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.