I read this chapter with great interest because our school has been on the AYP "naughty" list for several years. Therefore, in the past few years we have begun a real push for literacy education. We have a consultant who has been working with our staff to teach us various literacy strategies, but she is rather "old school" and (can you believe it?) resistant to technology. On her last visit with us, she was teaching us about using storyboarding as a literacy strategy. When I mentioned that there are several digital storyboarding sites available online, she was uninterested. I was appalled. There is a wealth of digital literacy strategies online just waiting to be used! Why reinvent the wheel? I was once told a good teacher is a good thief...take what works and use it in your classroom.
So I was glad to read in this chapter all about the various websites and programs that can help with literacy techniques. I was already a fan of ReadWriteThink, but this chapter gave me some other websites and links to explore. I may have been most excited about finding National Standards and performance indicators for technology. In our district, we must align all of our rubrics with either State or National Standards. Our State ELA standards really don't deal much with technology, so in order to grade any work with technology I need these standards. I have now downloaded them and now I can make up rubrics with which to grade technology use by my students! Hurrah!
I enjoyed reading the examples of how TPCK could be used in various classrooms. I like the idea that technology does not have to be a burden. So many of my colleagues feel that technology "takes too much time" (and sometimes it does) but I think that technology if used well can save you time in the long run. This reminds me of the link that I found urging all of us to "do just one thing" related to technology in our classrooms.
Lastly, I enjoyed thinking about my student teachers. I have had three student teachers and none of them really emphasized technology in thier student teaching with me. When next I have a student teacher, I think that will change. I want to help encourage the use of technology in the classroom. Hopefully, I will get some great tech tips from the student teacher as well.
Thank you for all the great links that you found! I love ReadWriteThink and have used it for many years. I was very interested in SubEthaEdit. I would like to have my students explore collaborative writing next year. Although SubEthaEdit looked good, I probably would use a wikispace...they are, after all, free and the other program costs money. Starfall was interesting. I need to look into that a little more. I also loved the reading rainbow site. How cool would it be for young kids to be published! What a sense of accomplishment they would get. Thank you again for anvenjoyable presentation.
ReplyDeleteMeg - It sounds like you have some great plans to experiment with next year! Good luck with the wikispace page. I have attempted a limited site this year in which all of my kids post their writing to our class wiki. This has allowed parents to view more completed work! That is as far as I have taken it with my third graders. I agree that SubEthaEdit looks interesting, but I bet that you are correct in thinking that it would have some similarities to some wiki features. Anything that is free and can promote collaborative writing that is meaningful would serve as an ideal learning opportunity. I have yet to try the 30 day free trial through SubEthaEdit, but I plan to give it a shot.
ReplyDeleteMeg-
ReplyDeleteStarfall is a great site, but definitely for lower elementary students. It would be a fun way for you to see how far your students have come. They do learn a lot from kindergarten to high school. It will bring you back to the basics, that's for sure.
Thanks for your comments!