“It just makes them work harder,” she says. The Internet allows her students to engage with an authentic audience, says Parisi, which motivates them to record podcasts or write blogs that are more polished than what they might create for just the teacher.Teaching students to read in an authentic context is a key part of being literate, says Jeffrey Wilhelm, a former middle and high school teacher who is now at Boise State University, where he does research on struggling readers.“Being literate has always meant the capacity to use a culture’s most powerful tools to create and communicate meanings,” he says. “If you’re not teaching with [technology], you’re not only not preparing the kids for the future, you’re not preparing them for the present moment.”Technology, such as the Internet and Web 2.0 tools, makes it easier for teachers to tap into students’ interests and personalize what they are reading, he says.For instance, during a unit about satire, Wilhelm had his students post jokes to a wiki. Afterward, the class read through the jokes and identified what made each one funny.“We were defining satire, pastiche, misdirection,” he says, and because it was in the context of funny jokes, the students were engaged.“Most of the technological [interventions] that I see are decontextualized,” he says, “but it’s only going to help [the student] comprehend better if [he or she] is inquiring about something [he or she] cares about.”Katie Van Sluys, a member of the Urbana, Ill.-based National Council of Teachers of English and an associate professor of literacy at DePaul University in Chicago, also believes that using technology to connect students with meaningful audiences and resources can promote important literacy skills.Using the Internet to go over the daily weather report with kindergartners, for example, or reading through current events with middle school students can engage children with authentic, personalized information, she says.And using technology also provides an opportunity to teach other kinds of literacies, such as digital and media literacy, says Van Sluys.“You have to be a savvy reader and consumer—perhaps even more so because of the types of information and the amount of information you can access,” she says. “You need to be able to say, ‘What does this mean for me? What does this mean for the world?’ That’s part of the reading curriculum.”Reading Products & ServicesAmerican Reading Co.Cambium Learning Group Inc.EarobicsMerit SoftwareRead Naturally Inc.Renaissance Learning Inc.Scholastic Inc.School Speciality Inc.Scientific Learning Corp.Waterford Institute‘Thoughtful’ and ‘Intentional’Internet resources can also help teachers in other content areas incorporate literacy lessons into their classrooms.For instance, Teachers’ Domain, an online repository of free media resources for teachers run by the Boston-based WGBH Educational Foundation, provides multimedia-rich science and social studies curricula infused with literacy lessons.“It’s really designed to give content teachers who do not necessarily know literacy strategies ... some simple guidelines on comprehension skills and building vocabulary,” says Carolyn Jacobs, the national accounts manager for Teachers’ Domain.The lessons include a glossary of terms, videos, interactive Flash activities, and text boxes for students to submit answers in.So far, there are about 15 lessons, with plans to create 25 more in 2011, says Jacobs.Technology can help “extend a teacher’s reach” says Gail Lovely, a former K-8 teacher who started her own company, Lovely and Associates, to help teachers integrate technology into curriculum. However, teachers need to be careful to integrate it thoughtfully and intentionally, she says.“My bias is that a caring adult will always read a book aloud better than a computer can,” she says. “We have to be thoughtful about where the technologies fit best.”Using VoiceThread, for instance—which allows users to create collaborative, multimedia slide shows with images, documents, and videos—is an innovative Web resource that can be used in a thoughtful way, says Lovely. And another Web resource, Storybird, allows students to tap into a library of illustrations to create digital books, says Lovely.