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6 Technology to Promote Adult Literacy
Pages 162-178

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From page 162...
... Part two describes why these technologies would be expected to improve learning and literacy skill development. Part three describes specific digital tools and instructional approaches for practicing literacy skills.
From page 163...
... As described in Chapter 2, literacy always includes a mediating technology that makes possible the inscription and transmission of words and meanings, whether a stone tablet, a quill pen, a book, a typewriter, or a word processor. What is new in the digital age -- and what makes it essential to emphasize the role of new technologies in efforts to promote adolescent and adult literacy -- is the unprecedented nature, speed, and scale of change in technologies for literacy that have occurred as a result of the Internet and related information technologies, commonly referred to as Web 2.0.
From page 164...
... Currently, some populations still lack Internet connectivity and access to instructional uses of digital technologies, although such gaps are quickly narrowing (Pew Internet & American Life Project, see http://www.pewinternet.org/ [Jan.
From page 165...
... To this list must be added the everyday tools of word processing. The ability to easily and quickly compose and edit prose is a major determiner of writing achievement, and word processing tools replace laborious writing and complete rewriting with faster (after practice)
From page 166...
... have adopted with alacrity and ease digital technologies for everyday life that have become inexpensive and readily available, such as cell phones. Furthermore, the literature on adolescent literacy has documented many cases of young people who acquire facility with digital tools that require reading and writing in their out-of-school lives and who have more digital expertise than teachers, although they may experience difficulties with academic literacy.
From page 167...
... These computer environments as a group help students learn reading at multiple levels, including language decoding, vocabulary, semantic interpretation of sentences, generating inferences, and building self-explanations of the content. Learning gains in such system have been statistically significant, although effect sizes tend to be lower than those for mathematics and other science and technology areas.
From page 168...
... Agent-based systems have shown impressive learning gains, with moderate-to-high effect sizes (Atkinson, 2002; Gholson and Craig, 2006; Gholson et al., 2009; Graesser, Jeon, and Dufty, 2008; Hu and Graesser, 2004; McNamara et al., 2007b; Moreno and Mayer, 2004, 2007)
From page 169...
... DIGITAL TOOLS FOR PRACTICING SKILLS In the sections that follow, we describe some of the possible ways that technologies might enhance adult and adolescent literacy practice and acquisition. Many of these technologies have yet to be tested with adult literacy learners, so a program of empirical research to evaluate their effectiveness and how best to implement them is highly recommended.
From page 170...
... Contemporary online word processing facilities provide commenting tools in online texts. Adobe Acrobat provides such tools for commenting on PDF files, but there also are software packages on wiki or Moodle sites that allow students to annotate texts individually as they read.
From page 171...
... . A number of intelligent tutoring systems allow spoken student input as an alternative to typed input (D'Mello et al., 2010; Litman et al., 2006)
From page 172...
... From 1985 to the present, there have been a number of intelligent tutoring systems developed (see citations above) that track student performance on various tasks, provide feedback, and intelligently guide students in ways that promote learning.
From page 173...
... Serious games are designed with the explicit goal of helping students learn about important subject-matter content, strategies, and cognitive or social skills. Instead of learning by reading a textbook, listening to a lecture, or interacting with a conventional computer system, the learner plays a game that requires engaging curriculum content and provides learning opportunities as part of the game context.
From page 174...
... The integration of game components and literacy instruction seems destined to have a large future (Gee, 2007; McNamara, Jackson, and Graesser, 2010)
From page 175...
... It is not yet clear that this level of realism is needed to engage adult and adolescent literacy learners or which learners would benefit most, but the mere fact that it is possible sets the stage for a range of research that examines what level of intelligent technology is cost-effective for enhancing effective literacy practice. Moreover, as the techniques used in Tactical Iraqi penetrate the electronic games industry and the marketing world, costs may drop enough to make the approach feasible for low-budget adult literacy programming.
From page 176...
... For example, increasing numbers of adults are meeting and becoming paired through social media, which places a premium on being able to describe oneself in text and to respond to written questions. More directly, researchers have begun to design and implement social networking sites specifically to support and encourage literacy-rich educational activities for youth, such as multimodal composing, language learning, and intercultural understanding (e.g., Hull, Stornaiuolo, and Sahni, 2010)
From page 177...
... Numerous digital tools are potentially available to support adults in practicing their literacy skills and for giving the feedback that supports learning, among them group collaborative communication software, word processing, speech-to-text and text-to-speech tools, embedded low-level coaching of electronic texts, immersion environments, intelligent tutoring systems, serious games, and automatic essay scoring. Studies are needed to establish that the efficacy of effective instructional approaches can be enhanced by technology and to clarify which subpopulations of learners benefit from the technology.
From page 178...
... To help develop the capacity to use technologies for learning, it will be important to identify both the texts and tools already routinely used by various subgroups of the adult learner population and the types of texts they need to be able to produce and comprehend. A challenge in the use of technology for adult literacy instruction may be overcoming complex institutional arrangements often involved in changing educational practice.


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