KINDERGARTNERS MAKE TECHNOLOGY THEIR TOOL. (2007, December). Reading Today

This issue of reading day was very informative in the practical sense. The article presented a glimpse of what it looks like in a classroom that involves the use of technology in the aid of student literacy. The article shows kindergarten teacher Jo Ann Merrit's classroom. Merrit was the 2007 International Reading Association technology and literacy winner. In the classroom Merrit uses technology to help improve students as they begin to learn how to read and type, and to help boost parent involvment. The parents within the article felt that they were a "close-knit" bunch of parents, because they were always involved in their childs' progress. The parents several weeks in would recieve a note from their son or daughter saying "Hi Dad" or "I love you Mom" or other little means of interaction from school. As one parent came to say, "It really made my day at work, and gave me something to brag about!" The use of e-mail also was used for parent/teacher interaction. Merrit would send home information and materials online to help each child succeed in the classroom. Some of the other programs that were used were the
AR program, Reading A-Z, and the Reading Rabbit program. These programs provided students with reading levels that were scaffolded and differentiated to their exact reading and progress levels. This overall aided each student individually, and ended up being a great asset for the teachers and parents. Overall, I felt that this article was very informative and painted a great picture of integrating technology at the kindergarten level.

Barone, D., & Wright, T. (2008, December). Literacy Instruction With Digital and Media Technologies. Reading Teacher, 62(4), 292-303.

In Barone's & Wright's article on introducing media technologies into the classroom they offer you a glimpse into a unique classroom motivated by computers. The classroom is constructed of fourth grade students in a low economic status area of Nevada. The article begins with the brief history of the integration of technology in educational systems specifically with laptops in the year 1990. This article shows a fourth grade classes entire day consumed with laptop construction. The teacher by the name of Kurt begins each day with students updating their academic laptop calendars through the online classroom website. The day begins with a simple fun word activity which involves an online thesaurus and a student generated sentence with a visual representation. The article then gives the reader a look at the rest of the school day. Kurt seamlessly weaves literature discussions through the use of a blogging site. He sets time schedules for partner activities with the use of aol instant messenger. In the afternoon Kurt uses the KidBiz application to differentiate learning. The students are constantly immersed throughout the school day with the use of their laptops, and it was quite amazing to believe how much a teachers' actual day can be planned through the use of a laptop and wireless internet capabilities. I applaud this article for its great detail, and groundbreaking work in full classroom integration.

Knezek, G., & Christensen, R. (2007, September). Effect of Technology-Based Programs on First- and Second-Grade Reading Achievement. Computers in the

The author's Knezek & Christensen (2007), gave the example of several Texas school districts use of professional development and technology to influence student performance. The study consisted of several randomly selected schools that fit the description of being in a rural environment, and having 45% or more free or reduced lunches. Their was at least one member of every school was presented with a 5 day hands-on workshop that consisted of electronically deemed literate teachers helping illiterate teachers learn technological processes. Some of the topics that were considered were: electronic portfolios, AR, and a set of Early Reading Center software. After the training was concluded those teachers were sent back to their school as the Early Reading liasons. The students were then tested with the Texas Informal Reading Inventory, and then the classes were then averaged by reading levels. The article then conducted a 6 month trial and concluded that all of the scores had risen. The article lacks to explain in detail more about the programs other then their names. The article also does not include any other helpful information aside from the fact that technology boosts achievement levels. I would hope in the future the authors would provide a more indepth review of teaching practices to better inform aspiring and veteran teaching professionals.

Larson, L. (2008, October). Electronic Reading Workshop: Beyond Books With New Literacies and Instructional Technologies. Journal of Adolescent & Adul

In today's schools students are using technology in their home lives more then ever before. The article listed above presented a new view of integrating literature into the curriculum. Larson presents the idea of Electronic Readers Workshop. This area has the same structure as a traditional readers workshop which entails literature selection, literature response journals, literature conversations, and project response options. Larson uses e-books, hypertexts, and other means of electronic print for the literature selection. Literature responses are then presented through blogging and online journals. The literature conversations are through variuous specific chatrooms, and projects are done through applications such as Microsoft PowerPoint, and other publishing databases. The ERW was then given to a group of preservice teachers. The students were then questioned after the initial run through of the program. The results were that e-books had a positive review, but were not as aesthetically pleasing. The journals were presented in Microsoft Word and the college professor would then respond back to the students after the first half of the book and then at the end through the comment feature. The students were then given an online discussion forumn that was threaded to show each members response. The students felt closer and more free to establish communication through this but did not enjoy that they could not see the emotion from each group member. For the projects section, the students provided podcasts for a radio clip from the book time period, provided a virtual tour through PowerPoint and even created a webquest. The students were very engaged throughout the process, and I feel that the overall design of the program was a great success.

Authoring With Video by Barbara K. Strassman, Trisha O'Connell

The article "Authoring With Video" (AVW) provides teachers with an interactive glimpse of how to add the use of video to spark motivation. The key points that were mentioned within the article are motivation,technology, writers workshop, ideas, and video clips.

Furthermore, in motivating students in this day in age, teachers need to embrace technology within the classroom. Students use technology daily with the use of their wireless hand held devices, laptops, televisions, and ipods. It is often hard to motivate students into writing when their are so many other forms of communications. To get students motivated in writing teachers can use AVW. For example, a teacher could use the example of a narrative baseball game. They can watch a clip of the game without narration and then one with narration to see how narration provides an integral part to the whole experience.

The use of AVW technology is created through a image program called MAGpie. The program was developed by the WGGBH National Center for Accessible Media. This program enables students and educators to put together caption videos, and provides spaces for narrative  lines. They always say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and providing imagery you can harness students writing by the use of them. To help scaffold for writers workshop the program can be used to portray other students work as well. The teachers can go to www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/orleans to show the impact of narration with the tragic drownign of the city of New Orleans.

Furthermore, the use of video clips and narration is a new area to be explored that is extremely motivational and hands and is a new step to help enhance student writing and overall literacy.

Children's books and technology in the classroom: A dynamic combo for supporting the writing workshop By Julia Kara-Soteriou, Lisa Zawinski & Laurie H

The article that is listed above is one in which bring writers workshop into the limelight by integrating the use of technology. Writers workshop typically is a form of instruction where teachers being an explicitly taught lesson that is then followed by a writing activity to support the lesson. This is then followed by a sharing time in which students get to discuss and collaborate their newly formed pieces of writing. 

Furthermore, the article  begins with an introductory in which describes that teachers can save much time and effort for many different aspects of writing workshop. For instance, a teacher might use a word processing system in order to help save time in an editing lesson. Another way that the students can use technology is by the use of a shared book review database. This database can serve as a scaffold for students in regards to creating their own book reviews when needed.

The article then describes different websites for the majority of the article itself. Some of the morning interesting sites that were listed that I felt were definitely worth time and consideration were www.rhymer.com. This website offers students that are studying the form of rhyme poetry with every word imaginable that would aid in the creating of their poetry. This would also help aid in expanding student vocabulary. Another website that was mentioned in the article is the website www.inspiration.com. Within this website there are plenty of multimedia additions for students to use. For instance, the site provides both animations, and sounds to help aid in students storytelling. When the students is finished they will be able to share their published electronic copies for all to hear.

Through this article it gives us a glimpse of how to fully integrate technology and writing. The use of technology is both a motivator for students, and teachers. It is imperative that we learn new teaching strategies to aid in the future of our students and to add to our teacher disposition.

Skouge, J., Rao, K., & Boisvert, P. (2007, August). Promoting Early Literacy for Diverse Learners Using Audio and Video Technology. Early Childhood Ed

The article presented a much common theme of the lure of the technological age, and its implications toward literacy. The article gave the notion that many people today are looking at technology as a distraction for our good readers. That most households are filled with families that are avid buyers of video games, ipods, and other technological devices. There is a certain stigma that is being placed upon technology. Their are many people who blame technology for the loss of reading skills in the early childhood setting. The children have become distracted by all of the multimedia and that reading for pleasure is at a constant decline.

The article presents different ideas for affordable, and teacher friendly multimedia to be included within the classroom. The first thing that was of my interest, was the use of podcasts for audio story books for the classroom. The article explained that this can help the teacher and students in many different ways. One of them being in a regular classroom, and having a student turn the pages of the book as it is read to them over a "Boom Box." This would free the teacher up for doing other work, and could help give the teacher more free time to work with students individually. I have heard many times that in good teaching the students should be more tired then you at the end of the day. I still do not know how that is attainable, but this does take a step in the right direction as far as I am concerned. Another, aspect about the audio story is that it can help students with both cognitive exceptionalities, and for students that are visually impaired. The article introduced the use of clickers for students with exceptionalities in the creation of their own photo journal to help build fluency. The picture cues would be a great asset for them to have in developing early literacy skills. This is also true for the ESL students in making the transition from their native language toward the english language.

Furthermore, the article presents many different ways of fusing technology into an all encompassing literacy classroom. The article gave step by step instructions for audio storybooks, and is an easy to follow resource for technology integration within the classroom.

Teacher-Created Electronic Books: Integrating Technology to Support Readers With Disabilities by Joan A. Rhosed, Tammy M. Milby

The new rules of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 in the U.S. has given us the ultimatum that every student and teacher is held accountable for their actions in the classroom. Today, students with special needs are being identified at a hugely increasing rate. The need for one on one instruction and interaction is needed to an extremely large degree in the classroom. Some schools offer the support needs for students and some cannot afford enough aids, or special education teachers to fully create a greater climate for learning. In this article it discusses the need  for something more... Many of the students in today's society are constantly in need of interaction in order to keep both motivation and learning very high. 

Therefore, this article gives us a solution in which we are studying now, which is using electronic books or e-books to help boost learning. The use of electronic books has been proven throughout many different special education classrooms across the U.S. The electronic books can either be purchased in a store or online for a price. But, another way of introducing them without having to pay any money would be through Microsoft PowerPoint. A teacher can use text, graphics, and a voice over. This has been reported to be able to boost both fluency, and comprehension. The only cost is really the teachers time and effort. This time and effort is something that will pay off substantially in the future, when students need differentiated instruction within the classroom. The use of technology in the classroom is something that is very important, and is a skill that will be used significantly more year by year.

Multiliteracies, E-Literature and English Teaching

Students in todays classrooms are becoming more increasingly technologically literate by the day. They spend endless amounts of time online, playing video games, and in general working on the computer. This article provides the right ideas and know-how in order to give a budding teacher a place to begin with their students. Len Unsworth gives us a plethora of websites, and electronic media materials for us as educators to get our hands on. The article also brings up the point that many teachers out there are not utilizing the technology that is right in front of them. There is definately a digital divide among students and educators. The article posed the problem that we are not reaching our students through their interest, and therefore we are doing a disservice to not utilize it.

I agree with the article, whole heartedly, and was quite impressed by the resources that were listed. I like the thought of utilizing online children's books that read aloud to your students. This I feel.. can help students build fluency, and will provide individual help to struggling readers. This will help all of the students feel included in stories that otherwise would leave students out. I felt that not only were the early students involved, but their were opportunities for older readers, such as through the book Mice and Men by Steinbeck. I also, took in consideration the idea of using the Middle Earth website to have students act out a book. All in all I felt that this article was filled with interesting information on different websites and activities through media, and is an important read.

NCLB

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has highlighted the need for educators to be accountable for the achievement of all students and English language learners. Do you think this is a realistic goal? What changes would you suggest to NCLB that might increase its effectiveness in meeting its goals?

I feel that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legistlation is a great thought. And in a perfect society of learners it would make a lot of sense. I agree that a bar needs to be set for both students and teachers. The NCLB legislation has provided a systematic framework that gives the state and national governments an assessment of both students and teachers. I believe that teachers should be held accountable for their work, just like many other professions. The main overarching goal that is present is for all students by the year 2014 to be literate by the time that they reach the fourth grade.

Furthermore, this might be a high goal to strive toward, but it is also an unattainable one. Students are all at different developmental stages, and ability levels. Even if students are given the correct guidance and strategies, not every student is going to reach the NCLB goals. Another piece of NCLB that directly impacts the teachers is the achievement testing, which is commonly known as "high stakes testing." Within the assessments which are conducted on an almost yearly basis, all of the students are held accountable. For example, if a student is an ELL student or English Language Learner, and they arrive late in the school year. It is the new school's responsibility to have that student up to par for test time by the test. If a student cannot understand the test then it is unlikely that they will perform at the correct level. This is unfair for the teacher's and administrator's whom are being blamed for the poor test scores. Also, the assessments make the teachers accountable for students in low income status areas. These students primarily do not get the same time and attention that other class systems recieve. This has led to lower test scores time and time again in various research studies. This makes it even harder for teachers of low S.E.S. communities to reach the goals that are set forth through NCLB.

Furthermore, there is a solution to the current system in place under NCLB. It is what I call student progression assessments. All classroom students would be presented with their own individualized goals. They would each have a file and a progress chart that would indicate assessments and give an accurate model of how students are making way toward their own personal goals. If the student is not being tracked and not making progress then it is the administrations job to help that teacher figure out how to better differentiate instruction for that student. Their would be a point system that would be in place, where if a teacher would not be making headway toward progress they would have to go to a professional development seminar in that area of expertise. This way teachers are constantly being educated to better their students progress. This assessment tracking system would be for low S.E.S. as well as E.L.L. For the E.L.L.s it would comprise more of the transition from their native language to english, but they would still be held accountable for making progress in the content areas.