Technology is OK, Teachers are better

As I have stated in earlier blogs, I entered this course with very little regard for new technologies and their usage in the classroom. From personal experience, it had seemed that technology does more to cause frustration and headaches in the classroom rather than supplement learning. Regardless of my personal opinion, I went into this new literacy project with the hope that I would learn to appreciate digital resources and begin to understand all the hype surrounding technology.
Due to the nature of this project and my limited background with different digital resources, I knew that this was going to require a lot of time. I chose my literacy based on one of my favorite things: maps. For me, maps not only illustrate locations, but represent adventure, travel, and exploration. I plan on instilling this same passion for maps and what they represent in my students. However, in today’s technologically driven society, children rarely experience some sort of learning without any technological input, such as television, video games, or computers. In other words, today’s students are digital natives who enjoy practicing visual literacy.
As a result, I decided to combine my interest in maps with digital literacy to create a new visual application that would better capture the attention of today’s students. After much time perusing different websites and downloading different applications to my computer, I decided that GoogleEarth would be the most assessable for me as well as my students. As I experimented with the program, it became apparent that two forms of literacy are required to create a map tour. In addition to digital literacy, I would need to be fluent in environmental literacy as well. In other words, I would need to apply my geographic knowledge and experiences to this new program.
As I was becoming more fluent in the GoogleEarth program, I was actually enjoying myself. This digital resource gave me the opportunity to express myself through my interest in maps, geography, and the environment. Before I knew it, I was uploading old pictures, reminiscing, and feeling a sense of ownership over this project. However, after finishing the project and taking a deep sigh of satisfaction, I pushed one final button before going to bed – “upload.” This one button proved to cause me a terrible headache and made me spend more time figuring out how others can view my video than the amount of time actually doing it. Unfortunately, this only strengthens my ill notions towards digital resources.
Problems with technology are incredibly unpredictable. In many cases, an educator will spend an ample amount of time developing an educational resource only to run into problems when using it in the classroom. In turn, the only thing that the technology seemed to do was waste valuable personal and class time.
Nonetheless, a diverse group of students will still require “effective literacy instruction.” I just believe that that particular technology should be simple – with as little room for error as possible. For instance, I still believe that GoogleEarth is a powerful tool, but I would not use it for much else than classroom instruction. Although this will help all students learn through their own visual literacy skills, it lacks student involvement because of the issues I faced when trying to upload the document.
In general, there is no doubt that technology can be a powerful tool in the classroom. However, I believe that educators are focusing too much on the push to use more innovative digital resources in the classroom and forgetting how to establish quality learning without new technologies. Although it may help in its simplest forms, quality teachers will continue to make more of a difference in the classroom than any technology ever will.

Cultural Literacies

I just got done with my cultural literacies project for the new technologies assignment. I spent a lot of time on this project. The majority of the time was spent trying to decide what to do. I wanted to focus on another culture but I haven't traveled that much so I was unsure what to do. And then I had a meeting for my study abroad program that I am doing this summer and I realized that I might as well do my project on that because I am learning so much about the Malaysian culture. I know that I have not been there yet, but I have so many resources that I could still make my materials authentic.

I wanted to do a digital story because I like visual things. I also think the best way to learn something new about a culture is to fully immerse yourself in it, and the best way I could think to do that was through pictures. I used the Malay language to enrich the pictures, but I really wanted to focus on the pictures.

To use this in my classroom i would show the students this digital story before I left to travel. I would want my students to know where I am going and to know things about where I am going to be. I plan on using this experience when I am a teacher so I would want my students to know where it came from. I can't really say that my concept of literacy has changed after this project. My concept of literacy has always been pretty large and encompasses a number of things.

I think this is just one example of one way you could provide an effective litearcy instruction to your students. I know one theory of literacy is just to immerse your students into the subject and let them absorb the knowledge wtih guidance. I know this isn't practical for everything, but i feel as if it is ok for this kind of literacy. I think that learning about new cultures is hard, and the best way is to throw yourself into it and just absorb everything like a sponge.

Environmental Literacy

I began this assignment quite some time ago, after we had turned in our new literacies plan. When i turned in my plan, i said that I was going to create a wiki about social literacy. For many reasons, this changed. After attempting to do research about social literacy on more than one occasion, I not only realized that there was very little to find 'out there' about it, but what i did find, i thought to be quite dry and boring. At that point, i decided to take a different route. I started back at square one, re-reading the website about new literacies a few times, and then deciding on a new literacy: environmental literacy.
I decided environmental literacy would be a cool thing to do a project on, mostly because I really enjoy learning and teaching about the environment. Further, i have been trying to come up with ways to help students to learn to live more environmentally friendly lives.
After thinking about how I might do a wiki for this, i decided a wiki wouldn't be the best option for a project like this. This project is basically individuals working (non-collaboratively) to accomplish a goal of explanation. Wikis are best when used with numbers of people so that collaboration, explination and change can take place. To create a wiki by myself would probably end up being rather boring. Therefore, I decided to expand my e-portfolio a bit and create a website about Environmental Literacy. Because I have worked with NVU in the past, i decided to switch it up a bit, and attempt to use googlepages website creator. I wanted to see how accessible it was - specifically for students, and i found that it was quite accessible. It was much simpler than NVU to use, and didnt involve setting up a network on your computer, which msu.edu requires you to do when you use NVU. I can see myself using googlepages in the future with my students (i even left a page where I plan to put links to student projects on my site :-) )
I also ended up using Del.icio.us to tag some of the cool sites i found information on, which i think is cool. It helps to give credit to where I got my information, as well as keeps it all in one place for my students and peers.
I really did end up enjoying this project, despite the fact that i was off to a bit of a rough start.
This project helped me to analyze my own plans for the future, and really think about how I am going to incorporate something that i believe in into my classroom. I am excited to help my students to become more environmentally literate in the future.

Miller Article

I know we don't have to blog about this, but I enjoyed some of the tips in this article, so I figured I would post them.

1. Plan Ahead - don't just think that stuff will come to you while you're teaching. You have to plan your prompts, your questions, your connections, everything ahead of time.
2. Authenticity Matters - by choosing books that you really connect with, and making sure that you can relate to them, it makes lessons able to be more authentic.
3. use a variety of types of literature.
4. use precise language. define words that students may not know, and stay consistent in meanings and uses of words.
4. "think through the text" with students - make connections and ask for theirs, etc.
5. plan for student discussion ahead of time, figure out how to put it into your lesson.
6. make meaningful connections
7. PRACTICE. tell students what you expect, and practice it. your first lessons of the year wont be perfect. learn from them, and make changes to reach your goals.

For today’s class, I read Joanne Carlisle’s article, “How Can I Help Children with Learning Disabilities.” As she illustrated, nearly one in twenty students are said to have some sort of learning disability in the United States. To be honest, I was surprised at this estimate considering that many of the classrooms I have visited or been a part of have had a much smaller ratio of students to LD students. Personally, I believe that students in America’s classrooms are misdiagnosed and over-diagnosed. It often seems like an easy way to remove responsibility on the part of the teacher to place an “LD” label on a problem student. I am in no way an expert on this matter, but even in TE courses, I have heard TE students suggest to first get a child on medication for a specific disability, most often ADHD, and then approach the problem.

However, as Carlisle suggests, the first step is to have the child properly evaluated. According to such evaluations, the most common LD among elementary students involves reading and spelling. In fact, nearly 75% of LDs involve these two aspects of literacy. Research suggests that the number of students with this specific disability is so prominent because children often have trouble develop their phonological processes. As a result, this LD has direct implications on a child’s spelling and reading comprehension. As with any disability, it may have profound effects on the child’s self esteem and confidence in school or social settings. As teachers, we can avoid such problems and foster literacy development by creating a classroom environment that is safe and comfortable where intellectual risks are encouraged and rewarded instead of right answers. Once the classroom community is established, the teacher may aid LD students with certain activities that help them develop their spelling and reading skills, such as storybook reading and discussion, word games, journal writing, and other activities. In addition, when participating in whole-class activities, it is essential to break down tasks into a sequence of short activities.

I certainly agree with much of what Carlisle suggests, but I do not think that all LD students, even if they have the same disabilities, should be approached the same way. It is up to the teacher to evaluate and monitor each student's progress academically and socially tailoring activities and instruction accordingly.

Today's Reading

I read chapter 2 for today's class. The chapter discusses the different parts of the reading and writing processes. What interested me most was the 5 stages in reading.

1. The first stage is pre-reading, where students preview the text, set goals for their reading, and make connections.
2. The second stage is reading, where the students do the actual reading where they use many skills like making predictions and take notes while reading.
   
3. The third stage is responding. In this stage students either write in a reading log or take place in a discussion.
4. The forth stage is exploring where students reread the text and continue to make more connections.
   
5. The final stage is applying where students do a project on the book, or connect with other books, and mainly reflect on the reading process.
   

I find this interesting because this is how most literacy circles are formed in the classrooms that I have been in, have been formed. I also find this interesting because this is how many reading strategies are structured, such PQ3(or4)R, where the students preview the text and make predictions and then read and then review.

How do today’s readings help you understand your own reading comprehension processes?

For class, I read the applegate article which focused on different types of 'problem' comprehenders. I'm not going to lie, i saw a little bit of myself in a few of these groupings....
I remember in high school i was very much a literalist(someone who believes that all answers are in the text) - i hated questions that didnt have direct answers in the books, because i coudlnt find them or they didnt make sense to me. I also sometimes am a quiz contestant (background experience is taken over text, as text is almost disregarded), but i typically try to relate it a bit more to the text than not. i used to be quite the politician (telling teachers what thye wanted to hear), but i feel like that is all a part of the 'game' of school. everyone does that at some point or another in their schooling, and often it is just to get teachers 'off their back'.
i feel like all students have qualities of these comprehenders in them, it is just a matter of the situation and the readings in question. some topics i am more comfortable with because they 'hook up' with me more, and i am more willing to talk about them. other topics i have no interest in and therefore dont comprehend quite as well.
i suppose it will help me to recognize when i am exhibiting these patterns of thinking and discussing to know how to stop it and re-formulate my actions and thoughts.