Socially Networking the Past: Digital Mediation of Disciplinary Writing

Handbook of Research on Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings

Rebecca S. AndersonUniversity of Memphis, USA

Clif MimsUniversity of Memphis, USA

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Chapter 7

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-5982-7.ch007

Socially Networking the Past:Digital Mediation of Disciplinary Writing

ABSTRACT

This chapter describes a historical inquiry project that used a social networking site (www.ning.com) to engage students in writing both traditionally and multimodally about the 1960’s. Students were pro-vided basic demographic information about a fictional individual living in the 1960’s and then were instructed to build a social networking profile as they conducted inquiry of the 1960’s over the course of eight weeks. Data were drawn from screen capture videos and semi-structured interviews (n=8) as well as online artifacts (n=185) that high school students generated to construct a profile page akin to Facebook for the project. This project demonstrated how student writing in a history class was mediated by the social networking task and the variety of multimodal texts that they could use to represent their historical inquiry.

INTRODUCTION

The expansion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has generated a proliferation of digital texts that are both produced and con-sumed. Additionally, Web 2.0 tools and social media have made the production and sharing of content (written, visual, aural, and in combina-tion) easier than ever. For example, it is estimated that 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month with individual users who create 90 pieces of content each month (Facebook, 2012). Adoles-

cents, in particular, are immersed in this digitally mediated environment with a majority of teens creating online content and a third sharing the content they create (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). Jenkins (2006) refers to these practices as being part of a participatory culture that includes collaboration, affiliations, expressions, and circu-lation of ideas and content.

The literacy practices mediated by digital tech-nologies in this participatory culture have been labeled as new literacies. New literacies not only make use of multiple semiotic resources (Kress,

Michael ManderinoNorthern Illinois University, USA

Lisa Hoelscher RipleyLeyden Township High Schools, USA

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Socially Networking the Past

2003) but also consist of literacy practices that are enacted differently online and require different skills (Coiro, 2003; Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004). As a result of the expansion of new ICTs, the nature of literacy is rapidly shifting from traditional reading and writing to new ways of engaging in meaning making and meaning production (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Reinking, Labbo, & McKenna, 2000). Writing then is not limited to traditional forms; rather it is “created out of word, image, sound, and motion; circulated in digital environ-ments; and consumed across a wide range of digital platforms” (DeVoss, Eidman-Aadahl, & Hicks, 2010, p. ix).

Despite claims made by teachers about the importance of the affordances of digital writing, few identify it to be essential for students to work with audio, video, or graphic content (Purcell, Heaps, Buchanan, Friedrich, 2013). Conversely, the same sample of teachers, agreed that digital technologies are critical for student opportunity to share their work with a wider audience (Purcell, et. al., 2013). However, while teens are immersed in the consumption and production of media texts, they are less adept with examining and evaluat-ing media itself (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, 2006). He and his colleagues postulate that:

Youth need skills for working within social net-works, for pooling knowledge within a collective intelligence, for negotiating across cultural dif-ferences that shape the governing assumptions in different communities, and for reconciling conflicting bits of data to form a coherent picture of the world around them (Jenkins, et. al., 2006, p. 20).

Social networking is a common practice among youth because it enables them to participate in identity work (Boyd, 2008; Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009). Social networks are dynamic examples of Web 2.0 that require participatory

literacy practices. One such literate practice is the design of one’s page through the use of copying and pasting code in order to create a personalized page (Perkel, 2006). Additionally, communities of practice emerge through the use of social net-working (Rodriguez-Illera, 2007). Within these communities of practice, teens construct social networks through the use of multimodal texts and are intentional about their communicative practices, like content, tone, style, and word choice (Greenhow & Robelia, 2009). Given teen affinity for these spaces and the rich literacy practices enacted in social networking sites, it appears fruitful to leverage social networking spaces for more robust writing instruction.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe a his-torical inquiry project that used a social networking site (www.ning.com) and new literacies practices to engage students in writing both traditionally and multimodally about the 1960’s. This project demonstrated how student writing in a history class was mediated by the social networking task and the variety of multimodal texts that they could use to represent their historical inquiry. This group of high school U.S. History students created fictitious profiles of everyday Americans in the 1960s and wrote about the time period through the lens of their character using the affordances of a social networking space. An empirical analysis provides an examination of how a digital tool, like social networking, can be used to leverage students’ out of school writing experiences to facilitate their in school disciplinary learning. By capitalizing on the digital practices of youth, teachers can facilitate expanded opportunities for disciplinary writing that are necessary for participation in the 21st century.

Background

New literacies practices are needed to interact with texts that make use of a combination of print and non-print modalities such as audio, video, and im-age. New literacies are difficult to define because

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they are constantly changing with rapidly increas-ing technological innovation (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004). Quickly changing information and contexts requires that new literacies practices evolve (Leu, et al., 2004). The fluid nature of new literacies makes it imperative to grasp how students engage with them. New literacies are a medium of meaning making and construction but are also a distinct set of social practices that students enact both in and out of school (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007). Therefore, studies of new literacies have focused on both the technological tools associated with new literacies and the practices that students deploy while using those tools.

New literacies practices involve complex cognitive processing as well. Their complexity is revealed through the vast number of links that can be made within and across multimodal texts. Lemke (1998) argues that meaning potentials of multimodal texts are multiplicative because of the number of intratextual (within text) and inter-textual (between text) links that utilize more than one mode of communication. This observation is relevant to students who engage in both out-of-school and in-school literacies including the con-duct of historical inquiry, the focus of this study. Currently, the field has yet to fully understand the role of multimodality in relation to the sense making that takes place in a specific discipline like history and how students communicate their meaning making with multimodal sources.

Teachers provide students with opportunities to engage in more complex reading practices when they use the multitude of texts they have at their disposal. Classroom teachers make use of several modes of meaning both on and offline to convey content to students (Wilson, 2011). The use of texts afforded by multiple modes of meaning is also referred to as multiliteracies. When the New London Group (1996) called for a “pedagogy of multiliteracies,” they were not calling for multi-modal sources to simply be added into the cur-riculum. They were calling for a new conception of the curriculum that utilized the affordances

of multimodal texts in an integrated way that capitalizes on students designing and redesigning with a multitude of available texts (New London Group, 1996). Unsworth (2001) argues, “rather than trying to ‘squeeze’ the textual affordances of new technologies into familiar literacy education procedures, we need to attend to the reality of new and emerging literacies” (p. 73). Therefore, the study of new literacies in a discipline like history should attend to the practices that are demanded through the use of historical sources that are multimodal and how students use those sources to construct and communicate meaning using a variety of modes.

Mediated Historical Inquiry

The texts that a historian may value include a mul-titude of text types that extend beyond traditionally written primary and secondary sources. These sources are especially germane to the discipline of history because they afford historians a more varied set of texts to use for historical inquiry as they attempt to approximate the past. Within the community of historians, digitized collections have generated a new age of inquiry having made historical sources available to a wider audience. The Internet has also provided a range of textual resources from photographs, original manuscripts, audio, video, and hybrids of text and image that use flash animation (J.K. Lee, 2002).

Students’ use of multimodal texts within the context of historical inquiry needs to be examined. Students engaged in multimodal instruction using new literacies are immersed in complex historical practice. A critical component of that practice is how sources are used to reconstruct the past. What are the meaning making potentials that are created as a result of expanding what counts as text? How are multiple multimodal texts used to create historical meaning? How do students make meaning across multiple multimodal sources and integrate those sources to communicate historical

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representations? These are questions that need to be investigated.

Research in the teaching and learning of history has advocated the teaching of histori-cal thinking skills (e.g., Bain, 2006; Lee, 2005; Monte-Sano, 2008; Reisman, 2012; Sexias, 1993; VanSledright, 2002). It is argued that the goal of history instruction should be to provide students opportunities to make sense of the past by criti-cally analyzing historical accounts. In order to critically analyze accounts of the past, students need to analyze primary and secondary sources mirroring the practices of historians (Bain, 2006; Vansledright, 2002).

In his seminal study of historians’ reading processes, Wineburg (1991) compared the reading processes of students and expert historians. The students were highly proficient college-bound readers (SAT scores >1200) who possessed a strong level of content knowledge about the Revo-lutionary War. Half of the historians in the study were not experts in the field of American History. Despite a lack of content knowledge for some of the historians, all of them used their knowledge of the discipline to interpret and critique the texts they read. Conversely the high achieving high school students treated the historical texts as individual sources to be summarized instead of critiqued and synthesized. The historians’ high level of disci-plinary knowledge allowed them to easily make sense of historical sources they were unfamiliar with. Based on the ways the historians approached new content within the domain of history, Wine-burg (1991) proposed that historians utilize three heuristics, contextualization, corroboration, and sourcing, when reading historical sources. These heuristics entail a level of disciplinary thinking in the domain of history.

Contextualization refers to the ability of the reader to place events and people in time and space (Wineburg, 1991). This requires the reader to go beyond the actual words stated in the document and requires extensive knowledge of and experience with the historical subject

matter (Britt & Aglinskas, 2002). Corroboration is defined as checking the details of texts against each other before accepting them as plausible or likely (Wineburg, 1991). Corroboration entails employing intertextual links to provide validity in a historical argument. Sourcing includes check-ing the author of the document and assessing the validity and perspective of the author. Sourcing can also refer to the perceived “trustworthiness” of the document being utilized in historical inquiry. These historical thinking heuristics are critical for students to comprehend and communicate reconstructions and interpretations of the past.

The goal of this type of historical instruction is for students to use primary and secondary sources to analyze and confront historical accounts that might be found in textbooks. Additionally, Monte-Sano (2008) argues that students’ writing about historical accounts is improved when writing in-terpretations using primary and secondary sources. These pedagogical goals have also materialized into national educational policy.

In 2010, forty-eight states adopted the Com-mon Core Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics. The English Language Arts standards include specific guidelines for literacy in History/Social Studies. Standards for upper high school include the “ability to integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media” and “integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources” (CCSO, 2010). Teaching historical thinking us-ing a range of sources is now an integral part of a common core curriculum.

Whereas students interact with the Internet daily as their primary textual resource, typically school tasks use textbooks and single texts, or perhaps the Internet as a supplementary text. If students are to engage in complex historical inquiry that requires interpretation of the past instead of studying the past as a series of events, a disciplin-ary literacy approach is necessitated (Shanahan &

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Shanahan, 2008). Students need to be able to read the texts that are valued in the discipline, discuss those texts, and create and defend interpretations of those texts. Multiple texts in multiple formats are necessary to facilitate this type of teaching and learning in history. Reconstructing the past using multimodal texts is dependent upon one’s understandings of maps, charts, political cartoons, graphs, and data tables. How students negotiate multiple multimodal texts is essential for build-ing strong disciplinary knowledge in history. Therefore, we need to understand how students can integrate various multimodal sources to create historical meaning and represent those meanings using a variety of communicational modes.

If new literacies are, “multiple, multimodal, & multifaceted” as Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear & Leu (2008) argue, historical sources online pos-sess the same characteristics. Research in the ways that students make sense of multimodal sources bounded by a discipline like history situates new literacies in a particular context. In addition, Coiro & Dobler (2007) theorize that the next step in research in new literacies involve writing and synthesis across multiple multimodal texts.

It is errant, however, to assume that students will naturally, without instruction, engage with multimodal sources of texts in a way that extends disciplinary ways of thinking (Manderino, 2012; Saye & Brush, 2002; Seixas, 1993). Sourcing a visual can be difficult because the author of the source may not be explicitly present; the source and perspective must be inferred by the “visual grammar” of the photograph, video, or political cartoon (Kress & VanLeeuwen, 1996). That is, the reader must infer meanings through the author’s combined use of symbols, pictures, and words, without the benefit of knowing how or when they were produced.

Contextualization is also difficult due to a lack of sourcing; the context must be inferred by the

synergy between text and image and the text’s relationships to other texts or possible intertextual links. Corroboration of visual sources, printed text sources, and multimodal sources require new ways of thinking about texts and their interaction. Despite these challenges, students have exhibited historical thinking in their writing using multi-modal sources (Manderino, 2012).

Studies on the role of visual sources (Callow, 2006; Radinsky, 2008; Unsworth, 2002) offer insights into the integration of both written and visual texts in disciplinary contexts. While stu-dents make use of multimodal sources to create meaningful projects (Hull and Nelson, 2005; O’Brien, 1998) like digital narratives, it is unclear how students make sense of multiple, multimodal texts for historical inquiry. It is also unclear how students integrate print and multimodal texts to create meaning. Therefore, it is essential to design learning opportunities that scaffold students’ read-ing and writing using a wide range of authentic historical sources in order to create their own historical representations. The social networking project described in this chapter exemplifies one such learning opportunity.

Methodology

The design of the study is part of a larger design that is in accordance with the notion of design experiments (Brown, 1992). The study draws on the problem of student appropriation of historical thinking when using multiple texts to construct historical meaning (Stahl, et al., 1996; Wineburg, 1991). The design of the experiment is intended to extend theories of multiple text comprehension with multimodal texts as well as the use of social networking to scaffold multiple text synthesis evi-denced through multimodal profile construction for historical inquiry. This particular study is the fourth iteration of this social networking project.

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As a result of findings from initial iterations, subsequent features of the project were modified; a key feature of design experiements.

Theories developed during the process of experi-ment are humble not merely in the sense that they are concerned with domain-specific learning processes, but also because they are accountable to the activity of design (Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Shauble, 2003).

For example, teachers included more specific task directions week to week. The main page of the Website evolved to become the place where specific tasks were outlined. Teachers decided to delete duplicate videos that appeared on the site to encourage students to view videos uploaded by others and to find more profile-specific content.

A previous study of the environment revealed high levels of engagement and use of multiple sources to create rich historical profiles (Man-derino, 2011). This paper reports on a new itera-tion of the project based on the analysis of eight focal students through their profile pages along with their interview and focal group responses. The eight students were drawn from three differ-ent classrooms with three different teachers. Data were collected over the eight weeks the project was implemented. Analysis focuses on students’ reported processes for using multimodal sources to construct their historical profiles and their actual use of multimodal sources to create their profiles.

Context of the Study

The participants in this study were drawn from 8 United States History courses taken during the junior year of high school. One hundred and eighty-five juniors participated in the online environment at www.ning.com. The high school is located in the metropolitan area of a large Midwestern city. The school is situated in a working class com-munity with a 72% Latino/a population. Several students self-reported speaking Spanish at home.

The school has a low-income rate of 53% and a 7% mobility rate. The students possessed a range of ability levels yet overall performed below the state average on national exams like the ACT and local assessments. The average ACT Reading score for the school was 18.7. The state average for Reading was 20.5.

A separate study of these students’ online self-efficacy indicated that technology was ubiquitous in the lives of this group of students (Khodos, Manderino, & Lawless, 2012). More than 89% possessed a Facebook account, spending a reported average of 2.35 hours a day. Their most common purpose for social networking is to chat with friends as reported by a majority of the students. In addition, most students had an email account yet rarely used it. Over 90% owned a cell phone as well. It is evident that social networking was a prevalent if not dominant mode of communication in the lives of these youth.

Project Design

This project was designed to engage students in historical inquiry about the 1960s in a required United States History course during the Spring semester. Over the course of eight weeks, students were assigned the task of creating a fictional profile of a person who would have been living during the time period studied. Teachers initially distributed an outline of the profile that contained basic information including age, race/ethnicity, geographic location, and family information (see Appendix 1). Situating the participant profiles in pre-selected cities allowed students the op-portunity to connect the fictional character with the reality of the period. It also constrained the students, affording them the opportunity to focus their research and ensuring that relevant informa-tion would be available online. From this basic outline information, students were given the task of creating a profile including name, picture, and family background. To aid students in the creation of their profile and provide a practice experience

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in contextualizing, teachers added the task of choosing favorite movies and music to include in the initial profile construction.

The project ran concurrently with content instruction about the 1950s-1970s and the profile expanded as the in-class curriculum was unfolded. One day per week, students spent the class period in the computer lab or with laptops construct-ing their profiles. In order to ensure temporal continuity within the social networking site, the project was divided into three parts. 1960-1963, 1964-1968, and 1969-1975 served as time mark-ers for the historical content that students would be discussing and reacting to within the social networking site. Every two to three weeks the years would shift so that all students were work-ing in the same time period. For example, in the first phase, students constructed their profile as if it were 1960. After the first profile check, students could then add content about anything between the years 1960-1963. These delineated time markers also provided a scaffolding structure for the students and gave teachers the opportunity to monitor progress. Students were expected to work on the project outside of school but each Wednesday students were provided a period of time in the lab or with a laptop to work on their profile and interact in the site.

Ning (www.ning.com) was the social network-ing site chosen for this project because of the wide array of tools available to students and teachers. Ning affords students the opportunity to create photo albums, post videos, blog, create groups, and connect with friends all while allowing for aliasing the students’ identities. In order to ef-fectively and accurately create their character’s profile, students had to work with multimodal texts to extend their disciplinary thinking, especially in the area of contextualization.

Requiring students to work in an online en-vironment as open as a social networking site creates potential concerns from an institutional standpoint. Ning allows the creators of a site to restrict access to outsiders and monitor partici-

pants. Additionally, Ning allows customization of the site, including the choice of tools available to students and the layout of the profile page. Monitoring tools available to the creators of a Ning site allowed teachers opportunities to keep students focused on the goals of the project and provide timely feedback.

Lisa (co-author) was the lead teacher and cre-ated the Ning site used in the project along with her own fictional profile. Her four colleagues then proceeded to create their own fictional profiles to be able to participate in the site, interact with students, and serve as models for the students. The team decided on initial sections like About Me, Favorite Music, and Favorite Movies to have students respond to in their initial profile set-up. Upon site set-up, an initial two-days were used to help students access the site and begin construct-ing their profile (see Appendix 1).

Prior to the project, activities using pictures and primary source text were embedded into the course to prepare students for the task of contextualizing which was needed to create a social networking profile in the 1960’s. Each task was intentionally designed to facilitate profile construction. Initial tasks included finding a relevant profile picture and constructing responses for their profile based on their demographic information. Subsequent tasks included the creation of a photo album, writing multiple blog posts, uploading videos, friending others, and creating and/or joining groups.

Feedback was given to students at multiple points throughout the project. Feedback came in the form of a comment on a students’ profile wall or an uploaded photo or video by any one of the participating teachers. Because of the number of students and their use of fictional names, a spreadsheet was created to match student names to their profile names. In order to keep consistency in feedback, teachers cross-graded profiles instead of only providing feedback to their own students. Assessment during the project was formative and students were encouraged to revise. A summative rubric was also created to assess the cumulative

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effort of the student in constructing a realistic profile. Key skills and tasks that were evaluated overall were profile maintenance, blogs, photos, videos, friends, profile picture, and questions (see Appendix 2). Instructions and tasks were continu-ously modified based on the work students had produced from week to week. By the eighth week students had generated an array of multimodal representations of the 1960s.

Data Sources

Data sources included 185 student-composed profile pages that included photos, videos, and text. Observations of student work occurred for the eight Wednesdays that students worked on the Ning project in the school-wide computer lab or with classroom laptops. Field notes were collected each Wednesday and analytic memos were recorded after each observation (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Screen recordings of the eight focal students were captured using screen record-ing software while students worked on the site and were collected at three points during the project. Individual profile pages were screen-captured at the end of a day. Students were interviewed towards the end of the project and focal groups of students were interviewed after the project had been completed. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed.

Data Analysis

Student profiles (n=185) within the social net-working site were analyzed using content analysis (Krippendorf, 2012). The site was analyzed for the number of sources used, the types of sources used, and the mediums (blogs, pictures, videos) that were used to construct the profiles. Constant comparative analysis (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) was used to analyze the 8 focal students. Open coding was used to identify themes. Subsequently, axial coding was conducted to generate com-mon themes (Cresswell, 2009). Final codes that

were generated and applied to the screen capture and interview data included locating resources, evaluating sources, profile construction, his-torical analysis, and profile revision. Codes were then applied to the screen recordings as well as interview data.

Findings

Analysis of the entire social network revealed that 185 students uploaded 1751 photos and 352 videos and composed 392 blogs. Overall the entire group of students averaged 9.3 photos, 2.1 blogs, and 1.88 videos per profile. It is important to note that the teachers deleted duplicate videos that appeared which resulted in fewer video uploads. Sources used to construct profiles were categorized by personal content and historical content (See Table 1). Photos consisted of pictures to represent the lives of the individual profiles and were kept in photo albums. The types of photos uploaded included personal photos of family, friends, pets, and possessions. Other major categories of photos included historical events, places, and people. All videos were taken from the Internet. The students did not take any photos, but they did use photo manipulation in some to make a photo black and white or aged. Videos were posted directly on individuals “wall.” Major types of videos included personal events connected to their profile or more general historical events. All videos were taken from YouTube. No videos were self-created. Sixty special interest groups were created that individu-als could join. Groups included more personal types of activities like car clubs or movie groups. Other groups included more politically or socially oriented groups like the Nation of Islam or advo-cacy groups for teachers or those with disabilities.

A closer analysis of the 8 focal students re-vealed the ways in which students used these digital artifacts and the processes they deployed to create their individual historical profiles. Themes that emerged included how students located and evaluated sources to use to construct their pro-

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files, the processes they used to compose their profiles, and how profile construction mediated their historical thinking.

Source Use

The eight students consistently reported that locating a profile picture was a difficult task. Students spent considerable time searching for an appropriate photo that matched their age, ethnic-ity, geographic locale, and was representative of the late 1950s and early 1960s. All eight students chose photos that encapsulated these elements. One profile (all names are pseudonyms), “Gail Robinson,” reported that she began to base her character on her photo. In her interview she stated, “She looked like a singer.” Her profile developed across the time period as a singer. The profile of “Bill Johnson” used a photo of a soldier and his profile reflected his involvement in the Vietnam War. Both of these students also reported that they made personal connections to movies (Ray and Platoon) they had watched about the 1960s to help build their characters.

All eight students uploaded video and images to their profiles. Sources however, were often treated independently with little evidence to support a context or connect to a more global explanation of a historical event or historical actors. Most photos and videos that were uploaded contained a limited one to two sentence description. Dur-ing the focal group interviews, most of the eight students admitted that they didn’t always watch the entire video that they uploaded.

The blog posts also revealed how students came to use sources to construct a blog about a histori-cal event that would have been connected to their character’s life. Links that were embedded in each blog usually were links to a Wikipedia page. In the initial blog post, only 2 students embedded a picture but by the final blog post six of the eight students embedded a photo that connected to the blog topic. None of the eight students embedded a video in any of their blogs.

Source Evaluation

The eight students also consistently reported that their evaluation of digital sources was based on the amount of information provided. One student mentioned that if it came from a reputable Website that was a criteria for selecting information to include in their profile. If a source looked plau-sible, then students deemed it to be credible to use. Analysis of screen recordings revealed that students often employed limited use of search terms. For example, one student spent 30 minutes of the class period searching for an event to blog about by typing “1963 and event” or “1963 news in Washington.” Other students used Google to search for details to include in their About Me section but relied on Wikipedia to select details. One example was a student who searched “Col-leges in Boston 1960s.” After scanning the first results page, she clicked on Wikipedia and chose a college from the list provided on Wikipedia.

All eight students confirmed in their interviews that they relied heavily on Wikipedia and that their

Table 1. Content curation

Type of Content Photos Videos Blogs Groups

Personal Family/friends possessions

favorites

Events connected to their profile

Beliefs life events

Interest-based

Historical Events people

General events television/movies sporting events

music

Events people

Political social

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search strategy was to enter a variety of search terms in Google. They reported that Websites that had “good information” were used to write blogs or provide material for their profile. When “Penny Williams” was asked how she chose sources to construct her blog about the March on Washington, she stated that the site she chose, “had all of the information.” The students expressed minimal criteria for judging the veracity of sources they used to construct their profiles.

Multimodal Composition

Analysis of the eight profiles revealed increased use of historical perspective as they participated in the task. Of the eight students, six wrote an initial blog on the March on Washington. The other two wrote about the assassination of JFK. The blogs contained no hyperlinks and few pictures. Subse-quent blogs reflected a greater range of topics as well as the use of hyperlinks and photos to extend text. For example, “James Wilson” wrote about the assassination of JFK for his first blog. The blog summarized the event and included no picture or hyperlinks. In his final blog, he wrote about the resignation of Richard Nixon. He included two hyperlinks to two different Websites and embed-ded the famous picture of Nixon waving the peace sign as he left the White House. His blog also addressed the implications of Nixon’s resignation instead of restating a summary of events.

Most blogs were short, averaging 7 sentences. Students increasingly personalized blogs to relate to their lives however were either based on their character’s interests or geographic locations. The use of video also demonstrated limited use of text to explain why they selected that particular video. Most videos were posted to reflect events that were occurring during the time. There was less presence of an explicit connection to the character’s profile. Videos didn’t appear to play a large role of the composition of student profiles like photos and blogs.

Mediation of Disciplinary Thinking

Student evidence of disciplinary thinking in this task was measured by their ability to use historical empathy, or the ability to take a perspective, (Lee, 2005) to construct their profile and their ability to use chronology to generate a plausible profile. Over the course of the project, students demon-strated increased historical empathy as evidenced by their blogs, updated About Me sections, and their comments on other students’ profiles. The creation of a photo album was an initial task that revealed students limited ability to take a histori-cal perspective. For example, many photos were limited to family or pets. Students often chose a photo of someone famous to include as a family member which reflected the students’ lack of determining the source of a photo. A strategy students used to make photos appear authentic to the time period was to manipulate the image to make it black and white or sepia toned. They acknowledged that if they had difficulty finding a photo they could manipulate the photo to fit the time period.

As discussed earlier, students demonstrated a lack of sophisticated sourcing of texts to include in their profile. The presence of photos of famous individuals in the photo albums that were intended to represent friends and family was evidence that students struggled to source an image. Students acknowledged that they tried to find credible Websites to find textual information but their sourcing of photos and videos was limited. Ad-ditionally, students rarely viewed the photos and videos that were embedded in the site by other students. The most popular video was only viewed 14 times. Most photos were viewed by only one or two other students. While students attempted to mediate their understandings via Internet sources, they didn’t utilize the sources within the Ning site as exemplars.

Students reflected in the post interviews that if their character was African-American or Latino

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it was more difficult to find pictures or videos that reflected events that would be salient to their character. While it appeared that students struggled to add videos or more sophisticated photos, it also may be a function of the availability of those sources online. Students were able to articulate that as a challenge instead of being unaware that they needed to construct a historically accurate profile.

Discussion

Students’ online content construction (O’Byrne, 2012) using multimodal texts for historical pur-poses appeared to be mediated by the ability to navigate the Web to locate quality historical sources. The tasks assigned in this project were complex. Student location of sources appeared to be impeded by a lack of background knowledge needed for the task. For example, it was not evident that photos or videos mediated students’ choices of topics for blog posts. Students did draw on their prior knowledge to construct their profiles based on movies or music they knew from the time period. Consequently, they initially struggled to represent their historical profiles and contextualize their character in the 1960’s. However, over time, students were able to integrate more sources into their profile pages.

Monte-Sano (2012) also found that writing tasks that ask students to take a perspective instead of constructing a causal argument are more dif-ficult. This task afforded scaffolded opportunities to take a perspective. The task was complex and ill-structured (Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & Ander-son, 2004) which required instructional supports. Because the project was extended over the course of eight weeks, students were able to redesign their pages after receiving formative feedback from the teachers or their peers. Students’ final profiles demonstrated an ability to construct a historical profile that took the perspective of an individual living in the 1960s. The overall site then reflected a diverse set of perspectives on topics during the 1960s. It is also clear, however, that students rarely

interacted with the multimodal sources contained within the site. Tasks that require written student comments on photos and videos may encourage more interaction within the site. Projects like these may facilitate different types of historical writing like perspective taking.

Despite a lack of deep engagement with sources embedded in the Ning site, it appeared that students developed an increased ability to take a historical perspective and use multimodal sources to craft that individual as situated in a past historical time period. Students attempted to manipulate photos to appear more authentic and match their profiles. Construction of a historical profile based on a limited set of characteristics is a difficult task especially since it is not typical of historical instruction in high schools. Students also demonstrated evidence of growth in their use of multimodal sources and integrated more sources in their blogs. Their blogs became more analytical and addressed historical significance over time. Students sustained engagement in the task and noted that they enjoyed the project. This suggests that extended opportunities for writing using digital tools is essential to move kids toward more disciplinary writing. Had the project made use of a blog and then moved on to another tool, student growth would not be evident.

Implications

While more studies are needed, there are notable implications for writing instruction using mul-timodal sources in history. Because evaluation of images and videos was less prominent than Websites, explicit instruction on how to determine source information contained with an image or video appears to be needed. Students may also benefit from increased opportunities to create multimodal compositions. Within a short time period, student compositions improved both in focus and the use of multiple sources. Multimodal tasks like this project appeared to facilitate student ability to take a historical perspective. The use of

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multimodal sources can provide powerful non-linguistic opportunities to demonstrate the use of historical thinking skills and historical meaning making. More studies of multimodal sources as credible primary and secondary sources and how to use them to communicate historical interpreta-tions are warranted in the classroom.

As Internet usage grows in classroom settings, the promises and possibilities of accessing quality historical sources will continue to be realized. An important caution needs to be stated, however. Simply giving kids multimodal texts will not lead them to be better writers in history. However, sustained opportunities to compose using writ-ten and multimodal texts led to better historical representations across the course of the project. Consequently, three critical areas for instruction emerged as a result of this study.

First, explicit instruction and scaffolding needs to happen with students searching for relevant and salient multimodal sources. Because students struggled in their initial searches, they had less time to spend on critically evaluating sources to include in their profiles. Specific tasks related to students’ searching and evaluating for salient historical sources is needed. Recent scholarship has advocated providing students with rich sets of historical sources (Reisman, 2012). However, students also need opportunities to locate and evaluate sources independently in order to con-struct their own historical interpretations.

Second, students need opportunities to inte-grate written text with multimodal texts in their writing. Despite their experiences with social networks and online texts, it was evident they had less experience constructing blogs or constructing their own written content. Robust writing instruc-tion in the disciplines should include tasks that require the integration of multiple source types to communicate students’ disciplinary learning.

Finally, writing in the disciplines should encapsulate more than demonstration of content knowledge. Rather, writing instruction in the disciplines should focus on how to construct

arguments using multiple sources and source types. As the Internet has afforded opportunities to create and share one’s ideas and points of view, it is imperative to teach students how to construct and disseminate knowledge using the practices that are instantiated in online environments.

Limitations and Future Analysis

This project is only representative of a single school. The results should not be generalized but considered for furthering the conversation about the role of multimodal sources in disciplinary reading and writing. The screen recordings did not capture verbal protocols but only student naviga-tional choices as represented by their mouse clicks. A future study may benefit from either think aloud protocols or capturing dyads discussing the task. Finally, a more robust study that captures students’ epistemologies about multimodal sources, new literacies, and disciplinary learning would further illuminate student choices for text selection and processing to construct their profiles.

CONCLUSION

Students will continually use multimodal sources to learn in disciplines like history. The results of this study challenge the notion that students natu-rally use new literacies or visual texts especially in their compositions. Digital texts and tools can be leveraged for rich writing experiences but careful instruction is required to take full advantages of the affordances of such platforms and environments. Writing for a variety of audiences using multiple formats is essential disciplinary practice. Focus-ing on disciplinary practices undergirds effective digital writing and multimodal compositions. Slick presentations and the mere presence of digital texts cannot stand up to the standards for warrant in a discipline. The interdependence between disciplinary writing and digital composition af-fords opportunities for expanded access into dis-

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ciplinary communities of practice. Students have greater opportunity to construct new knowledge and disseminate to the widest possible audience thus not only learning the discipline but also becoming contributing members of disciplinary communities of practice. Leveraging digital tools that intersect with students’ lived experiences and their everyday literacy practices is critical to 21st century writers in the disciplines.

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Contextualization: The ability place an event in time or space (Wineburg, 1991).

Corroboration: Checking the details of texts against one another before accepting them as either plausible or unlikely (Wineburg, 1991).

Multiliteracies: Theory that a broader concep-tion of literacy is needed as a result of technological proliferation and increasing globalization (New London Group, 1996).

Multimodality: The theory the text can include auditory, visual, spatial, temporal, and linguistic designs that create multiple meanings (Kress, 2003).

New Literacies: The use of texts available through the use of Information and Communica-tion Technologies (ICTs) and the social practices associated with online engagement.

Sourcing: Judging the reliability and cred-ibility of a source based on the authorship of the source (Wineburg, 1991).


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APPENDIX 1

Figure 1.


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APPENDIX 2

Rubric Guidelines

• Profile Maintenance: How well have you maintained your site? Are you interacting with others online? You should be on the site at least once every three days. It is difficult to keep up with the project if you are on only every Wednesday when we visit the lab.

• Profile Questions: How well have you created your profile and added appropriate information that fits the initial profile you were given? You should be updating your profile as we progress and appropriately age yourself keeping the information true to the initial profile you were given. We should be able to see how you have aged during the project in your profile section.

• Profile Picture: Does your picture match the description you were given? You will receive a 0 for this category if you a. choose a profile picture of someone who is already famous OR b. were told to change your profile picture and you never did OR c. change your profile picture to make your character older.

• Blog: Are you blogging about a variety of topics? Have you dated your blog appropriately? Is your blog post historically accurate and does it fit your profile? Is there historical evidence in your blog? You must have a minimum of two blog posts that are historically accurate and contain historical evidence. Commenting on other blog posts may get you extra credit if the post is mean-ingful and connected to your character.

• Pictures: Do you have pictures you have posted that help us understand your character and/or the events s/he has experienced? You should have at least ten pictures covering a variety of topics. In addition, these pictures should be historically accurate and in an album with descriptions of the pictures.

• Videos: Have you posted any videos that help us understand your character and/or the events s/he has experienced? Videos should be historically accurate. No mash-ups allowed. Three videos posted of your favorite subject will not meet the requirement.

• Friends: The person with the most friends DOES NOT get the best grade. The importance is the appropriateness of your friends. Are your friends of similar age? What binds you to that person as a friend? Do you have similar interests? You should be able to show, through your discussions/messages with your “friend” on Ning, the interests you share or the events that bind you in friend-ship. You will receive a 0 on this category if all you do is choose your real life friends as your Ning friends OR without showing how your Ning characters might be friends with you.

• Joining or Starting a Group: You should join or start a group regarding a topic that is realistic and/or historically accurate. You will not get credit for starting a group that already exists. You will not get credit if you join a group that is not consistent with your character’s profile. When joining or participating in a group, your comments should realistically connect your profile to your interest in the group. Just because you are a Cubs fan in real life does not mean your 15 year-old character from San Francisco is also a Cubs fan. That is unrealistic unless you find a way to build it into your profile based on your research.


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• Responses on Others’ Walls: This is the most public part of the site, other than your actual pro-file, that people see when they click to your page. The wall should be used to communicate infor-mation. It can be a quick way to communicate with friends or a quick way to share information. Your comments need to be school appropriate. The wall is used for communicating between the members of the site and the teachers. It can be used to build your character by demonstrating the nature of a friendship. Changing the privacy settings to something other than what you were told can lower your grade on this part of the project.

• Extra Credit: Music: Is the music you chose for your profile historically accurate? Does it fit with your profile? If you have embedded music or created a play list you can get extra credit for the final grade.

Socially Networking the Past: Digital Mediation of Disciplinary Writing

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