Digital Literacy in the Classroom

Using digital literacies within a classroom should, and often are, used very early on in a child's schooling.   Below you will find many examples of resources available to promote using digital literacies.  From personal experience, I have found that many teachers regularly use Starfall and Read, Write, Think in their classroom as early as Kindergarten.  I have also encouraged friends and family to begin using this tools with preschool age children and have found that many younger children enjoy these learning activities as well.  With my students, I use the stories available from Storyline Online to model oral reading fluency.  The Nets Standards are abound with the resources available.  Both teachers and students will be able to implement the standards with ease.  Teachers can engage in professional development and promote digital age work and learning.  Students will use critical thinking skills to communicate, collaborate, and research within the digital environment.   

Many Kindergarten classrooms use Starfall as an introduction to digital literacies with activities focused on the calendar and learning to read.  Students can often be found singing along with letter activities, discussing the calendar, and more.  With Starfall, there are also more advanced activities focused on learning to read skills and skills needed for more advanced readers. 

     Read Write Think is also a tool that can be used very early on in classrooms.  Classroom activities, lessons, and printables are available for all grades, as well as, professional development for teachers.  There is also a section for parents and afterschool activities.

    Kindersite, Wikijunior, Hubbard's Cupboard, The K Crew, One More Story, Scholastic's Student Activities, PBS Kids, and Scholastics's The Stacks for Kids also have information, resources, and activities for both teachers, and students.  

Storyline Online has been one resource that I have found great interest in with my students over the years.  This site has great examples of children's literature being read aloud by members of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. 

My Very Own Website!

As disappointing as it is to me personally, having my own website to share information with parents is not an option as a Reading Assistant.  While watching a slide show of Web 2.0 tools I discovered Weebly.  Weebly allows an individual to create their own website as a subset of their domain.  I thought creating the site was going to be very difficult but it really wasn't.  I set it up so each grade level has its own page.  On each page I plan to include information about the group focus and the reason why we are learning this information.  Also, I plan to include activities to help with the specific skill.  I think it can be a great tool for parents to see what their child is doing in Reading group.  Often, it is the case that parents do not know what their child is doing in the classrooms let alone in a small group setting. 

Mrs. Lubanda's Homepage 

What do you, as classroom teachers, think about class websites?  Do you have control of the content? Do you update them often?  Is updating them a time consuming job?  Is it used at home on a regular basis to make it a worth while task I am just beginning to undertake?

NETS Connections:  Students can create original works to showcase their findings about a topic and share with a global audience on their very own website!  In order to accomplish this task students will have had to locate, organize, and evaluate information leading to this reporting of results.

Google Reader

At first, I have to admit, I was not a big fan of Google Reader!  Now, I am beginning to feel otherwise.  Since I have been spending more time using the tool, I am really finding it more and more helpful.  Not only do I find following other's blogs much easier but I have also found out that I like the Explore and Recommended Items as well.  There have been a few interesting reads recommended to me.  This however, does lead to a problem.  DISTRACTION!  I have discovered that there have been times when I am so far off topic, I forget what I was originally wanting to explore based on these recommendations!

Don't miss out on the other tools Google has to offer.  Go under the "more" tab and click "even more" and see what other tools there are waiting to be discovered.  Or just click here!

Digital Storytelling- rough draft

As a Reading Assistant, I have groups of children that I have been working with reading comprehension strategies that good readers use before, during, and after reading a text.  I have just begun putting together a short digital story that I can use with my students to review some of these strategies.

Here is a project I have been working on using Photostory 3. 

There are many extra images in this rough draft and the "story" is not near complete.  I will be removing the extra images and editing the "story" as I progress.

Let me know what you think so far. 

Empowering Students with Technology

Alan November:  Empowering Students with Technology

November Learning

Chapter 4-

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could invite major figures into our classroom to discuss their lives and experiences?  Well this is not always possible. 

Can we invite Anne Frank into our room when reading The Diary of Anne Frank?  How about Abraham Lincoln when discussing The Civil War?    

What we can do, however, is use primary resources to enhance these learning situations.  How about using the actual letters written between families while one member was serving in Vietnam to learn more about the Vietnam War than what is in the text book?

Alan Novembers suggests using primary source document to increase authentic learning experiences. One avenue to access primary source documents is from the National Archives.  November also points out that educators should also teach the skills so students can access these documents on their own. 

This reminds me of the Chinese proverb…

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. 

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

It also remind me of the first video in Taini's Alan November's Blog Post in which Alan November speaks about the skills that we must teach our students including the importance of teaching our students to be self-directed, independent thinkers and learners.

We must teach our students the skills to access and evaluate primary source documents on their own…

    not just the skills to read and respond to a primary source document we have provided for them!

Chapter 5-

We now live in an age where technology rules just about every aspect of our lives.  Online learning and access to web-based knowledge has become the norm for most. 

As asked by Alan November...

Do schools have an obligation to prepare students for a world where those who can access learning resources 24-7 potentially have an enormous advantage over those who can only rely on the physical structure of the classroom to learn?

In my opinion, the answer is absolutely!!!  We as educators need to do the best we can to provide students the tools and the desire to learn and learn well in all arenas, including an online learning community.  As elementary teachers, we do not have students who are taking online courses, but in the future many of our students probably will be learning in an online community.  The skills that they will need to succeed in this learning environment must begin to be taught NOW! 

In the second video in Taini's Alan November's Blog Post, Alan November speaks about teaching students the importance of evaluating web-sites and using critical thinking skills to evaluate the information accessed.  I am reminded of what I read in Sara's Alan November's Blog Post.   Sara speaks about November’s views of blocking sites as a short-term victory.  Even with the constraints we face in our classroom (blocked sites being only one of them) we need to teach all of our students the skills to succeed in the 21^st century technological age- not the 20^th century industrial age!  The critical thinking, analyzing, and evaluating skills to succeed in online learning must begin with us in elementary school. 

The standards emphasized in the Nets for students and teachers should be ever present in our learning communities while we organize student-centered, technology rich learning environments.  

Diigo bookmarks

Diigo

Do you often visit the same web-sites?  Are there sites that you want to go back to and can’t find  again?

How about organizing it all in one place that you can access

from anywhere with any device!  With DIIGO you can-

Diigo is a web 2.0 tool that allows you to organize all your favorite websites into an organized list and manage other information.  You can choose to share these sites with individuals or groups of friends.  Want to keep them private?  You can do that as well.  There are also tools available to highlight and make notes on the site and to manage images and documents.  If you think the web page may no longer be available in the future- diigo allows you to take a snapshot of it so it will always be available to you- even when the site is gone!  Diigo can do it all!

Here is my diigo library-  it’s only just getting going!  I can’t wait to use this tool to its fullest potential.  The more I learn what this is capable of the more excited I become about using it.    

Classroom Connections:

Create a web-based lesson for your students.  Gather and bookmark sites for your students to access.  All they need to access this information would be your diigo link.  From there they can do just about anything- webquests, blogs, research, global communication, etc. 

NETS Connections:

Teachers will inspire, model, and promote creativity, digital learning, and digital citizenship while the students are using innovative and collaborative tools to increase critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making skills. 

All depends on how you choose to use DIIGO!

10 Ways to Differentiate Learning

I read this blog post and thought that others may find it interesting.  Goes along with a lot of the conversations we have had lately. 

10 Ways to Differentiate Learning

Here's the gist from "What Ed Said" about differentiating.
1.  Let Go
2.  Change Your Expectations
3. Change the Sequence
4.  Use Technology Creatively
5.  Care about What Matters to Them
6.  Assess for Learning
7.  Embrace Inquiry as a Stance
8.  Don't be the Only Teacher
9.  Focus on Learning, Not Work
10.  Encourage Goal Setting & Reflection

I think he is on the same page with Alan November's philosophy and I agree that schools need to change to accomodate todays society.  "Ed" does, however, take it one step further than Alan November and addresses other issues beside technology.   I especially agree with the statement that we need to know our students' stories and what makes them who they are.  Many of our students come to school dealing with a variety of issues at home, as teachers we need to understand and support our students and provide a learning environment in which they can thrive in.  If students do not feel valued and represented in the classroom, then true learning experiences can not happen.  Knowing about students' personal lives also allows us to "hook" them into our lessons.  If children are not "hooked"  all of the hours we spend planning and using innovative technologies will be wasted. 

Some thoughts that I am having regarding this...
Do you agree or disagree with "What Ed Says"?  Are you reminded of Alan November?  Do you have a way you differentiate learning that has worked for you and your students?  Is this really "differentiation"?  How did you react to the statement that we teach people not subjects?  Share your thoughts!