Description:
Students love making their stories come alive with technology. Learn ways to use digital media, podcasts, and online activities to engage students in literacy.
In this small world students of all ages easily communicate with people around the world. If they want information, they search the Internet. They video chat, text message, blog, upload video, podcast and more. A month from now there may be another new way to communicate. Students will begin using it right away. Teachers will begin thinking about adding this new way to communicate into their teaching in a couple years, after they learn how to use it and then figure out how to integrate it into their curriculum. Teachers and schools need to keep up with these digital students. Students are empowered and they understand the power of communicating through technology.
Teachers need ongoing staff development to help them integrate technology into their classrooms. “The magic lay not exclusively in the technology, but in the interweaving of a systematic program of education reform with the judicious use of technology-based resources” (Chang, Henriquez, Honey, Light, Moeller, & Ross, 1998, p. 43). They need to learn how to podcast stories, poems and other communication items. They need to learn how to create books using technology. They need to learn how to blog. They need to learn how to use the Internet in their classrooms. They need to learn how to keep up with their students, so that they can teach about communicating in order to learn about and from people around the world. They need to learn how to use technology in authentic learning to increase literacy. According to Kate Kemker (The Digital Learning Environment: What the Research Tells Us, 2005), “A Digital Educator creates a learning environment in the classroom that provides the opportunity for students to develop both academic skills and 21st century skills.”
Imagine the excitement a child has seeing his or her story come alive in a book or on a screen as a movie. This session will demonstrate ways to use digital photography, video, podcasts and online activities to differentiate instruction, empower and engage students in reading and writing. Samples of student publishing will be shown. Participants will be given ideas for integrating technology and online resources with literacy. These ideas will work in a classroom with only one computer or in a computer lab.
