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pjking

Education Update:Leveraging Technology to Improve Literacy:Leveraging Technology to Imp... - 3 views

www.ascd.org/...ology-to-Improve-Literacy.aspx

literacy technology digital literacy

shared by pjking on 12 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • In a 2006 article in the Handbook of Writing Research, "The Effects of New Technologies on Writing and Writing Processes," he explains that his series of three studies of 9- and 10-year-olds with severe spelling problems showed that these students' legible words increased from 55 to 85 percent, and their correctly spelled words rose from 42 to 75 percent.
  • In developing the program, Greig worked with University of Oregon researcher and pioneer in computer-supported studying Lynne Anderson-Inman to test its effectiveness with kindergarten students. Using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills test, Greig tested the group of students every two weeks on pre-reading and early reading skills, such as naming letters, phonemic awareness, and ease of decoding nonsense words accurately. After six weeks of using Reading Buddies, Greig says, "We saw kids who had been operating at the 10th and 20th percentiles moving up to the 40th and 50th percentiles." At the end of the 10-week pilot, Grieg says, "[Students] were at or above the test's benchmark."
  • The Reading Buddies program promotes the school's whole child approach, Greig says, by encouraging multiple modalities—such as visuals, tracing letters, auditory, and songs—and requiring students to discuss the material with parents or an adult family member in the home.
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  • Greig found that, for these students, the program's benefits included higher test scores as well as increased comprehension and confidence. "These were kids who, in a large or small group, would just as soon not give answers—they'd be in the back making trouble," Greig notes. "In two weeks, they were the kids raising their hands and saying, 'I know that.'"
  • The technology "builds those auditory and language skills" of students, allowing them, generally, to be more receptive to learning because typically 80 percent of the instructional day relies on auditory information, Egli says. "They're better able to make use of classroom instruction because they can understand the language of the instructor better," she explains.
  • Recently, the Bridges Academy also started using Reading Assistant, a program that uses speech recognition technology to help students improve their reading fluency. At the high school level, students first listen to the computer read a passage from a novel. Using a headset with microphone, students then read the same passage aloud, and the program records the exercise. If a student stumbles on a word, the program automatically prompts with a correct pronunciation. Teachers use the data collected by the Reading Assistant software to see how many words students correctly read per minute and which words they struggled with. Teachers use this data to inform classroom instruction.
  • Additional Resources Dynarski, M., Agodini, R.., Heaviside, S., Novak, T., Carey, N., Campuzano, L., et al. (2007). Effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products: Findings from the first student cohort. Retrieved August 12, 2008, from U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences Web site: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20074005.pdf.
samahmed

Education Week: Classroom-Tested Tech Tools Used to Boost Literacy - 3 views

www.edweek.org/...02literacy.h04.html

digital literacy literacy technology education reading writing fluency

shared by samahmed on 13 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Sullivan also uses audio recorders to have student-teachers read sets of vocabulary words, then she creates matching PowerPoint presentations with the words and burns them onto DVDs for the students to take home and listen to.
  • “New technologies are making amazing inroads into helping students overcome some of the challenges that have prevented people from keeping up with reading,” says Frey. “The technology is just a tool that is engaging and allows [students] to do the instant playback.”
  • “The last two years I really looked at the data to see how the kids were doing using all of this technology, and in both the past two years, I ended the year with no children below grade level in reading,” she says. “I do think that technology has a very large part in that.”
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  • “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.
  • 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.
  • The lessons include a glossary of terms, videos, interactive Flash activities, and text boxes for students to submit answers in.
  • samahmed on 13 Aug 14
     
    A unique and more "literal" take on how technology helps improve literacy in today's students.
Taylor Gruszka

Can social networking boost literacy skills? - 2 views

www.teachers.ab.ca/...ing-boost-literacy-skills.aspx

blog Blogging definition vocabulary DGL socialmedia reading social literacy

shared by Taylor Gruszka on 13 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Let’s explore these findings in more depth. Teenagers may not be reading books, but they are clearly interested in social networking. So the question becomes whether social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube are harming students or helping them. Social networking sites, which began as social communities, are becoming increasingly important. Barack Obama, for example, used such sites to great advantage during his successful campaign to become United States president. But do social networking sites have any educational benefits? Aside from helping students to make new friends, do social networking sites facilitate learning? The answer seems to be that they do. The National Literacy Trust found that social networking sites and blogs help students to develop more positive attitudes toward writing and to become more confident in their writing abilities. According to one of the studies, 49 per cent of young people believe that writing is “boring.” However, students who use technology-based texts such as blogs have more positive attitudes toward writing. Whereas 60 per cent of bloggers say that they enjoy writing, only 40 per cent of non-bloggers find writing enjoyable.
pjking

Technology helps make language click for students - The Denver Post - 2 views

www.denverpost.com/...ci_17860900

shared by pjking on 12 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • just like generations of students before them. But here, they're just as likely to find their subject matter on the Internet as the printed page, as likely to tap compositions and critiques into a netbook — or, in one student's case, an iPhone — as commit them by pencil to a notebook.
  • "They know that reading online or reading a textbook is part of their lives," Roberts says. "I don't think they see it as either this or that. I think they're incorporating both."
  • Our culture has been moving toward prizing efficiency over taking time to do things," Kleinfeld says, "and we've been moving in that direction for decades." As state standards and national policies embrace the relationship between technology and language, specific skills have emerged as central to new literacies.
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  • And while it may not carry the gravitas of Dostoevsky, it all adds up: Experts figure that kids today read and write even more than previous generations. And they do so in a broader and more complex environment — though not always in academic ways.
  • "If we don't start helping kids to slow down and think, they could get overwhelmed and not read deeply at all," says Julie Coiro, an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island who specializes in new literacies and online reading comprehension. "I think there should be very much a conscious, strategic moving back and forth between rapid locating (of information) and deep reading."
  • "The Internet offers incredible opportunities to build high-level, deep thinkers if we provide the instruction that's needed."
  • Meanwhile, the students click their way to a site called ThisIBelieve.org, a collection of personal essays. Together, they read a 16-year-old's account of his parents' worries about the country's future, exploring his use of humor as he makes the case that tomorrow will be a better day.
  • Still, for some who didn't grow up with this generation of technology, the concept can trigger what Knobel calls a "false memory" of deeper engagement with the written word. "If you choose to see (new literacies) as dumbing down, you're going to see lots of evidence of that," Knobel says. "But if you choose to see it as something new and opening up all sorts of opportunities for young people to really think about media, how truth itself is often up for grabs, then there are all sorts of ways of understanding it."
  • Vicki Collet, a literacy facilitator for the Poudre School District in Larimer County, recently met with a group of middle-school teachers and posed a question: Are kids reading as much as they used to? The unanimous response: More.
  • "Anyone can look at it and comment on it, so we can improve our writing," explains Ally Bormann, 12. "On one of my paragraphs, my classmate said, 'Your hook is great, but you might want to change your thesis.' That made it a lot better. And over the year, you can really see your progress."
  • Kennedy loves the range of digital tools that teachers can use to advance literacy — the Web, its blogs, the seemingly boundless information superhighway. And yet, she begins the class by asking kids a calculated question: What's the strongest reading and writing tool you have with you? "Our brain!" comes the response. "What impresses me," Kennedy says later, "is when students go to a website that the teacher has made available and think deeply. Otherwise, it's just a dog-and-pony show."
  • pjking on 12 Aug 14
     
    Preston A great link that shows some compelling points about literacy and the flow of technology.
wcfrazier1230

Facebook 'can help to improve writing skills' - Wales Online - 3 views

www.walesonline.co.uk/...n-help-improve-writing-2064532

Blogging

shared by wcfrazier1230 on 12 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • A study conducted by the National Literacy Trust found that children’s confidence in their writing abilities were boosted by writing blogs and using social networking sites.
  • It found that 57% of youngsters who kept blogs said they liked writing compared to 40% of children who did not do so.
  • Dr Sangeet Bhullar is executive director of Wise Kids, a Newport-based non-profit organisation promoting safe and positive internet usage among young people. She believes it is important that educators and parents recognise the importance of blogs and social networking sites in both developing children’s writing skills and their knowledge about safe internet usage.
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  • Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, said: “The digital age often gets a bad press but the findings of this report demonstrate that social networking sites and blogs are linked to young people’s more positive attitudes to writing.”
  • wcfrazier1230 on 12 Aug 14
     
    Research on how blogging encourages students to write.
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