Article reviews

Adolescent Literacy: What's
Technology Got to Do With It?
http://www.ldonline.org/article/35792/
This article points out the lack of technology preparation for students who are learning disabled.  Interestingly enough, technology tools can support the teaching and learning process and promote independence.  The problem here is that these students are not getting exposure to these technologies.  The article points out that teachers need to pay close attention to the student’s background knowledge and vocabulary, comprehension strategies, the synergies of reading and writing, and the importance of interest and motivation.  I think that when technology is introduced it is so important, especially with learning disabled students, to know what they are capable of in order for the technology to be beneficial not harmful.  Knowing what level your students are working at, is essential to the learning environment.  Delivering a multisensory instruction to students can benefit our LD and ESL students because they gain exposure to new vocabulary through sounds and spelling patterns.

Technology to support learners:

Digital Text: Scanning text into the computer and adding digital text and audio
Text to Speech: Providing read aloud versions of stories or work.
Annotations and study skill features: Learning how to use virtual post-it notes, bookmarking, highlighting, and color-coding.

 “Tomorrow will not be like today”: Literacy and identity in a world of multi-literacies
http://igenlit.pbworks.com/f/williams%20multiliteracies.pdf
Technology is evolving at such an exponential rate that everything that we are learning about in this program could very well be obsolete in five years.  This points to the fact that educators always need to always be developing and researching new technologies to stay on top of the kids.  Online environments can be beneficial for students because they have the opportunity to create personas that can be different from the way they present themselves in face to face interactions.  Shy students can really come out of their shells in an online learning environment.

Student’s are now being bombarded with information online, from forums to discussion boards.  Student’s now need to know how to sift through information and be able to pick out what is valuable and credible.  Being digitally literate is a new skill that we need to help out students reach.

 Preparing Tomorrow's English Language Arts Teachers Today: Principles and Practices for Infusing Technology
http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss1/currentissues/english/article1.htm
This article brings up a number of great points that are very relavant to this course and this program.  As educators we now need to not only know our content and our educational pedagogies, but also instructional technologies.  With this, just knowing technologies is not going to make the cut.  We need to know how to effectively use different technologies with students to promote academic learning.  Without proof of academic achievement, one should evaluate their teaching methods.

Seven principles as touchstones for infusing technology into English language arts teacher preparation.
1.) Introduce and infuse technology in context.
2.) Focus on the importance of technology as a literacy tool.
3.) Model English language arts learning and teaching while infusing technology.
4.) Evaluate critically when and how to use technology in English language arts classroom.
5.) Provide a wide range of opportunities to use technology
6.) Examine and determine ways of analyzing, evaluating, and grading English language arts technology projects
7.) emphasize issues of equity and diversity.

I would like to focus on number five: provide a wide range of opportunities to use technology.  It is important to begin to make student work accessible for outside the classroom.  The key to future success in education is to create virtual classrooms that students can access for their mobile devices and home desktops. There are a number of great resources that we have learned about in the NYIT program that make this a possibility.  Edmodo, MyBigCampus, blogging, and even Google Docs.  These programs all allow for universal accessibility and promote 21st century collaboration amongst peers.

Children's Book

http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view.php?op=share&book=c0b20965a2ad187d8971c4f312267408&sid=7497

I came up with the idea to write a book about pollution in the ocean because the ELA teacher that I have been working with was having her student's read about the oil spill in the gulf.  The teacher was showing student's pictures of the damage that the wildlife endured and the student's seemed very disturbed by this.  When I showed the ELA teacher the children's book that I wrote above she loved it and said that she is going to have her students read the book and give me some feedback on not only how they liked the story, but also how they like interacting and reading the book through the cast builder program.  She really liked the coaches that were embedded with the story because of all the great things that you can add to help students decode what they are reading.  I asked her if she would be willing to use this program again and she said that she would like to have her student's create their own story about pollution and how it effects wildlife.  I explained the critical thinking and creativity that this program offers and she agreed and is working on creating a rubric to use to grade their work.  She also liked how I created prompt questions on the bottom that were thought provoking questions.  This really stimulates the children's brains and gets them thinking about the bigger picture.  I think that a science or even social studies teacher could use my children's book in their classroom as well.  Science teachers could focus more on the pollution aspect where social studies teachers can focus on the social effects of pollution and how history always seems to repeat itself.

Second Life Disadvantages/Uses of ADDIE

I have done a lot of research on this Second Life online learning environment and it has tremendous benefits, but I am beginning to realize some of the serious limitations and potential dangers of online learning environments.  These are not to suggest that Second Life or other online environments should not be used, but should be considered.  One of the first disadvantages/limitations that I recognized with this model is the broadband issues that may arise.  If students are working from home with dial up connections or really anything less than Road Runner, this may cause a loading/buffering issue.  The biggest issue that I have seen or have an issue with is the lack of structure and lack of security protecting the children.  It is an open environment that anyone can drop in on and distract the other users at pretty much any time, which can be beneficial to the learning environment at times to break up the structure of a traditional class, but mainly detrimental to the learning experience.

I have used the instructional design system ADDIE with Dr. Wang in Multimedia and I feel that this is an amazing outline that should be used, especially when using an open ended online environment like Second Life.  Teachers need to have a firm grasp on their learning outcomes, how they are going to get there, and how effective it is.  This form of planning is essential to ensuring that the class is getting what was expected out of the online environment.  There needs to be a goal with some structure here in order to make sure learning actually takes place because of how easy it can be to wonder, explore, and get off task.

Literacy

Coming from a math background I found this article to be filled with tons of useful information because I never knew a lot of it.  It is funny how as we are reading we take advantage of some things that authors intend to put on the page or not.  After reading through everything the one thing that really stuck with me was the structural changes of text in children's books.  I was amazed to read about the child that could figure out that the mom or women was screaming in the book merely because of the font size chosen by the author.  Font size, colors, and even shapes have such a big impact on children when reading.  This makes me want to think about all of these things while writing my children's book for this class.  It also appeals to me because of the importance of pictures and other graphics.  When making notes for my students in math I am going to include way more pictures in order to facilitate what is being communicated to the children.  When students are being read to I feel they should be able to communicate what is on their mind but to a certain extent.  Sometimes when you are being read to you create this imagery in your mind of what you think the scenario looks or feels like, but once a fellow classmates calls out, this may change or ruin your imagery of the topic.  I think a better method would be to give students a pad of paper to write or draw illustrations that come to their mind when they are being read to.  I definitely see a great benefit to having students participate when being read to, but there are other ways than having them call out or even raise their hand and maybe change a story for someone else.  Just some food for thought.

Second Life in the ELA Classroom

I proposed this idea of using second life in the ELA classroom to an English teacher and she responded by saying, "What the heck is second life".  After explaining this concept to her she was unsure how she could use it in her classroom, but she said that in terms of multi-modality, she could see this being very beneficial for creating a classroom environment outside of the classroom.  She was very confident, as am I, about the collaborative benefits that Second Life can have.  Once students enter this virtual world their imagination will let loose and create a whole other side of the student that may have not been present before.  Some students never come out and participate in class for a number of reasons, but once they enter a virtual world, they may come out of their shell and really begin to explore new environments that enrich their learning.  Second Life can be used in the ELA classroom by holding class discussions outside of school or even extending yourself to answer questions for homework, etc.

Second Life Screenshot

Used SmartBoard tools to take screenshot.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43439166/Second%20Life.notebook

Gamestar

When used properly, gaming can motivate, teach, and encourage students of all levels to succeed or work harder.  If you can really implement gaming and use them to their fullest extent, you can motivate poor performing students, or even help bright students ask important relevant questions about their worlds. 

I do feel that gaming can and should be infused into every subjects lesson planning, but as a professional you need to ask  “Is a computer game the right choice in this situation?”. I would first start with thinking of the learners, their needs, or any disabilities they have.  It is important to know if your students can draw inferences from experiential activities.  One of the most important points is to make sure you have a proper structure so students can stay on task.

After doing some research online and with these websites, teachers are using games in a number of ways and with great success.  Most teachers recommend playing the game first, using the exact technology that students will be using to avoid any problems down the line which will through the whole class out of whack.  Working kinks out prior can be all the difference when using something like a game.  Considering time can be crucial to how much they get out of this gaming experience. Although some parts of some computer games can be completed in 40 minutes, it would be much more beneficial to use 3 or 4 40 minute classes.  Spend the first time learning how to use the game, the second just playing around with the game, and the third and fourth playing the game with good instructional design.  Educators should take outcomes into account.  Make sure that the games are linked to state standards/common core, and be able to justify your teaching methods to administrators before implementing.  

4 important things to get right when using gaming in the classroom

It has to work right and well.  Technical problems are disastrous in games in education. Short classes and limited technical support make technical problems a serious issue. 

It has to be fun. It doesn’t get boring.  A guiding mantra should be “if it’s not fun, why do it?”.  This is why we always think about the game first and then educational potential.

It has to be challenging at different levels of abilities.  Some students are naturally interested in technology and games, others are not.  As much as something which is very difficult can cause problems, so can something which is very easy.  Levels of difficulty help alleviate this situation.

The game needs to be accessible for different types of players. There should be something in the game for everyone.

Philosophy of Using Gaming in the classroom

It is my position to incorporate gaming into my teaching methodology.  Gaming will support students in becoming active problem solvers and innovators of the 21^st century. When used properly, gaming can motivate, teach, and encourage students of all levels to succeed or work harder.  My goal is to use gaming to help students learn to reason about their world.  The use of gaming will help students to understand many of the unintended consequences associated with using digital media, which will lead to a stronger sense of digital citizenship. 

Enhancing Learning Through Edmodo

Students can collaborate in real time, just like they do with Facebook, with their classmates and teacher. Students will have opportunities to reflect on pieces of writing, use the embed feature to publish student work for portfolios.  Edmodo can be linked to twitter and students can receive messages or important announcements.  The Poll feature can be used as a springboard to discuss questions on class/homework. You can also use the embed feature considerably more to bring other tech tools into your classroom environment.  It allows you to embed Google forms from your docs, which can be great for surveys or quizzes.  Anyone can embed their google calendar, wallwish, glogter, and other student made media project, like YouTube videos.  This is such a great tool.  Another educational social networking site that is exactly like this and maybe better is MyBigCampus. Very cool, check it out!

Game Scenario/Script/Powerpoint

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43439166/ELA%20Game%20Scenario.pptx