2.4 Misinformation Debate/Group A

A 2008 study completed by researchers at Fordham University found students in grades 5 to 7 improved their cognitive and perceptual skills after playing a video game they'd never seen before.

While traditional literacy is foundational, it is no longer solely sufficient. As media scholar Henry Jenkins has said: “Traditionally we wouldn’t consider someone literate if they could read but not write. And today we shouldn’t consider someone literate if they can consume but not produce media.”

Vocabulary is often a hard subject.  Memorizing a definition or few different definitions for one word is difficult for some students.  Research has shown that people only learn new words by associating them with a distinguishing action or experience. This gives the word a situated meaning not just a verbal meaning.  In other words, it’s visual literacy.  Video games can situate words with images so children can associate the image and dialogue with the word.

According to Dr. Jeffrey Taekman, the director of Duke University's Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, "serious games and virtual environments are the future of education."

A new study indicates that preschoolers become literate faster in a curriculum that uses video and online technology.

Do literacy skills increase when preschool classrooms incorporate video and games?

They're great," she says. "As you can see, they're eager, they love the sound, they love the music. And I like the fact that they can get up and be engaged with the video. They don't have to just sit.

Forward-thinking teachers say the informal writing style that defines text messages can be incorporated into class lessons. And a new study from California State University researchers has found that texting can improve teens' writing in informal essays and many other writing assignments.

Teachers such as Cindi Rigsbee of Orange County, N.C., have asked students to translate passages from classic literature to texting-speak to demonstrate language comprehension in different contexts.

teachers say that texting has educational tie-ins and that it can teach positive language skills

The Times Daily newspaper cites a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life Project, "Writing, Technology and Teens," which found that the cell phone text-based abbreviated communications teens use are showing up in more formal writing.

The average American teen, you may not be shocked to discover, texts a lot: 3,339 messages per month

Girls outpace boys, averaging more than 4,000 texts per month. That’s more than 130 of them a day, every day, or a text every 10 minutes, almost around the clock.

A British study published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning found a positive correlation between texting and literacy, concluding that texting was “actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children.” In other words, contrary to what you might think when faced with “creative” usages such as ur for your, 2 for to, and w8 for wait, kids who text may be stronger readers and writers than those who don’t.

Students today have new learning styles, which draw upon the multimedia world they live in at home or visit each day outside of school.  The SMART board is effective in engaging children with multiple learning styles; it incorporates visual, tactile and auditory learning into each lesson

SMART boards are just one of the ways we use technology to strive for academic excellence here at Frank.”

Technology is such an important tool when educating students because it is an integral part of the Arizona College and Career Ready Standards,” said Inman.  “The students of today need to have tech skills for their world of tomorrow.  We need to make sure that all students are equipped to be 21st century learners.

Graphics, music and other instructional resources can be called upon at the push of a button. Additionally, their interactive nature provides the opportunity for students to become involved in the instructional process

Using interactive whiteboard technology enables high school teachers to integrate the lesson with a variety of instructional modalities quickly and easily. A teacher can call upon a segment of an online video or news headline to help reinforce a social studies unit. A virtual field trip becomes possible. Higher level math teachers can use a Smart Board graphing calculator to not only work a problem, but also to demonstrate graphing the process.

SMART Technologies, the maker of the SMART board, says its whiteboards are used in more than 1.5 million K-12 classrooms and by more than 30 million students globally. And they point to research that shows interactive whiteboards benefiting “student engagement, learner motivation and knowledge retention.

The board can accommodate different learning styles..

Learners show increased motivation and enjoy the interaction the technology offers

It makes the subject come alive

Computer reading software programs give the student the opportunity to manipulate text and have words and sentences presented in a way that makes learning the sounds and words easier.

Children with visual impairments and visual processing difficulties can have larger sized text and extra spacing between words.

Computer-aided writing software can assist students with handwriting and other expressive writing problems. Talking word processing programs can make writing tasks easier for students with learning disabilities. Creative writing programs can help stimulate children’s creativity and make them more successful at writing stories and assignments. Word prediction programs are available and can offer students help with spelling, word finding, and auditory processing difficulties.

The use of “textisms” can improve literacy among pupils by giving them extra exposure to word composition outside the school day, it was claimed.

But academics from Coventry University said there was “no evidence” that access to mobile phones harmed children’s literacy skills and could even have a positive impact on spelling.

The pupils, who did not already use a mobile phone, were split into two groups. Half were given a handset to use for texting over weekends and during the school holidays over a 10-week period. The remaining pupils formed a control group. Academics then gave pupils a series of reading, spelling and phonological awareness tests before and after the study. Pupils’ reading and spelling was also monitored week-on-week

"A UK study of three thousand children aged nine to sixteen suggests something that may not come as a shock to geeks: using technology increases a child's core literary skills. As Researcher Obvious put it, 'The more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills.' And for those of us worried about a world of 'tl;dr' and 'Y U H8n?' the research claims that 'text speech' does not damage literacy. The biggest shortcoming of this research is that it appears the children graded their own writing in that their methodology was an online survey designed to ask the children which technology they use and then follow up with asking them how well they write to determine which children have better literacy skills."

The researchers found that younger children, especially those aged 2 and 3, who watched a few hours a week of educational programs had higher scoring on academic tests 3 years later than children who did not watch the programs.

"Viewing of educational programming was associated with better school readiness and better academic skills,"

Watching educational television may be an important vehicle for children to get some early learning that can really make a positive contribution.

Educational technology is nudging literacy instruction beyond its oral and print-based tradition to embrace online and electronic texts as well as multimedia.

Computers are creating new opportunities for writing and collaborating

The Internet is constructing global bridges for students to communicate, underscoring the need for rock-solid reading and writing skills