Skip to main content

Home/ Team A / Week 2 : Pro-Tech!/ Group items tagged word

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
seabreezy

Education Week: Classroom-Tested Tech Tools Used to Boost Literacy - 0 views

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

technology literacy education adolescent learning improves increase skills digital literacy digital fluency web2.0 television

shared by seabreezy on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • For instance, in her classroom, Sullivan uses photos licensed under creative commons, an alternative to copyright that allows varying degrees of sharing, as a jumping-off point to start a conversation with her students. “It gives them a mental image to connect to,” she says, “a familiar, relatable scene so we can discuss what we see in the photo as a class and build the vocabulary.” Then the students can transition into a writing exercise, says Sullivan. 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
  • seabreezy on 14 May 14
     
    "For instance, in her classroom, Sullivan uses photos licensed under creative commons, an alternative to copyright that allows varying degrees of sharing, as a jumping-off point to start a conversation with her students. "It gives them a mental image to connect to," she says, "a familiar, relatable scene so we can discuss what we see in the photo as a class and build the vocabulary." Then the students can transition into a writing exercise, says Sullivan. 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"
Laidy Zabala-Jordan

Using Technology To Increase Literacy Skills - 0 views

ttac.odu.edu/litcy.html

technology literacy

shared by Laidy Zabala-Jordan on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • There is increasing evidence that the use of computer technology can positively effect the acquisiti
  • on of literacy skills in students of all abilities and ages. Using technology to enhance reading and writing instruction can make learning activities more fun and help to create a lifelong love of reading. Through the use of special software programs, children with special needs can be exposed to literacy without being directly taught through task-oriented lessons. Computer-aided reading and writing activities can help students to develop a broad appreciation for and understanding of literacy.
  • 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. Teachers are better able to individualize reading instruction by having the ability to construct customized reading materials. Children with visual impairments and visual processing difficulties can have larger sized text and extra spacing between words. Text can be repeated as often as necessary and the rate or pace of speech can be adjusted for students with auditory processing difficulties. The use of graphics, sound, and animation can help to motivate and encourage children to complete reading tasks more successfully.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 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. Good writing programs include features such as text-to-speech with male and female voices, the ability to enlarge text, different font choices, the use of color coding and highlighting, spell checkers and grammar and punctuation dictionaries.
  • Using technology to enhance reading and writing instruction can be an excellent way to stimulate your students to develop literacy skills and have fun in the process
  • Laidy Zabala-Jordan on 14 May 14
     
    Increase of literacy skills in tech
Laidy Zabala-Jordan

Education Update:Leveraging Technology to Improve Literacy:Leveraging Technology to Imp... - 0 views

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

technology education improves increase digital literacy

shared by Laidy Zabala-Jordan on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • Technology is changing literacy, claim Web 2.0 advocates, university researchers, edgy librarians, pundits of the blogosphere, and the media. The visual is ascendant, text is secondary—and linearity? Forget about it. Web surfers flip from one information wave to another, gathering and synthesizing. Beginning, middle, and end are up for grabs.
  • In the classroom, some educators are attempting to harness the power of technology to increase literacy rates for struggling students, but does using technology really make a difference? An initial assessment of the research on the current generation of technology used to aid literacy yields interesting, if somewhat lackluster, results.
  • According to Kamil, however, that's not necessarily a bad thing: "The important aspect, from my perspective, is that these were classroom programs that replaced about 10 percent of instructional time. What that means is that since there was no difference, the software programs were as good as the teacher." Such findings, Kamil explains, could signify a shift from teachers using technology as merely a supplement to using it as the means of instruction.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Now, Kamil notes, newer and better technology is coming out all the time to make the option of classroom technology even stronger, especially for struggling readers and writers. He points to advances in speech recognition technology, such as Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh's research-based Reading Tutor project or programs such as Pearson's Quick Reads, as examples of tools that can improve students' reading fluency.
  • Despite the lack of data showing that technology has a tremendous effect in the classroom, teachers have found that using technology may help address students' specific learning needs. Charles MacArthur, a special education professor at the University of Delaware, explains that students who have learning disabilities, including dyslexia, typically need help with transcription processes to produce text, spell, and punctuate correctly. However, any students having trouble with writing fluency can benefit from teachers integrating technology into the classroom. And sometimes tried-and-true technology works the best.
  • "The only tool that has enough research behind it is plain, old word processing," MacArthur says. "Students with writing difficulties are able to produce a text that looks good, and they can go back and fix things without introducing new mistakes."
  • Carol Greig, a former technology coach, won the International Reading Association's 2008 Presidential Award for Reading and Technology for her Reading Buddies program, which uses MP3 players to increase the literacy skills of beginning readers
  • 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."
  • auditory processing problems or dyslexia, schools are using various computer technologies to make students more aware of the sounds of words when others speak or when students themselves read aloud.
  • At Howard Elementary, teachers also use technology to assess students' individual comprehension and written work.
  • The Reading Buddies program
  • Pointing to the school's use of the FastForWord Language and FastForWord Literacy programs, Egli explains that computer technology can slow down a word's "sound signature" so that students become more aware of the phonemes that make up that word. For example, students who reverse the "b" and the "d" may do so because of auditory problems distinguishing those two phonemes, which are extremely brief compared to a typical vowel sound. To help retrain the brain to note the distinction between the two sounds, teachers highlight the differences by slowing down and amplifying the sounds slightly. Students then focus on them through computer activities. Typically, it takes many repetitions of the exercises to retrain the brain.
  • 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
  • "They're better able to make use of classroom instruction because they can understand the language of the instructor better,"
  • Recently, the Bridges Academy also started using Reading Assistant, a program that uses speech recognition technology to help students improve their reading fluency.
  • using technology alone is not the answer to improving literacy, but the tools help teachers move students toward their individual learning goals. "Using some of the technologies we have now, we can do some things that many of us hoped to achieve for a lot of our special-needs kids—but at a much more efficient rate
seabreezy

Adolescent Literacy: What's Technology Got to Do With It? | Adolescent Literacy Topics ... - 1 views

www.adlit.org/35792

technology literacy education adolescent increase skills debate digital literacy

shared by seabreezy on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • How can technology support learners? Electronic references such as dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias. Definitions, translations, and explanations are now a click away. Identify dictionaries and other online tools to use in the program, teach their use, and expect students to use them to develop their vocabulary skills. Look for tools with text to speech to read the word, read the definitions, and support word study. If classrooms are not equipped with Internet-ready computers, consider purchasing handheld dictionaries with many of the same features and encourage students to get their own and use them. Have students sign up for a word of the day e-mail or text message to receive on their own cell or smart phones. Video supports, how-to diagrams and animated illustrations. Visuals are a fantastic tool for building background knowledge, especially for ELL learners. Bookmark sites such as www.HowStuffWorks.com with content specific illustrations to help learners grasp sequences, interactions, and relationships. Use virtual manipulatives and interactive math dictionaries such as the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives and The Math Forum@Drexel University to demonstrate concepts and vocabulary.
  • Digital text. Convert any scanned reading material into digital text with a scanner that has optical character recognition. This allows it to be read aloud by text to speech software and also customized to meet visual needs (enlarged font, shaded background, etc.). Books are increasingly available for purchase as digital books through online booksellers and free ebooks are available at Project Gutenberg University of Virginia library. For learners with a documented visual and print disability, a subscription is available to the vast online repositories of digital books at Bookshare.org and Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic.
  • Text-to-speech (TTS) software with electronic references. Providing a read aloud through TTS supports learners' comprehension and vocabulary. Many students with dyslexia have better listening than reading comprehension. TTS programs, especially those with highlighting as the text is read provides a model of fluent reading, supports vocabulary development, and frees attention for annotation and active comprehension.
  • seabreezy on 14 May 14
     
    "Technology can be a tremendous benefit to differentiating instruction and supporting learners' success with literacy tasks in career training. Used strategically, technology tools can support individualized needs while supporting instruction of a shared, core curriculum. Students with LD will most likely not be prepared to use many mainstream tools as learning supports, however, as "far too few" K-12 students with LD are using technology in the classroom.4 They will need explicit instruction and guided practice to become proficient."
seabreezy

Digital Word Walls and Vocabulary Learning: The Use of iPods to Facilitate Vocabulary I... - 0 views

www.academia.edu/..._Instruction_with_ESL_Students

learning instruction esl word academia

shared by seabreezy on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • seabreezy on 14 May 14
     
    Digital Word Walls and Vocabulary Learning: The Use of iPods to Facilitate Vocabulary Instruction with ESL Students. Today's advances in technology have provided us with a variety of useful tools that can supplement andenrich the ways in which vocabulary is taught and learned. One of the latest trends involves the use ofmobile devices. This technology is expected to become a mainstream addition to classroom practices inthe immediate future (Johnson, Levine, Smith, & Stone, 2010). . Mobile devices include digital tools thatare portable, provide Internet connectivity, promote social interactions, and expand data collectioncapabilities. Trifanova, Knapp, Ronchetti, and Gamper (2004) define mobile devices as "...any device thatis small, autonomous and unobtrusive enough to accompany us in every moment" (p. 3). Additionally,Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula, & Sharples (2004) suggest that mobile technologies provide immediatefeedback, authentic experiences, and availability of information in a mobile environment that allows forcollaboration to support lifelong learning
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page