iPads as placed resources: Forging community in online and offline spaces

Rowsell, J., Sandelli, M. G., Scott, R.M., & Bishop. A. (2013). iPads as placed resources: Forging community in online and offline spaces. Language Arts, 90(5), 351-360.


This article gave me a glimpse of what literacy learning in elementary classrooms could be, if technology is used to its fullest potential. Here are the stories of two teachers—one a veteran third-grade teacher, and one a sixth-grade teacher in mid-career—and their classes as they explored the use of iPads as texts. What struck me most about this account was how important it is that the introduction of new technologies in classrooms be accompanied by changes in the ways we conceptualize and implement instruction. We cannot think of electronic devices just as better ways to do exactly what we have always done in literacy instruction with traditional print texts, that is, as just glorified word processors and e-readers. We have to view teaching and learning in totally new ways, ways that we might feel uncertain about—ways in which we allow ourselves to give up some of the control over instruction that we have had before. That could make teaching scarier at times, especially if we have done it one way for a long time, and did not grow up with digital technology. It could also make teaching more exciting, though, and could take both us and our students to places we have not been before. That is the story this article tells us.

The two teachers we hear from here are co-researchers in the study and describe their classroom experiences in their own words, which were from posts on a blog that enabled them to share with others about their experiences introducing iPads in their classrooms. Two teachers’ posts are shared, but for some reason we get more depth and detail about “Diane’s” third grade classroom than about “Natalie’s” sixth grade classroom. After I read the article, I could remember several pungent tidbits from Diane’s blog entries, but few from Natalie’s. Diane was the veteran teacher, with 30-plus years of experience, and Diane was a sixth grade teacher with ten years’ experience. Could it simply be that Diane was a better writer than Natalie? Why did I perceive such an imbalance between these two teachers’ stories?

Diane’s story is compelling. She realized that the new devices required a paradigm shift, and when she saw how her class was reaching for levels of learning they had not reached under the previous kinds of literacy instruction, she embraced the new way of teaching and learning. She truly became a learner along with her third graders. I admire her greatly for her courage and her engagement. As I mentioned above, the story of the younger teacher in the study is strangely muted, but could that be because she grew up with technology and her changes were less dramatic?

The heart of the article is in two places. The first place is in the blog entries told in the voices of the teachers. The second place is in the summary of the themes that emerged as the study progressed (pp. 354-359). If you want some food for thought about how technology has the potential to change teaching and learning in some huge and mind-boggling ways, look closely at the discussion on these pages. I left my reading of the article with my mind full of ideas and possibilities, and anxious to know more and to discuss all of this with other educators.

The article made me want to revisit the work of Wohlwend, which anchored the study for these teacher-researchers. Wohlwend wrote about the contrast between the older “Web 1.0” paradigm, which retained the individualistic, product-oriented, teacher-centered nature that has traditionally characterized teaching and learning in elementary classrooms, and the newer “Web 2.0” paradigm, in which classrooms are collaborative learning communities, the process is as important as the product, and the learners (which include the teacher) set the course and the agenda to a large extent. In the newer paradigm, the teacher’s role changes from “expert” and “information-giver” to that of a mentor and a facilitator and a mediator, and also someone who is a learner and who shares that process of learning with students. I am fascinated by the implications of this paradigm shift, and plan to dig deeper into Wohlwend’s work.

This article made me, a veteran like “Diane”, and of about the same vintage, reconsider how I think about technology, literacy instruction, and the whole teaching-learning process. I invite other educators to read and do the same.