tricks they
discovered. Each activity be-
came both a writing lesson
and an opportunity to ex-
plore a new digital tool.
To learn about each of
the selected issues, we con-
sulted InfOhio (http://www
.infohio.org), an EBSCO
Host research database de-
signed for elementary and
middle level students with
a kid-friendly interface that
Figure 1. Example of a graphic organizer completed with an iPad (IRA/NCTE, 2006)
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filters search results by Lexile ranges. Working port the overarching claims. The members of 27
collaboratively, we tried various search terms each group then collaborated on ideas to include
related to each group’s issue. After reading ab- in the interactive “Persuasion Map” on the Read-
stracts from several articles, each group selected WriteThink website (IRA/NCTE, 2010). Figure
one article to read that would help build back- 2 shows an example of a file one student created
ground knowledge and provide reasons to sup- using the interactive tool.
Figure 2. Persuasion map PDF file generated from student interactive (IRA/NCTE, 2010)
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28 Using the website Bitstrips for Schools quick write to capture every detail they could re-
(http://www.bitstripsforschools.com), the stu- member (Kittle, 2008). I shared what I had writ-
dents created digital comic strips by selecting ten about my memory, and students shared their
settings, characters, and props for each panel, writing.
and writing captions and dialogue. They used The next day we visited the Storybird web-
the information from their persuasion map to site (http://www.storybird.com), and students
write the text for each panel in their comic strip, logged into the accounts I had created for them.
transferring ideas generated through the inter- This website makes it possible for students to use
active tool to the digital comic strip platform. I artwork as a tool for storytelling; users select a
encouraged them to use settings and characters picture set to illustrate their digital storybooks
to nonverbally represent ideas documented in and then write text to tell their own stories us-
their graphic organizer that would persuade oth- ing the images as inspiration. The artwork is
ers to agree with their claim. The claim and main meant to aid in narrative writing by giving users
points of their arguments became the captions a source for plot, setting, characterization, and
for the comic strip, while the dialogue between descriptive details. Because we were coming to
characters and content in thought bubbles above the website with initial ideas for the stories we
individual characters became the evidence that would like to tell, we looked for picture sets that
supported their claim. Groups were encouraged related in some way to our ideas; however, we
to use at least three persuasive strategies in their also remained open to images that tapped into
comic strips. With the comic strips completed, new memories. Some students changed their
the groups came together at the end of the day topics based on the images in the picture sets.
and each took a turn displaying and reading its Once students had selected a picture set, they
comic strip to the other groups. Figure 3 illus- chose art for each page of their digital storybook
trates the comic created by the group that select- and then wrote text based on their memories;
ed sibling relationships as its issue. they used the art and their imaginations to fic-
Through this process, students drew on mul- tionalize their stories as needed to blend their
timodalities, socially situated practices, and their memories with the artwork. For instance, one
own identities and lived experiences to learn key student wrote about a trip to the zoo. As she de-
components of persuasion that would help them scribed the animals she remembered, she also in-
create more extended representations of persua- cluded details from the artwork she had selected
sive writing in the coming school year. to represent her story. Figure 4 illustrates how
she began with her memory of seeing pandas, and
Writing Narratives as Digital then used the details in the artwork to write de-
Storybooks scriptive details for her story. By interacting with
Our next writing exploration focused on narra- artwork she found on the Storybird website dur-
tive writing. We discussed the common charac- ing her composing process, this student moved
teristics of a narrative, such as real and imagined beyond listing the animals she remembered see-
experiences, dialogue, description, and a predict- ing as a child to creating an engaging story detail-
able story structure (i.e., exposition, rising action, ing a little girl’s experience at the zoo.
climax, resolution). Once students understood Once students had written a first draft, I
the idea of narrative, we began generating a list modeled revising my initial draft. I demonstrated
of memories. I modeled by sharing a memory how I revised by adding more details and descrip-
from my list, and students were then invited to tive words that would help my readers visualize
share the memory that was most vivid in their my story; in doing so, I used the images from
minds. After talking through the memory with Storybird as inspiration and actively encouraged
the group, students engaged in a five-minute students to help me craft phrases to add more
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Figure 3. Digital comic strip created by 5th- and 6th-grade students (Bitstrips, 2011)
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Figure 4. Sample page from a student’s Storybird (Storybird, n.d.)
vivid description. The students then worked col- onto DVDs, along with other files created dur-
laboratively to add imagery to their own stories ing the Summer Digital Literacy Camp, and
and edited for grammar, spelling, and word us- mailed to students and their parents shortly after
age. Once they considered their stories finished, the program concluded. The use of these tech-
they published them to nologies allowed students to create, publish, and
Although the writing the Storybird website. share their words with their families and friends.
concepts were grounded Our final step was to
transition each student’s Beyond the Digital Literacy
in traditional school-based creation from a digital sto- Camp
literacies, the ways the rybook to an act of digital In three short weeks, students used their personal
storytelling (Skinner & knowledge of issues, such as bullying and sibling
students and I engaged Lichtenstein, 2009). Us-
rivalry, while also drawing from personal expe-
with these ideas were all ing the screen capture riences, such as vacations and trips to the zoo,
feature of the MacBook, to explore persuasive and narrative writing in
mediated by technology. I captured pages from the
authentic ways through the use of digital tools.
digital storybook and im- Although the writing concepts were grounded in
ported them into iMovie. Then each student and traditional school-based literacies, the ways the
I sat together as the student read each page of students and I engaged with these ideas were all
the storybook while I used iMovie to record the mediated by technology. The students worked
reading and time slides to coincide with the voice collaboratively and individually to create digital
file. The final product was a movie file including products that not only demonstrated their mas-
the student’s recorded voice reading each page tery of the Common Core Writing Standards but
of the digital storybook. Those files were burned also made it possible for them to create identities
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within their comic strips and digital storybooks they realized that the focus of the camp was 31
to give voice to their lived experiences. more about utilizing digital literacy tools and
The activities I used in this Summer Digi- less about remediating
tal Literacy Camp can easily be adapted for a their literacy skills, their When they realized that
classroom setting. Teachers with limited access perceptions of the camp
the focus of the camp was
to a computer lab could have students plan their quickly brightened. Those
comic strips or digital storybooks in the class- of us who organized the more about utilizing digi-
room before using the websites to create them. camp knew we had created
tal literacy tools and less
Students could also work in groups and share something powerful when
computers to create collaborative projects. My a student said she was dis- about remediating their
youngest students had just completed fourth appointed that she would
literacy skills, their percep-
grade and were able to learn and successfully have to miss a day of the
use both the Bitstrips for Schools and Storybird camp to attend a popu- tions of the camp quickly
websites. Both sites offer enough choices to make lar amusement park with
brightened.
them appropriate for older students as well. As her family. By immersing
a ninth-grade English teacher, I have no doubt students in new literacies
that my freshmen would have enjoyed using the practices and valuing collaboration and shared
websites just as much as the students I worked learning mediated by Web 2.0 digital tools, we
with in this camp. Teachers could use these re- changed the dynamics of literacy instruction; as
sources for short activities such as prewriting, or a result, students who had previously struggled
they could design larger units of study around the in the areas of reading and writing were given a
websites (e.g., a unit on ad campaigns to study space in which to share their expertise and play
argument). with literacy.
Final Thoughts References
Students began the Summer Digital Literacy Alvermann, D. E. (Ed.). (2002). Adolescents and litera-
Camp by equating it with summer school. When cies in a digital world. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
connections from readwritethink
Merging Research Skills with Digital Storytelling
“Digitally Telling the Story of Greek Figures” invites students to become engaged learners through this unit that pre-
pares them for studying ancient Greece and combines learning basic research skills with digital storytelling skills. While
researching about Greek gods, heroes, and creatures, students learn how to find main ideas in sentences and paragraphs
in books and Internet articles, which they then learn to record in short phrases on index cards divided by topic. Working
with a partner, students turn these short phrases into the script for their digital story that includes music and pictures.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/digitally-telling-story-greek-30805.html
Interested in the Persuasion Map shared in the article? Visit the printout here: http://www.readwritethink.org/
classroom-resources/printouts/persuasion-a-30310.html and the online interactive tool here: http://
www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/persuasion-30034.html.
Lisa Fink
www.readwritethink.org
Voices from the Middle, Volume 21 Number 4, May 2014
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Jessica A. Wertz is a former high school English teacher and a current doctoral student at the
University of Cincinnati, where she studies adolescent literacy and teaches educational technology
courses to teacher candidates. She can be reached by e-mail at wertzjc@mail.uc.edu.
Voices from the Middle, Volume 21 Number 4, May 2014
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