When I look at the future of education, I wonder what subject matter will look like ten, twenty, or fifty years from now. While the institution of education is typically slow to change, I am hopeful that it will evolve to better meet the needs of students as well as the ever-changing needs of society.

One of the most fundamental ways society has changed in the last twenty years has been through the proliferation of Internet-enabled technology. I remember my friends getting smartphones, opening a Facebook account, and playing online games. I went from spending the majority of my time reading books to a large amount of time on the computer or a handheld device. Now, the devices of my childhood are obsolete and replaced with even more advanced digital experiences.

Navigating the world of the Internet and other digital spaces is something that I learned simply by engaging in it. No one in particular taught me formal lessons on Internet etiquette, writing an email, or navigating an online bank account. I was what some people call a “digital native.” As a teacher, I realize that the term “digital native” is a misnomer. There is no such thing. There are simply people who have spent the time learning how to navigate specific digital spaces and those who have not learned those same specific spaces. I see this all the time as a teacher. While the students I teach would be considered “digital natives” by the nature of their youth, they do not know how to send emails, open file downloads, or keep a cloud drive organized.

This becomes a major issue when looking at social spaces, apps and websites used for communication. Isn’t that what literacy is, though? Literacy is the ability to deliver an idea to audiences and to receive communication as well. In the traditional sense, this meant being able to read a holy text, the newspaper, and the latest political pamphlet. Now, this means being able to craft a text message, distinguish advertisements from objective information, and discern the malicious intent of a phishing email. The world has changed, but literacy education has not moved much.

I believe that the common core standards are flexible enough to be applied to digital literacy. I have used them to teach students using things like video game scripts and memes. However, I think the standards themselves need to be more cognizant of the typical ways in which people in today’s society “read.” This could look like a set of digital literacy standards that go alongside the literary and informational text standards. This could be one step in the direction of combining some coding skills into the literacy subject areas, which is becoming more pertinent in today’s world.

As I think about novels and novel-based instruction, I want to explore the connections between how novels are taught and the process of coding. I found several similarities in the processes and products that are involved in each, which could lead to some interesting connections and lessons.

Stamina

The first thing I thought of that is the same between reading novels and coding is the need for stamina. Sticking with a long project, whether that be reading a 300-500 page novel or writing a large program, requires students and teachers to maintain a long-term perspective. There is a lot of talk about students and attention span, and asking students to keep grinding through a novel is often not something students seem prepared to do. Teachers can try to find ways to keep things exciting for many students, but the length of the process ultimately requires stamina. It’s hard work and determination, which are mental factors, that get students through to the end and the satisfaction that comes with completing a large task. While some students may enter the classroom with that inclination, the rest of the students can build their stamina just by participating in large projects. Acclimating and assimilating the attitudes needed to endure through a lengthy process is a necessary part of social-emotional learning.

Story

Professional programmers always keep in mind something called the “user experience.” It’s so embedded in the culture that it has its own fancy acronym, UX, that many job titles within the field use as well. Another name for this is “user story.” This is the idea that the programmer is creating an experience for the user that can be thought of as a story where the user opens the app or website and navigates through it. The development of this story is similar to that of a novel where an author imagines how their characters react to different landscapes, enemies, and even other characters. Analyzing how an author does this is a central theme throughout the literary standards for secondary education, and similar ideas are also used by computer scientists as they create experiences for their users.

Plot Structures

Several plot structures used in novels are also connected with the process of coding. As main characters progress through a story, they encounter structures such as cause and effect. Similarly, one of the core components in coding is and if-then structure which uses the same idea. Another plot structure is problem and resolution, which could be the overarching conflict for the story or any smaller conflicts. Computer scientists also encounter this as they code through something called debugging. Debugging is the process of finding errors in code and finding ways to fix them. This is more of a mentality that programmers need to have, and it is mirrored in the story devices.

There are probably more areas to explore when it comes to connecting novel-based instruction with coding. The themes that appeared throughout this exploration are both the mental pieces (stamina, growth mindset, dealing with conflict) as well as the metacognitive pieces (user story, analyzing author’s choices). If I were to forge even more connections between these two disciplines, I assume that most of the connections would fall into these two categories.

In my state, ELA standards transition sharply from foundational skills to analytical skills between the 6th and 7th grades. This aligns with the same shift in the common core standards. As students need to meet a variety of similar standards on both informational and literary texts, schools typically adopt one of three strategies.

The first strategy exclusively uses short stories, excerpts, and a variety of brief informational texts. The school will typically purchase a textbook that contains the passages, and the teacher sequences lessons around topics or themes. I recall going through a system like this myself in seventh through ninth grade. The advantage of this strategy is that both sets of standards (informational and literary) are covered.

The second strategy is a novel-baed approach. I recall doing this in tenth through twelfth grade. This strategy focuses primarily on literary standards, alongside the inclusion of a memoir or supplementing books with informational articles.

The last approach is a hybrid approach in which teachers teach one or two novels during the year while also tackling a series of shorter works. The advantage to this strategy is more flexibility, including more time that could be devoted to writing.

I have taught using all three approaches. Personally, I believe that novel-based instruction is great. Before my seventh grade year, I was homeschooled, and the vast majority of my curriculum was just going to the library and reading books. The constant, continued practice of reading developed my literacy skills. In college, I learned through experience that reading higher-level books became easier the more I read them. Being saturated in that environment helped me develop vocabulary knowledge, structural knowledge, and higher-order thinking within a specific domain. At first, I wouldn’t understand most of what I read, but a peer told me that was normal. “Just keep reading, even if you don’t comprehend it” was the advice I got. It worked. I got used to the difficulty level and was able to consume more of those texts with greater ease.

It reminds me of being homeschooled and experiencing the same breakthrough as I was reading my first chapter book. This also reminds me of how video games are played. Many players don’t bother sitting through tutorials and jump into a game without the appropriate skills. They try, fail, and keep going until they figure out how the mechanics of the game. The more video games that are played, the more likely the player is able to see patterns in different game styles and transfer skills to new games. The same is true for novels.

I have some more thoughts on novels, so this will be continued in the next post.

The field of computer science is currently really excited about Artificial Intelligence (AI). While this field has existed for a long time, recent breakthroughs and public access to generative image and generative text tools has expanded the field. AI is close to being commonplace, which brings to mind some of the old science fiction authors’ warnings about allowing AI to replace human thought.

As a teacher, I saw this in my classroom at the end of the last school year. A handful of students learned how to use AI tools and began to ask the AI to complete their assignments instead of doing it themselves. I understand the temptation. Generative AI is able to quickly answer questions, summarize articles, and more. And if it gets the assignment turned in faster, all the better. Right?

Not quite. While some assignments are busy work and don’t mean much, all of my assignments are purposeful and direct. When a student copies and pastes from an AI tool, that is the same to me as copying from an article because no thought is necessary. In fact, from the samples I saw last year, the content isn’t even accurate. This mirrors how I see students copy from articles instead of summarizing.

That being said, generative AI can be a very useful tool. If a student were to read an article, then ask the AI to give them tips on how to summarize articles, then that would be an appropriate use of the tool. If the student wrote a list of main points from an article and then asked the AI to do the same afterwards to compare and contrast, well, that’s leveraging higher-order thinking skills. If the student writes their summary and then asks the AI to proofread it for them, then that’s not dissimilar to asking a peer for proofreading as well.

Artificial intelligence, while it can be misused, can certainly have a place in educational spaces. I believe it does have value, and teachers should seek ways to incorporate it in their classrooms within certain parameters. As I think about this, I wonder if I can develop a workshop or training on generative AI to deliver to teachers at my school or across the district. This is an important topic to discuss, and I believe it will be all the more important as generative text AI’s improve and become more ubiquitous.