New Literacies & Final Project Review & Chat

What is the new literacies perspective?

New Literacies, according to Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and Cammack, are "the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives. These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to others" (2004, p.1576). New Literacies are deictic, or always changing, they are are needed within the workforce, and they are used in the social context. Richardson also points out that new literacies also include critical literacies. In chapter ten of his book, he states that "consumers of the Web content need to be editors as well as readers" (2010, p.148).

What are its implications for your current or future teaching?

Richardson states that "teachers need to think of themselves more as coaches who model the skills that students need to be successful and motivate them to strive for excellence" (2010, p.155).

Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and Cammack provide multiple examples of ways to include new literacies within the classroom. These include:

• using a search engine effectively to locate information;

• evaluating the accuracy and utility of information that is located on a webpage in relation to one’s purpose;

• using a word processor effectively, including using functions such as checking spelling accuracy, inserting graphics, and formatting text;

• participating effectively in bulletin board or listserv discussions to get needed information;

• knowing how to use e-mail to communicate effectively; and

• inferring correctly the information that may be found at a hyperlink on a webpage. (2004, p.1590)

Along with suggestions from Richardson and Leu and colleagues, I feel that Web 2.0 tools, if used for educational purposes, can be very beneficial and motivating for students to use in school. I've reviewed and used many new Web 2.0 tools this semester, including blogs, wikis, wordles, glogster, prezi, and digital stories.

Virtual showcase

During the final project review and chat, Annie and I set up a chat-with-me site where many of our classmates connected with us. We had a few questions about the Web 2.0 tools that we used and their classroom applications. Greg said that he wants to use one of them with his Kindergartners. I joined Kallie's chat after reviewing her final project. We discussed the book "The Outsiders". She said that she has seen it used with 7th grade students and up, but because it covers the topic of tolerance and providing students with voice, she felt like it could be used with students in younger grades too. I felt like Shanna and Sarah's blog will definitely be a good resource to have in the future when I need information about certain disabilities. I also feel like Andrea's blog about "Road to Reading" will also be a great resource to have in the future, when reminding myself of the 5 steps or while teaching others about the "Road to Reading" program. Overall, the review session went well and everyone had a lot of great projects to share!

Skype Date

On Sunday, I had a skype date with Shanna! We discussed how the Leu and colleagues reading had multiple definitions for New Literacies. For example, Leu and colleagues state that "new literacies are seen as new social practices that emerge with new technologies. Some see new literacies as important new strategies and dispositions required by the Internet that re essential for online reading comprehension, learning, and communication (Leu et al., 2007, p.6). New Literacies are also viewed as "deictic; they regularly change as defining technologies change" and lastly, they were viewed as "multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted" (Leu et al., 2007, p.7). New Literacies has an impact on the definition of reading because specific skills are needed for online reading versus offline reading. For example, navigating information from a website, analyzing important information, and synthesizing information. We said that New Literacies will have an impact on our teaching of Language Arts because we will show our students how there is more than one way to be literate. We want our students to work together and learn from each other's strengths to develop their literacies. Shanna and I also discussed the Richardson chapters, in which he states that "consumers of web content need to be editors as well as readers" (2010, p.148). We feel that it will be very important for us to teach our students how to critically analyze web based information as they explore and learn from the Web. We feel that skype is a great New Literacies tool to use with students. It could be used to connect to other classrooms, experts, authors, pen pals, and could be used to conduct interviews and complete projects. I felt that this was a fun and easy assignment to complete. I have also been using Skype for over 3 years now, so using this web tool was not a problem. I liked having to use skype for a school assignment because I've only ever used it to communicate with family and friends. When I first got my webcam, the technicalities of downloading the webcam software and adjusting its settings were a bit of an issue, so I would suggest that teachers spend some time with Skype before introducing it to their students in a classroom setting.

Making my Glog

I decided to make a Glog for this weeks posting on classroom web pages/sites. It ended up being really fun!! Classroom websites that I reviewed included sites from A.F. Palmer Elementary School, which is where I went as a child, and a website created by my host teachers from French Road Elementary School in Brighton, NY. I tried to find a classroom website for my second placement at School #7 in the Rochester City School District but could not find one. I described the websites for A.F. Palmer on my Glog so I will include some of my findings the FRES site here. It included two of the three elements that Baker says makes up many classroom web pages today: newsletters, external links, and various supports for publishing (2007). It had many different pages with links to additional resources, monthly newsletter, and pages for each subject with a description of what would be covered throughout the year. There was even a link to "Puzzles" but none were listed at the time. I feel that all of the classroom web pages that I looked need to be updated and revised so that students can use them as a collaborative workspace. Teachers, especially teachers with older children, should allow students to take part in the editing process of the website. Web sites should also feature information and resources based off of the information that students are learning on a daily basis. Baker states that "Classroom web sites can neatly fit with classroom instruction and likely facilitate the current curriculum" (2007, p. 57). Schools provide teachers with a space on the web to be as creative as they please. I hope that more teachers take advantage of this space and make it spot where their students can go to, inside and outside the classroom, to collaborate, explore, and continue to learn.

Glogster

 Great collection of Web 2.0 tools!!

Visual Literacies

After reading Richardson's chapter about Flickr, I decided to create a Flickr account to see what all the excitement was about. I also decided to create my own Wordle (posted below). However, before I even got on the computer to make a Wordle, I asked a co-worker (who is an IT graduate student at SU) if she knew what they were. After we looked at the Website for Wordle, we realized that a Wordle of Syracuse University's School of Education was printed, framed, and is hanging in the basement of Huntington Hall!

Anyways, what I noticed about the genre of "visual literacies", from the readings and from my explorations of the Web, include uses of digital images, photographs, authentic documents, collages, paintings, posters, ads, comics, newspaper headlines, etc. According to Long, these types of materials are chosen by teachers to "Touch the students emotionally as well as cognitively" (2008, p. 507).

Flickr, which is "social software where the contributors interact and share and learn from each other in creative and interesting ways" has many applications for classroom use (Richardson, 2011, p. 102). Teachers can use Flickr in their classrooms to create presentations and slide shows; share daily events or highlights with parents, community members, and colleagues; create a "photo stream" of field trips, classroom guests, special projects, etc.; publish student work; teach about social software, and teach geography by integrating with Google Earth. Something as simple as historic pictures were used in Long's article to motivate students and get them involved in a unit of study, driven by the "full circling" approach. McVicker's article focused on using comic strips to "motivate disengaged readers, offering an ingenious hook to reading that can ultimately bridge their literacy interests to more conventional text structures" (2007, p. 86). Comic strips were used to teach students comprehension strategies and print concepts, such as using "picture clues, context clues, phonics cues, basic sight words, main-ideas practice, and sequencing skills" (McVicker, 2007, p. 88).

Literacies involved in "visual literacies" allow for the definition of literacy to be "broadened to include literacy skills necessary for individuals, groups, and societies to access the best information in the shortest time and to identify and solve the most important problems and then communicate this information" (McVicker, 2007, p. 85). Therefore, literacies include reading both text and visuals for understanding and responding in a way that shows your understanding. For example, looking at a historic picture, reading about that time period, and writing a story as if you lived during that period. If for example, students were creating a Wordle, they would have to type up a piece of their writing and paste it into the Wordle Website. This would include the writing literacies, computer literacies, and website navigation literacies.

Visual literacy technology has great potential to transform literacy teaching and learning. Visual literacy is "motivating for young readers to become recreational readers, enabling them to expand their vocabulary knowledge, to engage their imaginations, and to inspire a love of reading" (McVicker, 2007, p. 86). Teachers should expose students to visual literacies early and often because of their growing use in today's world.

My Wordle!! It'sBased off of Elizabeth's email to our class about this weeks assignments. Just click on it to see the enlarged version of it!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Internet Project, Internet Workshop, Internet Inquiry, WebQuests...

While subbing today I finished reading about all the wonderful ways to incorporate technology into classrooms. I go back over my sub plans, which are based off of students completion of multiple worksheets, and try to envision how the Web based technologies that I just read about could be incorporated into this 7th and 8th grade English teachers lessons (due to the fact that my morning students were bored out of their mind with the worksheets). So here is what I took from the readings and also how I would use them in my own classroom...

Leu, Leu, and Coiro state that "It is important to understand that nearly every instructional activity you currently use in your classroom may also be used with the Internet" (2004, p. 106). This quote becomes more realistic to me with each new Web tool that I learn about. After I completed the assigned readings, I realized that this could be done with an activity as simple as the simplest Internet Workshop or as in depth as a year long Internet Inquiry with students from around the world. I really liked the concept of Internet Workshop because it seems as simple as finding computers with Internet access for your students to use (and I'm all about simplicity!). Anyways, one key aspect of this is bookmarking. Since I have already created a Delicious account, I could bookmark good sites that are related to the content of the unit. Literacy is involved with Internet Workshop because students are navigating through a website, completing an activity page (which requires students to answer OPEN ENDED questions), and sharing their discoveries and asking questions as a whole group at the end of the week or unit.

A second Web technology discussed in Leu, Leu, and Cairo's book was Internet Project. This type of technology involves "students and teachers communicating extensively about the topic that both classes are exploring" (2004, p. 116). In other words, students are able to compose a message and send it to another class of students, who read and compose their own message and send it back. The message can be about anything but Leu, Leu, and Cairo give the example of using this technology to share a morning message , which includes what students are doing in class and important events taking place. I like the idea of having a separate email account for this and giving a student the job of "Email Assistant". By switching jobs each week, every student would be able to "develop the new literacies of email" (Leu, Leu, and Cairo, 2004, p. 118). I research a few Internet Projects and found one that I thought was really fun and creative for students in primary grades to try out. The website is called Monster Exchange and it is designed to encourage reading and writing skills while integrating technology into the classroom.

 A student ends up drawing a monster and writing a description, emailing the description to a student from a different location, who then reads the description and tries to draw the same monster. The process enhances reading comprehension and writing skills along with computer literacies. Leu, Leu, and Coiro discuss a specific type of Internet Project called a Spontaneous Project. Spontaneous Projects are posted to the Internet by the teacher, who describes unit of study or a project that his or her class is working on. The teacher asks other teachers if they want to complete the same project so that their students can share results. Oz Projects is an example of a site where teachers can go to get their classes involved in such projects. Using an already existing Web tool is also what they suggest in the video clips on CTELL's website from the University of Connecticut. 

A third Web. 2.0 tool that Leu, Leu, and Coiro discussed is Internet Inquiry which requires students to 1) Develop a question, 2) Search for information online, 3)Evaluate the information they find, 4) Compose an answer/presentation to their question, and 5) Share the answer with others (2004, p. 123). Literacy is also involved with this type of technology because students are provided with the opportunity to read, evaluate, write, and discuss information within content areas.

The last tool that I learned about from Leu, Leu, and Coiro's chapter was WebQuests. I found that a useful website for finding quality WebQuests was WebQuest.org. This site provides you with sample WebQuests from grades K-12 and also a list of picture books based on the topic of your search. WebQuests usually include an introduction, a task definition, a description of the process, information resources, guidance in organizing the information, and a concluding activity. Sox and Rubinstein-Avila promote the use of WebQuests in their article "WebQuests for English-Language Learners: Essential Elements for Design", by stating that "Because of their flexibility, we contend that WebQuests have great potential for accommodating diverse learners-especially ELLs- while creating academically challenging activities that encourage the development of academic language development, Internet Inquiry, and critical and higher order reasoning" (2009, p. 39). Sox and Rubinstein-Avila suggest that teachers modify their WebQuests to better meet the needs of the diverse learners in their classrooms. For example; keep sentences short with simple tenses and direct commands; use pictures to accompany text; and provide links to key word definitions. Sox and Rubinstein-Avila provide tips for how teachers should make WebQuests and alter already made WebQuests; which include links, visual elements, clear instructions, and a connection to content standards. They state that "one of the greatest strengths of the WebQuest is that it can scaffold Internet searches for students, rendering their searches more efficient and effective" (2009, p. 47). Skylar, Higgins, and Boone also support the use of WebQuests in classrooms in their article, "Strategies for Adapting WebQuests for Students With Learning Disabilities", "Research suggests that students with disabilities who use technology are more highly motivated and complete more assignments when using the technology" (2007, p. 22). They also list several tips for creating WebQuests for students with LD; use study guides, create advanced organizers, use graphic organizers, develop a partial outline, provide a list of web sites, provide a list of vocabulary words and definitions, develop a hypertext list of questions, and create a study guide with exact instructions. I would definitely use Webquests in my own classroom and look to the Internet to find one relevant to the topic I am teaching. However, I would modify the WebQuest to meet the needs of my individual students. "Webquests provide a structured and guided learning activity for students to use as they conduct research in an online environment" (2007, 27).

PODCASTS and DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Podcasts are a very new concept to me. I have heard of them but have never done any further research on them. After reading chapter 8 from Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I began my search to get a better idea of what they are and how they can be used in classrooms. I started with one of his suggestions, the Radio Willow Web at Willowdale Elementary School in Nebraska. Once on the site, I was surprised to find that many teachers from each grade level contribute Podcasts!!! I feel like its usually hard to get all teachers on board with a new technology but teachers at Willowdale are really taking initiative and each contributing to their site. Teachers at Willowdale allow students to host the shows, which all have a different topic based on what the students are learning about. I listed to a podcast about matter, which was created by a fifth grade class. A podcast like this one is a great example of what can be done with students in school to motivate them. I love the idea of connecting the podcasts to the schools webpage and allowing parents and community members stay tuned in to what students are doing in school. Richardson says "podcasting is one of those technologies that can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be" (2010, p. 117). I feel that this is important to remember when getting involved with technology, such as podcasts, because the initial thought of having to use them may be overwhelming, especially on top of state curriculum requirements. I believe that the motivation factor that podcasts can bring to student learning would overall have very positive results.  

Podcasts can be used in any grade and can be based on any content area. Richardson gives us many examples of how Podcasts can be used in different subject areas (2010, p. 117):

• Social Studies: Oral histories, interviews, or reenactments
• Science: Narrate labs, dissections, or experiments
• Music: Weekly recitals, special events

Teachers can also use Podcasts to share daily lessons with absent students! The possibilities seem endless!!

I really liked the study done by Figg and McCartney about digital storytelling. I am a hands-on learner and like to express my work in a creative manner, making digital storytelling right up my alley. Not only did their study use a Web 2.0 technology, it also shows how this way of learning positively impacts children. Their study also makes the connection between technology and literacy in a way that children made improvements in their writing and technical skills. In their article, Figg and McCartney state, "Digital storytelling was selected as the activity that would promote the development of writing and language skills while allowing individual expression and creativity...(2010, p. 41). Digital storytelling was used to motivate students, through the use of computer technology, and also to provide students with real-world skills. The model that is provided within the article also "suggests that video creation skills can be taughtin a sequence that supports the writing process" (Figg and McCartney, 2010, p. 42). This pyramid shaped model takes you from a descriptive digital story, which is the first and simplest, to an interactive digital story, which is the most difficult story to create. The process of making digital stories includes many literacy processes, such as taking digital pictures, writing scripts with dialogs, interviewing family members, researching topics, and discussing the process with peers and teachers. Figg and McCartney included a statement from one of the researchers; "They are writing on a daily basis and don't even know it!"  (2010, p. 54). Along with the improvement of student writing skills, this study also shows a greater awareness of future educational opportunities for students.      

                                                        

WIKIS

Is Wikipedia reliable and should it be used in the classroom?

I started this blog with a question about Wikipedia because it is heavily debated whether or not teachers should allow students to use Wikipedia to research for classroom projects. Will Richardson would argue for the use of Wikipedia in classroom according to chapter 4 of his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. In this chapter on wikis, he states, "Wikipedia is the poster child for the collaborative construction of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates" (Richardson, 2010, p. 57). Although Wikipedia can be seen as an unedited and unreliable source, Richardson states that, "there are vastly more editors who want to make it right than those who want to make it wrong" (2010, p. 56). I found it interesting how a UB professor actually tested Wikipedia's editors by placing errors throughout different pages and seeing how long it took for the errors to be corrected. The results were only a few hours, which proves that people who read and edit Wikipedia pages have a critical eye for erroneously placed information.

Richardson also urges teachers to try using wikis in their classroom and provides readers with multiple uses and advantages of wikis. Teachers can create Web-based wiki classroom sites that are password protected. This allows anyone with Internet access to read their wiki but only students within the class can edit the site. This eliminates the concern of outsiders vandalizing or erasing valuable content. Using a collaborative site teaches students how to publish content, how to use collaborative skills, how to negotiate with others, and it allows students to begin teaching each other. Two examples that Richardson gives about how to use wikis in the classroom are 1) creating a collaborative classroom text and 2) having students create or edit book entries (2010).

Editing a post on Wikipedia is also a way to introduce a class and get them excited about researching and/or using wikis. This is what Bud Hunt, co-author of "New Voices", did with his tenth grade students. They were learning about subcultures and Hunt used Wikipedia to research the term. As a result of his research, his class found the definition inadequate and so decided to collaboratively revise it (Hunt & Hunt, 2006). A wiki allowed for his class to publish their work in a meaningful way for a real life audience to read.

The wiki that I decided to research was mentioned in Richardson's chapter. The Flat Classroom project wiki was created by two classroom, one teacher from Georgia and one from Bangladesh. This wiki allows students in their classrooms to connect to each other and to students from different countries around the world. The site includes student narratives, essays, audio, video, and captions of the Flat Classroom Conferences, where students from different countries were brought in to meet face to face. The goal of Flat Classroom is stated on their wiki: Flat Classroom™ Projects

Goal: To create and maintain best global collaborative projects and collaborative work spaces for students and educators in and serving K-12 around the world while building bridges between Students, Educators, trainee teachers and Post Secondary Education Institutions.

Another benefit of wikis, that was not mentioned in the readings, is that because they are Web-based and allow students to navigate sites, they will better prepare high school students for the Web-based curriculum's they will face in college. As I looked at different wikis, it seemed to me that their layout is similar to college sites such as Blackboard or WebMail. If students have experience using wikis and navigating the Web, adjusting to a Web-based colleges will be that much easier.

A wiki that I have personally used is PBwiki. It was used for a college class where my classmates and I would post questions about a reading and then critique each others posts. We also published final projects on the site, which meant that we could view all the work and use each others ideas to benefit our own projects. However, we did not use the wiki to make a collaborative piece, which I would have liked more than the assignments we were given. My classmates and I also experienced the negative effects of the site when multiple users were editing. Wheeler, Yeomans, and Wheeler included a section on this in their article "The Good, the Bad and the Wiki". They state, "When students attempted to add to shared pages there was occasional conflict, and the software was unable to cope with the simultaneous posting" (2008, p. 992). The result of multi-use posting was one person got to stay on the site and keep their work while the other lost their work. It was very frustrating for some of my classmates but we quickly learned to draft our posts in a Word document and copy the text into the wiki.

Facebook in the classroom?!?!

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking

It was interesting that each of the readings for this weeks class featured different types of Web. 2.0 technologies, all based on social bookmarking and social networking. Christine Greenhow's article "Social Scholarship: Applying Social Networking Technologies to Research Practices" focused alot on a social bookmarking or "social bibliography" (as she called them) site called Diigo. I have never heard about Diigo before and so it was interesting to learn about the features of Diigo and how to apply them in the classroom. Diigo allows readers to highlight important text and even leave "Post-it" notes for private or public viewing. Teachers could use Diigo in their classrooms in a whole group or individual setting to research specific topics of interest.

From reading Will Richardson's book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms", I learned alot about a social "microblogging" webiste called Twitter. Twitter allows people to follow people and read their "updates" as to where they are, what their doing, their interests, and anything else people like to write about. Richardson's chapter 9 went into more details about a social networking site called Facebook. In his book, Richardson writes, "Learning has traditionally assumed a winner-take-all competitive form rather than a cooperative form. One cooperates in a classroom only if it maximizes narrow self-interest. Networked learning, in contrast, is commiteted to a vision of the social that stresses cooperation, interactivity, mutual benefit, and social engagement" (p. 133). Networks like Myspace and Facebook are becoming more and more popular with students outside of school, which is why teachers should try to incorporate aspects of them within their own classrooms. If teachers do choose to use Facebook, for example, they can create a private group that only their class could view.

Using technology in the classroom allows students to have access to information that was once limited by books, magazines, and printed texts. It allows students to be creative and it may even motivate students by allowing them to complete assignments which showcase their strengths and skills. Web 2.0 technologies also promote literacy practice in every aspect of their use. Students have to use their literacies to navigate the web, to follow sites, to research topics, to share thoughts and "tweets", to leave "Post-its" on important text, and to simply communicate and colaborate on the Web.

This week I used Facebook and tried to find educational uses of Facebook. I used Facebook to form groups with my classmates to discuss assignments and also to communicate with people who I do not get to see everyday. I am interested in knowing other educational uses of Facebook because as of now, I mainly use it as a way to stay in touch with friends and family and not for educational purposes.

Reflection for blogs

For the past week, I have followed Ree Drummond's blog, "The Pioneer Woman". At first, this site was very confusing to me because of the complexity of the pages. However, the more time I spent looking at the pages, the more comfortable I became with the setup of her blog and the multiple pages and headlines it included. Ree has 7 pages with two or three columns on each page. After reading Lisa Zawilinski's article, I found out that this set up, of multiple pages and two to three columns, is a typical blog set up. I was brought to Ree's blog because it was on Time Magazine's list of Best Blogs for 2009. I remained interested in it because Ree is an author, she is a mother of four children who she homeschools, she lives in the country and owns a farm, she cooks, and she is a photographer. Ree shares each of the activities, plus many more, in great detail and fun pictures on her blog. I would want to use her blog as an example of how to set up my own because it is organized and interesting to read and look at.
Denise Johnson states in her article, "One way to enrich students' engagement with literature is by developing a depth of knowledge about the author". I liked this quote because this is one way I could get elementary students interested in both blogging and literature. She also states that blogs usually provide more personal and insightful information than other printed sources. Blogs such as Ree's allows readers to learn background information from her writings and pictures, which allows them to form connections with authors. Johnson also suggests following young adult author blogs, which is also something I would be interested in personally and with students. She describes these blogs as being lead by "critically acclaimed young adult authors" and a new book or books are featured each month. Followers of this blog can then read the featured books and talk about them with each other and eventually with the authors of the books. Communicating in this way is both authentic and meaningful and it also promotes critical reading and thinking.