Literacy & Technology Integration

Jennifer Corbett CRD 511 Fall 2012

Introduction
George Washington once said, To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country. In Washingtons day, however, there were few public schools available, so reading and writing consisted of homeschooling with a Bible, a hornbook, and a quill dipped in ink. Today, teaching reading can take place at home, in the classroom, on the Internet, or on a thin electronic hand-held device that can hold hundreds of books at ones fingertips. Devices today such as the Kindle and iPad sounded like science fiction as few as twenty years ago.

Integration the research

From my experience and discussions with colleagues in education, technology programs for education have, to some extent, been considered nothing more than games with no educational value. However, research exists that shows us the specific applications and advancements technology can play in the role of promoting literacy. TPACK is a framework for combining technology, pedagogy, and the content area and guides teachers in integrating these techniques in the classroom.

iPad literacy
Apps iBooks Reading skill Independent reading & read alouds Sequencing Visualization Classroom application Download books, take notes, look up words in dictionary, match books to students reading level Mind mapping & brainstorming Can work in small groups to draw a picture to represent a paragraph. Students can present the photos in sequence.

Popplet Doddle Buddy

Strip Designer
Sundry Notes Doodle Buddy

Retelling
Cause and effect Main idea and details

Comic strip tool use to sequence events in a story & retell it

Can type notes, draw, & record voice for notes Students can draw the main idea and details

iBooks
In iBooks, you can match student reading level by Lexile score You can choose from hundreds of free books that offer animation and read aloud

Popplet
Popplet is a great mind mapping tool to help kids sequence events or just visualize key points. In this lesson, a student was asked to list Brians firsts from the novel Hatchet.

First meat

Doodle Buddy
In Doodle Buddy students can draw freehand or use available pictures to help visualize a scene. For easy grading, you can save the picture and email it to yourself, or you can use Teacher Kit to record a formative assessment.

Strip Designer
In Strip Designer students can sequence events to look like a comic strip. They can then retell the story and even add an element of drama comic book style! Comics are a gateway drug to literacy. -Art Spiegelman

Sundry Notes
Sundry Notes has two versions. Sundry Memos is free. Sundry Notes Pro has a small fee. Sundry Memos offers three options:

Text memo Image memo Audio memo

Software programs

Study Island
Study Island is a program that can be purchased by school systems. It requires a site license and is an online tool. Teachers can assign modules, take grades, and track student progress in all core subjects math, science, reading, language arts, and social studies. A game mode is available, but students must answer correctly to be able to proceed to the game. The game module itself does not improve learning, but does increase student motivation to answer correctly. A study involving three case studies (male, African American, SWD) showed significant improvement in two of the cases in the areas of reading comprehension and fluency.

Other Programs
The software DaisyQuest and Daisys Castle are game-like programs that focus on rhyming, counting numbers of phonemes, and pairing words based on similar sounds. This software is suitable for younger learners and runs off of a CD Rom. For multiple literacies, Hyperstudio allows students to fuse multimedia elements for literary comprehension. Students learn to incorporate digitized speech, animation, and sounds to better understand a text. With Hyperstudio, students can learn to podcast, make presentations in Keynote, create animations, learn to publish on MobileMe, create websites, narrate videos, import to YouTube, and use paint tools. Hyperstudio and MobileMe are online programs.

Nabi Tablet
The Nabi Tablet is a unique tablet designed for younger kids.

In addition to the fun apps, there are educational apps in the core subjects for grades K 3. I gave this tablet to a middle grades self-contained class. The teacher reported that one particular student who functions on a really low level was able to successfully interact with this device. All students were excited to use it. More studies will be conducted on this next semester.

Conclusion
Overall, it is evident that technology is here to aid us in helping our students become more literate, and a literate student can succeed better in all verbal-based subjects. As John Steinbeck once said, Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you dont believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it. I would prefer to catch them while theyre young.

References
Grimes, R. (2012). Middle school special education reading teachers' experiences using Study Island technology to enhance male students' literacy: An exploratory case study. (Doctoral dissertation.) Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis database. (UMI No. 3539364) Hutchison, A., Beschorner, B., & Schmidt-Crawford, D. (2012). Exploring the use of the iPad for literacy learning. The Reading Teacher, 66(1), 15-23. Karchmer, R., Mallette, M., & Leu, D. (2003). Early literacy in a digital age. In D. Barone, & L. Mandel-Morrow (Eds.), Literacy and Young Children (pp. 175-194). New York: The Guildford Press. Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for integrating technology in teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 10171054.

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