New Literacies Post

Providing effective literacy instruction requires teachers to provide instruction that appeals to students with various learning styles, levels of background knowledge, and interests. While differentiation sounds like an easy ideal to achieve, teachers must always be making a conscious effort to conduct formative assessments and get to know students' learning interests and styles, then adapt lessons accordingly. Related to the technology I explored, blogging, there are two main ways in which I see blogs as being able to enhance classroom learning, when either the teacher or students write in a blog. I used my New Literacies blog to record my thoughts, learning, and external resources as I learned more about a new topic. Unlike my experiences using blogs like this one, I tried to incorporate aspects other than just text entries, such as embedded youtube videos, external links, and polls. If I wrote a similar blog for my students to read and follow, it would require them to practice comprehending written text, providing personal responses or writing their answers to a specific question, and critically viewing and analyzing information presented in a video format.

As a teacher, I could provide my students access to a blog written by me that might provide additional instruction in literacy (or other content areas) with the option of including multimedia files and links to other websites and resources. Such a blog might allow students to practice their reading comprehension skills by providing them with an additional source of print information while also (hopefully) encouraging their enthusiasm for reading on their own. Since many students enjoy spending time on the computer, they may be more willing to read on the computer, especially if the blog contains pictures, videos, or if its topic is based on students' interests. On such a blog, I might ask students to post comments responding to a specific question or have them share something that they learned from the post or from their own research...this would get students writing and responding to text and would provide me with some feedback about their understanding of the topic and incorporate some accountability.

Alternatively, I could have students create their own blogs to follow their own research of a topic and possibly have it structured as a type of annotated bibliography, have them write their personal reflections in a journal/traditional blog format, or have them work collaboratively in blog groups using a jigsaw or another format. This would give students a greater degree of autonomy and would engage them in more writing activities than the teacher-written blog. These assignments are not too drastically different from traditional assignments that might appear in a classroom, but blogging provides a new, interactive, and interesting way to present information.

My current view of blogging is that it might be able to engage reluctant readers and writers in literacy-based activities using a tool that is more often associated with fun games (the computer) as opposed to traditional worksheets or journals. (And, blogs can include fun widgets including polls and games to make them a bit more interesting!) Furthermore, blogs are able to incorporate additional media and collaboration in ways that traditional pencil and paper cannot. Although computer skills are often overlooked or considered an "after thought" in classroom instruction, part of the process of having students become literate citizens requires that they have basic knowledge of computers including typing, using internet browsers, and navigating different sites to search for information. Depending upon the age and background knowledge of the students, these skills might develop over the course of weeks or months as students become accustomed to an unfamiliar technology, or might be an easy task for students who already have a lot of experience with the internet and word processing software. These skills are no longer optional and students must learn how to operate computers and use internet applications, which reflects the broader definition of literacy reflected in Tompkins and our class discussion.

While I thought I had discussed a fairly comprehensive definition of literacy in my second blog post, in the case of digital literacy, the definition given in Tompkins seems more appropriate when she discusses the IRA and NCTE definition that includes the "competence 'to carry out the complex tasks using reading and writing related to the world of work and to life outside the school'" (11). Although technological literacy likely won't be the primary focus in my classroom, I definitely think that it is an integral part of an elementary classroom. Throughout this semester, I have had the opportunity to access sample lesson plans through Tompkins and in our class, and have been able to observe effective, standards-based lessons in my field placement that have provided me with a more complete view of what literacy instruction must include. Often, my CT thinks aloud as he is reading and models sample responses to questions that he asks of the students. At the beginning of the semester, I noticed these habits and thought they were interesting and useful methods to use in the classroom, but as we continued learning about these and other strategies in class, I realized that these were very purposeful instructional decisions and really do tend to help students think critically about a text. The lessons I observe in the placement are very standards-based and do not use basal readers at all; observing these lessons has helped me to envision structuring my own current (and future) lesson plans with high quality literature, while still meeting the necessary standards.