Reaching our students—easier or more difficult than before? To answer, go back to your first year of teaching or your freshman year of high school when your teachers were reaching you, or trying to.
In the digital era, we may feel like shouting or at least hitting Caps Lock before responding: more difficult! The sense of competition with digital tools breeds a kind of exasperation—how do I get my students’ attention, much less sustain it for an entire lesson and string enough of these together to cover the standards?
When we leverage the digital tools that define our students as digital residents and make their tools our tools, we get closer to reaching them at the very least. Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm have long advocated bringing together in-school and out-of-school literacies (Michael W. Smith, Temple University, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Boise State University).
The E-Book Experience
Daily independent reading on wide-ranging topics and across varied genres is a key way our students become proficient readers as they increase vocabulary, and apply metacognitive and comprehension strategies, while gaining information. This is not news to our ears! Using e-books can bring together our students’ digital residency with best practices we know that align to balanced literacy. CAN, but how? In conversations I’ve had with teachers in many school districts, I hear the concerns:
How do we provide students with appropriate texts, matched to their specific reading level with e-books? How do we support students, based on their reading levels so that they engage with text successfully? How do we address accountability?
As reading teachers, these questions haunt us—we want students to have the e-book, digital reading experience they will connect most readily to, but we also demand (rightfully so!) the same care we use to select print texts.
Consider an e-library, with precisely leveled texts, such that a student’s virtual library card provides access only to those texts appropriate to the student, taking reading level and (for our ELLs) language level into careful account.
Customization options in e-books are astounding and make differentiating the e-book experience easy and efficient. The ability to place support through virtual sticky notes on virtual pages at the point of use takes differentiation to a new level. You may have taught the vocabulary strategy of using context clues to determine meaning. So, in the e-book you have assigned to a group of students who need to practice this strategy, you notice the text:
Pourquoi tales often point out character flaws, or foibles, that people have, such as being boastful, proud, or impatient.
How helpful would it be to these students to place a virtual sticky note for them right in the margin that reads: “What is another word for “foible”? Give an example.” Students respond on the virtual sticky note.
With this feature, we serve quite a few “masters”: differentiation, strategy application, and accountability.
So, while the e-book experience may not replace the valuable experiences our students have with print books, they open doors that print books can’t and at the same time motivate and engage students, our digital residents who live in the same digital neighborhood as e-books.
You may enjoy perspectives on e-books from No Shelf Required as well as author Michael Pastore who has recently written, 50 Benefits of Ebooks, A Thinking Person’s Guide to the Digital Reading Revolution.
The other day, my son asked me why I like to read and his dad doesn’t. Good question! I really didn’t have an answer, other than thinking about the way I grew up. In my childhood, household reading was what we did. Every night before bed, my parents read to me. As I grew older, I was allowed to stay up thirty minutes past my bedtime to read on my own (motivating me even more—who doesn’t want to stay up late?). Reading was simply a habit I developed early on and luckily still enjoy doing today.
Now, as my own household winds down (kids in bed), I find myself heading upstairs to read as my husband heads downstairs to watch TV. What motivates me to want to read? The answer is that I enjoy it.
A few years ago, I read a great article when trying to find strategies to motivate students in classrooms. The article was called Motivating Children Who Don’t Like to Read* by Alan Haskvitz. He comments that, “Motivating a young person to read starts with a good example. And that is the parent. Research has clearly shown that the most important base for a successful student is a mother who conveys a positive attitude about school to her child. Without this role model the chances of a child becoming an avid reader diminish.”
It seems pretty simple, right? But as children get older, it gets harder to compete with sports, after school activities, and friends. So how can books compete? Haskvitz provides some really great ideas in his article, and I think the key idea that he states is to focus on the type of child you are dealing with. There seems to be two types of readers who may choose not to read. My husband is a perfect example of a reluctant reader. He can read just fine, but he chooses not to! He is a reluctant reader in the sense that he is “reluctant” to pursue reading as an enjoyable activity. The second type of reader is one who struggles with reading. We may call this reader a “struggling” reader because he or she finds reading frustrating (which obviously makes the task unenjoyable).
I think technology may be the key for both readers. We are learning quickly that technology is an important part of children growing up in this day and age. I noticed at my children’s school they have been encouraging students to read e-books. The newer e-books now even allow children to interact with the books. Books are not simply a passive event. Students can place sticky notes with comments, circle words they don’t understand, and highlight areas where they have a question. Any of this interactivity could motivate a reluctant or a struggling reader! As much as I love a traditional book in my hands, I really see the motivation technology can provide students, whether they are struggling or simply reluctant to read.
Below are some websites that may provide further support:
How important is technology in classrooms today? In doing some research, I stumbled upon a YouTube video called “A Vision of K-12 Students” (see below). I know that with over 1 million hits, many people have had an opportunity to see this video. For me it was extremely powerful both as a parent and as an educator. The message was simple – we must think about technology today differently than we did five or ten years ago.
The technology available to me as a child looked a little like this:
Obviously, what I had available to me looked very different than what we have today, and as I remember was thought of as more of a privilege! Looking back technology was not readily available. For example, my family did not get a home computer until I was on my way to college, and my first cell phone was a present for my twenty-first birthday. Now on average there are 1.55 computers per household (which has doubled since 2000)* and many people no longer use home phones but instead rely only on their cell phones. In just the last hour I have used six different types of technology avenues to help me make it through my day (e-mail, iPad, GPS, Internet, cell phone, texting).
The video “A Vision of K-12 Students” sends a powerful message. The message inspires me to look at the world today through different eyes and not rely on what I know about technology from my childhood. The technology that our students are growing up with today is here to inspire, integrate, and encourage learning beyond any potential we had access to years ago. Even as I sit and write this blog, my daughter is sitting at the table with me on our family laptop and my son is on the couch playing on my iPad. So how does technology fit into our classrooms? Basically, we need to continue to grow ourselves and take chances with different technology avenues available to students and their learning. If you have not had an opportunity to see the video “A Vision of K-12 Students,” I encourage you to watch it and hopefully it will inspire you to take chances in your classroom.
*Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2008
A Vision of K-12 Students
I hope this video inspires you as much as it inspired me:
A Vision of K-12 Students Today
Related article:
If you’re like me, you enter each school year with plans for expanding, improving, or updating your professional repertoire, “New Year’s Resolutions” for the classroom, if you will. While 21st century learning and technology standards are high among priorities and while you share the idea that increasing use of technology in the classroom offers huge benefits for you and your students, technology-related resolutions may not have made it onto your list.
There’s still time!
In fact, time is the exact reason we’re going to look at RSS today (RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication).
Not only is using RSS a key strategy to “tame” the Internet jungle, but it saves you time!
The Internet Jungle: Virtually every person has experienced data overwhelm. Here are a few statistics to “validate” that:
“In 2009 more data was generated by individuals than in the entire HISTORY of mankind through 2008.” (highlight is my addition)
~Harvard Business Review, The Social Data Revolutions
Those who calculate, figure a day in the life of the Internet generates over 210 billion e-mails (more than an entire year’s worth of letter mails in the U.S.), over 900,000 blogs posted (enough to fill the New York Times for 19 years!), over 3 million images uploaded to Flickr every day, etc.
Got information? Staggering amounts, the technology twist on “needle in a haystack” for any info seeker.
So let’s look at RSS to see how this technology strategy changes the information-seeking game!
Understandings: RSS Basics
The acronym RSS stands for a couple things, the most often used is “Real Simple Syndication.” Opt for “Relevant Search Stream” to underscore the main point: Using RSS feeds delivers the information of your choice, from sources you trust, on topics that are of highest interest to you and your students. Relevance is really the key.
How? RSS technology allows you to subscribe to any website that has one of these in the address bar: 
RSS users typically begin as readers of blogs or visitors to websites that provide valuable information or content on a subject. Depending on how often they check, they may not see anything new on the majority of their visits. Not a great use of time!
With RSS, you never again have to go to a site that has no new material. When I subscribe via RSS to the sites I enjoy, I am updated every time they post new material. The information finds me; I do not have to go looking for it! For those of us who are visual, picture a gigantic magnet on your browser, programmed to attract only the information you want.
Understandings: Feed Readers
If you’re not a current RSS-user and would like to be, by the end of this article, you will have everything you need to begin. I have chosen one feed reader, Google Reader, to show you how the process works. “Feed readers” are programs that collect and manage RSS subscriptions. If you use Outlook or another e-mail program, you already know what an e-mail reader is. A feed reader works the same way, except it’s pulling in posts instead of e-mails.
You can choose any feed reader; I’ve chosen Google Reader because it’s very easy to use, free, and available to everyone no matter the computer or browser, which explains why it’s the most popular, by far.
Setting Up Google Reader
1. Create a Google Reader account: Go to google.com, drop down “more” menu, and
click “Reader.” Complete by filling in your e-mail and password.
2. Next, go to Google Reader and sign in to the account you just created.
Adding a Subscription in Google Reader
1. Select “Add Subscription” from the left column.
2. Type in the address of a blog, content publisher, or a key word phrase you want to
subscribe to and click “Add.”
Adding a Subscription from Outside Google Reader
1. When you are visiting a site that you want to subscribe to, click on the orange icon in
the address bar or on a link provided on the site.
You’ll see a page like this: view feed page
2. Now, select Google as the reader you want to subscribe with. That’s all there is to it!
Reading and Managing Your Subscriptions
Reading Options
You now can see a few of your favorite RSS feeds listed in the left column of your Google Reader page. The best way to go through your feeds is up to you. Here are some options:
- Home, at the top of the left column, is where you can see new, unread posts listed with just a few lines of content.
- All Items, just below “Home,” is where you can see new, unread posts listed with all their content.
- Selecting an individual feed from the list in the left column allows you to see new posts as well as scroll down through older ones.
Unsubscribing
If you change your mind about being subscribed to an RSS feed, you can unsubscribe by going to the settings in the upper right corner.
RSS: Which Sites to Invite
What you teach coupled with the students in your class this year and their individual needs will determine where to look for sites to deliver content of highest interest and relevance. There are all kinds of lists to begin with RSS feeds; I’ve included key sites, sources of information I have found invaluable:
- MindShift (for those interested in how technology fuels learning): mindshift.kqed.org
- Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD): www.ascd.org
- Howcast: www.howcast.com
- International Reading Association (IRA): www.reading.org
- National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE): www.nabe.org
- National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS): www.socialstudies.org
- National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): www.ncte.org
- National Science Teachers Association (NSTA): www.nsta.org
- Smithsonian Magazine: www.smithsonianmag.com
- Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL): www.tesol.org
Now that you’re up and running, don’t forget to add the Benchmark Education Blog feed to your RSS list so we can continue the conversation.
Have some must-have feeds to share? Please tell us in the comments section below.
For some of us, bringing interactive technology into our lessons is anything but second-nature. We know technology is a powerful tool for motivation and engagement, but…
Where to begin with planning?
How to connect to best practices?
Can we spare the time?
Literacy 1.0, New Literacy, Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants, Blended Learning, Networked Literacy, D-Gen, Net – Gen, Digital Literacy, Literacy 2.0, Hybrid Learning
The terms related to technology and education can confuse rather than clarify. We are on firm footing when we acknowledge—vigorously—that we strive daily to fully equip our students for a bright, successful future. There IS a brave new DIGITAL world. And yet we often find ourselves at a loss.
Is digital DIVIDE more apt? There are best practices in literacy I know (and love), feel “at home” with, and can natively weave into lessons to deliver to students right here. And technology over there.
Upgrades in technology do not account for this divide. Gladly did we exchange the overhead for the LCD projector and document camera. When the team of computers moved into our classrooms, we applauded, and we cheered the interactive whiteboard.
User guides, manuals, technology training, and hands-on practice—all helpful, all needed.
But these alone do not permit us to cross the digital divide. We are still left with our best practice literacy strategies divorced, instructionally speaking, from our newly gained technology tools.
So how do we get beyond this great divorce? How do we craft a marriage, arriving in that best-of-all-worlds place, in which technology tools are integrated within our literacy lessons, as routinely and as natively as any of our before, during, and after the reading strategies?
Let’s start with a few strategies we know, representing best literacy practices, and use them to connect to our technology tools. Consider the strategies we have that roughly fall into the three categories we use with our students: Think About It!, Talk About It!, and Write About It!
Think About It!
In shared reading lessons, we conduct pre-reading activities to model our meaning-making strategies. When I add an interactive whiteboard into this part of my reading lesson and project my text through it, I now have a range of tools at my service.
For example, in a text rich with comparison and contrast, the use of color, by highlight or underline tools, permits me to focus on the author’s signal language. Color becomes a key way for students to hone in on the words that show what is alike (like, and, also, both, etc.) using one color, versus what is different (but, while, however, although, etc.) in a second color. This creates the context for my students to see the author’s organization, the rhetorical pattern of text, which becomes their road map for successful reading. The active involvement of students as they come up to try, possibly make mistakes, erase these and try again is key. The visual element of color is powerful, as is the student engagement of using technology as a support tool for their reading.
We often model asking questions as a strategy for before, during, or even after the reading. When we have our text projected through the whiteboard, we can use the text or notes tool to place our questions directly into the text. Picture how this looks on an interactive whiteboard—use your visualize strategy here. How would your students benefit from hearing the questions you would ask, then seeing you place your questions exactly there—right on text, at the place your question arose? The lesson becomes interactive as students add their questions to the text or put check marks next to questions they also have, or propose answers, which can later be confirmed. Interactive? Yes!! White? Not for long!!
You get the picture. We are indeed using the strategies we natively include in our reading lessons to develop our students’ strategic reading behaviors. At the same time, we leverage interactive tools, not just for their own sake, the fun of the “bells and whistles,” but to support all of our students in comprehending text.
Digital divide? Perhaps, but one that we can certainly cross!
Reading and re-reading are necessary steps to improve fluency and comprehension, however, it can be challenging to find innovative, authentic ways to encourage students to read the same work over and over again.
As many of you know from experience, Reader’s Theater asks students to reproduce written work using voice alone (no props, sets, and costumes), providing a legitimate rationale for re-reading. In the process of using the scripts and performing, students demonstrate marked gains in literacy including, but not limited to, a more complete understanding of how to read expressively by achieving the right volume, pitch, tone and timing.
A interesting study by Sheri Vasinda and Julie McLeod (conducted and published earlier this year in The Reading Teacher) points out that by thoughtfully pairing technologies with literacy strategies, teachers can reinvent and reinforce tried and true classroom techniques like Reader’s Theater.
In their study, Vasinda and McLeod seek to incorporate 21st century technology – in the form of podcasts – to further enhance the impact of the Reader’s Theater experience. The study followed six classes (100 students in total) for 10 weeks. Each week, the students chose a new script to practice and perform by week’s end, then recorded the scripts on existing classroom computers using external microphones and free software (about $10 worth of technology).
Even though technology can occasionally detract or complicate the goals of a classroom, the findings from this study demonstrate that the use of podcasting actually complements and reinforces the benefits of Reader’s Theater. The results show that in this case technology offers students:
- A wider audience for their work, further reinforcing the significance of the overall exercise
- A more permanent illustration of their work, allowing for review and self-evaluation to make changes for the next time
- An inexpensive and easy way of capturing the student voice, while maintaining the integrity of the Reader’s Theater experience
- A relatively concealed method for the students to express themselves anonymously, allowing the students to read and be in character without feeling overly self-conscious
Have you ever captured a Reader’s Theater performance either aurally or on video? If so, please share your experiences… we would love to hear (and learn) from you!
