Technology and Literacy

Copyright Law and Information Literacy

edrd7360 — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:00:11 +0000

Knowing the basic principles of copyright law and fair use policy is part of information literacy nowadays. If you wish, you can test out your knowledge in this area through this exploration copyright-law-exploration.doc. Have fun!

Podcasting in Literature

edrd7360 — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:27:25 +0000

This is a welcome announcement to podcasting. Enjoy it.edla-7440-welcome-announcement.mp3.

Thank you for backrgound music to Aruna Neeru’s creative commons contribution at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Technology and Pedagogy in Literacy Education

edrd7360 — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 02:25:47 +0000

The potential of technology for literacy instruction can be realized only when pedagogy merges the best of traditional approaches with the best of innovative methods in literacy education. The authors of “Beliefs about technology and the preparation of English teachers…” began to describe such pedagogy for English teachers. Anderson (2003) shares a multimedia reflection on the pedagogy for composing with consumer technology tools in K-12 classrooms. What beliefs will you add to these two conversations?

Digital Authoring and Student Empowerment

edrd7360 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:00:14 +0000

Suzanne Miller and Suzanne Borowicz conducted a fascinating research on the use of digital video in various classrooms upstate New York. You may want to visit their project site, City Voices City Visions, and review some of the students’ digital authoring projects. Ernesto’s Bio Poem and Tysheka’s iPoem spoke to me personally. These projects are great examples of the ways to empower our students with ownership for complex media productions that

integrate all aspects of language arts (reading, listening, writing and speaking);
send powerful messages to the larger audience about important issues in students’ lives within and outside the classroom, and in this way bridge inside/outside school literacies;
encourage and nurture collaboration, peer support, and inquiry,
and call for critical thinking about the meaning making process with newer technologies and about the audience’s interactive role in this process.

Please join us in exploring the potential of digital video for multiliteracies of today and tomorrow. Here are some questions for us to consider in this exploration:

· What possibilities do you envision for digital authoring in your classroom?

· Do you know of good examples of student digital authoring?

· Can you share these with us?

· Can you tell us why you chose them?

Podcasts and Screencasts in Learning English Language Arts

edrd7360 — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:21:24 +0000

Faster computers with accessible broadband connectivity and expanded memory chips have made creating and viewing of multimedia compositions a more enjoyable and easier process. Many people, particularly teens, listen to podcasts, view video clips on blogs, or preview screencasts on a daily basis. They tune in for news updates, favorite music, or stories from their friends, family, and other interesting people, among many other things. Moreover, today’s youth are not only consumers of multimedia texts. They are also their producers. Good examples of student productions are a series of podcasts—book talks—on young and adult literature by college students, a Youth Radio
Atlanta series, a broadcasting news series by 4th graders, and 2nd graders’ book in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Please note how all these students’ unique voices shine through their multimedia compositions. They also have something important to share with us all about their personalized content featured in their productions.

Podcasts, screencasts, and blogvideos have just begun to evolve as new genres. Let us stop to think rhetorically about podcasts for a moment.

What are they?
How do we compose a podcast?

Please join in me in this exploration.

Fun with Writing on the Blog

edrd7360 — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:01:13 +0000

Writing still is the most neglected “R” throughout the school and college years in American education (The Neglected “R”: The Need for a Writing Revolution, 2003), particularly amidst the pressures of standardized testing and teacher accountability associated with it. Not surprisingly writing has become the most feared activity among many students in English classrooms. Newer technologies offer the possibilities for personal expression and reflection that may bring back passion for writing in our students’ hearts and minds. One of such possibilities is composing with digital photography/images. While digital technologies allow composing content other than text, text can be easily added to augment digitally created content. Richardson (2006) shares his excitement about this approach in classroom teaching:

What if you could invite other people from around the globe to have discussions about those images?

What if you and your students could annotate them with your own descriptions and observations?

What if you become a part of a community that contributes images of similar topics for you to consume? (p.102)

The Disappointment Turned Great or the Half Fun Day are good examples of students’ composition and publishing with digital images. Their posts also bring joy to the reader and their authors. Digital stories by students in the Scott County Schools will leave you with awe and smile too.

Also, have a look at how Barbara Gangley uses digital images to illustrate and to a push in new direction her reflection about important events in her professional career. A good example of this is her post, Heading Home from ELI–Lessons and Learnings. In her writing, digital photos become an inherent part of her narrative, can you see that too? Her images are also fun to watch. I invite you to contribute ideas to this reflection on fun writing with digital images by either addressing the questions posted below or by coming up with a question of your own.

What English language arts content, topics, and skills can be introduced to students with digital images and publishing?

What kind of teacher support will students need to be able to compose successfully with digital photos/images?

Online Reading Literacies

edrd7360 — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:42:38 +0000

In exploring the topic of online reading, as informed by Coiro & Dobler’s research on skilled and less skilled readers (2004), we asked the following questions:

What does online reading involve?

How does it differ from reading traditional texts?

What do skilled readers do? What do less skilled readers struggle with? Why?

What must students acquire to become proficient at online reading?

What types of pre-reading activities would best help all kinds of learners?

What would the potential drawbacks be to directing student to reading online texts? Conversely, what would the benefits be?

Have online texts reached its pinnacle (in development) as a source of information? If so or if not, what are the implications for both teachers and learners?

We considered both cognitive strategies and navigation behaviors. The comments in response to this post record our attempt to address some of these questions. Feel free to join our discussion by adding a comment of yours.

Getting Started: Setting Personal Goals

edrd7360 — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:57:45 +0000

This first web log entry gives you an opportunity to introduce yourselves as educators to others in this course and beyond. Tell us something about your expectations from this course in general as well as from the web logging experiment at large. Happy blogging!

Welcome to EDRD 7360!

edrd7360 — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:12:37 +0000

Congratulations, you’ve logged in successfully. This web log is a home page for EDRD 7360: Literacy and Technology. It will serve as a clearinghouse for our dialogue in the blogosphere. This is where you will share with larger audiences interesting ideas from research and readings in our course and beyond, thought-provoking questions, and helpful resources for practice.

Your blog entries may utilize a variety of media (images, links, film clips, etc.). You will also be asked to read and respond to at least one of your colleagues’ blog entries using the Comment feature on this blog. Please review the Commenting page on my professional blog before posting your first responses to others’ web log entries on the EDRD 7360 blog. Also, make sure to give each post or comment a title so that it can be associated easily with our discussion topics.

You will post comments to students on their individual blogs. I will provide the links to these students’ blogs in the near future.

Let us begin our journeys into the blogsphere that celebrates collaborative learning, reflection, and sharing of expertise and resources!