Literacy Now

Digital Literacies
ILA Membership
ILA Next
ILA Journals
ILA Membership
ILA Next
ILA Journals
    • Administrator
    • Digital Literacies
    • Job Functions
    • Blog Posts
    • Innovating With Technology
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Digital Literacy
    • Literacies
    • Writing
    • Foundational Skills
    • Topics
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • Student Level
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Teaching With Tech
    • Content Types

    Letters to the Next President: Literacy and Elections

    By Chris Sloan
     | Feb 19, 2016

    ThinkstockPhotos-76945744_x300Although there is no single definition of literacy, most hold that literacy is not just a trait that resides solely in the individual—it requires and creates connections with others and leads to empowerment. Literate members of a society are capable of being active participants in their communities. If your goal as an educator includes preparing future citizens, then you might want to look into one project associated with the upcoming 2016 elections: Letters to the Next President 2.0.

    The biggest differences between the educational activities offered now compared with 2008 (the last time we knew for sure that we’d have a new U.S. president) are the many ways students can have conversations online. During the 2008 presidential election, Facebook and Twitter were relative technological newcomers. Google Docs was also rather new in 2008, and it serves as a good case study for how things have developed since.

    Google Docs was the central technology piece in the original Letters to the Next President in 2008, launched by Google and the National Writing Project. The website was the collecting point for the text of letters to whoever the next president was going to be, written by over 10,000 students. The project was innovative, and the well-designed site featured an interactive map with links to letters from students across the country, indexed by issues. What the site didn’t have was a way for youths to have conversations around those issues.

    This year promises to be different. The activities around Letters to the Next President 2.0 will have a lot of opportunities for students to have conversations with one another while they research, write, and make media about issues that matter to them.

    For example, Hypothes.is will be organizing “annotatathons” where readers annotate political language together—debate transcripts, candidate websites, speeches, and op-ed pieces. To get more comfortable with social annotation as we introduced it to our own students, some educators and I experimented with synchronously annotating the 2016 State of the Union address, and it was an engaging experience with about 250 comments and replies made during the course of the speech. In February, there was a weeklong Presidents' Day annotatathon featuring great speeches from a diverse sampling of presidents such as Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan; there will be another annotatathon beginning March 14 around President Obama’s 2008 “A More Perfect Union” campaign speech.

    I’ve written before on this blog about different ways to annotate text and other media online, but one of the most intriguing aspects of an application like Hypothes.is is that the comments are anchored to the text. In other words, when a user clicks on a highlighted part of the passage, the comment associated with that passage pops up; similarly, if a comment is selected, the part of the passage that it’s based on appears next to the highlighted text (see screenshot).

    A number of other partners are involved in the Letters to the Next President project. KQED Education has already begun gathering Do Now resources to facilitate student discussions on political issues via Twitter or on their blog; KQED will also be providing support for classrooms to create and share multimedia responses like infographics and political art. The Lamp’s Media Breaker will engage students in conversations by remixing and annotating political videos. Some of the other partners for Letters to the Next President 2.0 include Mozilla, The New York Times Learning Network, and PBS NewsHour. To follow and add to the conversation use #2nextprez on Twitter.

    The months leading up to November 2016 will provide some engaging learning for educators and students. Join the conversation.

    Chris Sloan teaches high school English and media at Judge Memorial in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project and KQED Education. In the summer, he is an instructor for the overseas cohort of Michigan State University’s Master’s in Educational Technology program.

    This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

     
    Read More
    • Teaching With Tech
    • Literacies
    • ~7 years old (Grade 2)
    • Job Functions
    • Digital Literacies
    • Student Engagement & Motivation
    • Innovating With Technology
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Digital Literacy
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • Topics
    • ~9 years old (Grade 4)
    • ~8 years old (Grade 3)
    • ~6 years old (Grade 1)
    • Blog Posts
    • ~5 years old (Grade K)
    • ~4 years old (Grade Pre-K)
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~12 years old (Grade 7)
    • ~11 years old (Grade 6)
    • ~10 years old (Grade 5)
    • Student Level
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Administrator
    • Content Types

    Digital Beginnings With Video

    By Karen Pelekis
     | Feb 12, 2016

    Elephant VideoWhere should I start? Teachers who are interested in incorporating digital tools in their classrooms often ask this question. One answer is: Add videos to your mix of teaching materials.

    Videos are versatile; they can be used in numerous ways to enhance any unit of study. They are readily available for free on YouTube. They are easy for teachers and students to use, and no special software or equipment is needed. Best of all, videos are a powerful way to enrich what and how you already teach. For example, your students can take virtual field trips, observe changes over time with time-lapse photography, and learn directly from experts.

    The use of videos requires mostly both time and thought. The key to making them work involves selecting, saving, and sharing. The following suggestions can help make your digital beginnings more manageable and successful.

    Selecting videos

    Finding just the right video to improve a unit of study is exciting. The video might help explain a difficult concept, reinforce material, or provoke discussion. Before you search YouTube, think about how some information might be easier to understand with the audio and visual components a video provides. As you start to search, be open to exploring some unexpected videos that come up for your topic, because sometimes they end up being the best ones to use. As you choose the videos that suit your goals, make sure to watch all of them to the end, in case there are any inappropriate surprises.

    Saving videos

    Once you have found the videos, saving them properly is important. The videos on YouTube do not always stay on YouTube, and it is disappointing when videos you want to use are no longer available. To keep a copy, use Offliberty. The site saves a video in just a few easy steps. The added benefits to saving videos are that they can be viewed without having to rely on Internet access and students do not need to go to YouTube to obtain them. Once you have the videos, it is simple to store them on your computer with each unit of study having a folder containing all the digital resources you use.

    Sharing videos

    The easiest way to share videos is by showing them to a group of students using an interactive whiteboards or a classroom computer. For students working in smaller groups or individually at multiple devices, one way to provide videos is through a shared folder if your school network is set up for it. The teacher drops the videos in a desktop folder that can be accessed by each student. If this option is not available, posting them on a site that is easily accessible to students, like a teacher page, may be necessary.  

    Videos can be incorporated in a variety of ways, such as introducing a unit, explaining information, demonstrating concepts, reviewing material, supplementing homework, or assessing understanding. They offer opportunities for deep examination, lively discussion, improved comprehension, and written reflection. Videos bring new life to old units of study and make new units easier to teach. They are free, readily available, easy to use, and enriching. For teachers interested in introducing digital tools in their classroom, using videos is one good place to start.

    Karen Pelekis is a first-grade teacher at Greenacres Elementary School in Scarsdale, NY. 

    This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

     
    Read More
    • Blog Posts
    • Administrator
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • Teaching With Tech
    • Digital Literacies
    • Innovating With Technology
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Digital Literacy
    • Literacies
    • 21st Century Skills
    • Foundational Skills
    • Topics
    • ~9 years old (Grade 4)
    • ~8 years old (Grade 3)
    • ~7 years old (Grade 2)
    • ~6 years old (Grade 1)
    • ~5 years old (Grade K)
    • ~4 years old (Grade Pre-K)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • Job Functions
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • ~12 years old (Grade 7)
    • ~11 years old (Grade 6)
    • ~10 years old (Grade 5)
    • Student Level
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Literacy Coach
    • Librarian
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Content Types

    Telling Stories Through Virtual Reality

    By William C. Yang
     | Feb 09, 2016

    shutterstock_189269807_x300This fall, I discovered my New York Times delivery newspaper package was bulkier than normal. Attached to the newspaper was the New York Times’ version of Google Cardboard—a foldout cardboard viewer in which you can mount your smartphone and experience virtual reality (VR). More than 1.2 million home subscribers of the newspaper received a cardboard viewer to coincide with the launch of the VR film that accompanied The New York Times Magazine article, “The Displaced.” 

    After a quick download of the NYTimes VR apponto my smartphone, I went into the viewer and experienced a heart-wrenching story of three children who have been displaced from their homes by war. I was immersed in a 360-degree environment of their war-torn towns and listened to children narrate their own stories in their native languages while I read the translation in the viewer. One can’t help but feel for what the children are going through as you watch them walk through destroyed buildings that were once their homes or their school or wait on a field as relief efforts drop food from planes in the sky. The VR film not only complemented the text article but also transformed it for the reader. The combination of using 360-degree footage with sound and text provided a unique experience, and this format may provide us with new ways to tell stories.

    While VR applications have been around since the 1990s, recent improvements in technology have made it accessible through a handheld device. The VR format has been revitalized thanks to affordable viewers including the Oculus, Samsung Gear, and Google Cardboard along with a number of apps you can download for free. Many of these apps provide us with examples of nonfiction and fiction examples of how this format can be used to tell stories. The Vrse app highlights their collaboration with the The New York Times along with other stories and concerts they’ve developed. You can view other journalistic stories through the VRStories app produced by Gannett and available for iOS and Android. The Discovery VRapphas a number of stories where you can walk alongside wildlife or even walk in space. For lovers of fiction, there are a number of immersive stories that can be found through the Google Spotlight Storiesapp for iOS and Android. These are a few examples of the growing number of authors, media makers, and software developers who are teaming up to develop creative ways to tell stories in this format.

    The potential for VR as a learning tool in K–12 schools has yet to be discovered. Google is bringing VR to schools through their Expeditions Pioneer Program. The educational division will come to your school with a set of devices and Cardboard viewers to engage students with content area studies in geography and social studies. Students can begin to experiment with creating their own environments using apps such as Sphere and incorporating them into their online writing. Although the technology for students to author their own VR stories is not yet accessible easily for schools, students can study the unique features of this format and the ways VR is being used to tell a story.

    By studying new formats such as VR, learning to author with media, and engaging with the process of writing, students can develop their creative capacity to innovate and create a compelling story not just in a VR format but also in multiple and new formats. As the technology continues to improve and more virtual reality stories emerge, we are reminded that the way we tell stories is also evolving.

    William Yang is an assistant principal at the Roaring Brook School in Chappaqua, NY. He is also on Twitter.

    This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

     
    Read More
    • ~8 years old (Grade 3)
    • Foundational Skills
    • ~7 years old (Grade 2)
    • Job Functions
    • Innovating With Technology
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Digital Literacy
    • Literacies
    • 21st Century Skills
    • Student Level
    • Topics
    • ~9 years old (Grade 4)
    • ~6 years old (Grade 1)
    • Teaching With Tech
    • Digital Literacies
    • ~5 years old (Grade K)
    • ~4 years old (Grade Pre-K)
    • ~18 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~17 years old (Grade 12)
    • ~16 years old (Grade 11)
    • ~15 years old (Grade 10)
    • ~14 years old (Grade 9)
    • ~13 years old (Grade 8)
    • ~12 years old (Grade 7)
    • ~11 years old (Grade 6)
    • ~10 years old (Grade 5)
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Administrator
    • Blog Posts
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Content Types

    Connected Kiwis: Blogging With Students in New Zealand

    By Katie Stover
     | Feb 05, 2016

    fig 1 about ozzyBloggers from around the world can connect and communicate in real time. Blogging as a digital platform to share ideas, opinions, and information in multimodal formats such as text, image, audio, and video allows young students to generate content for an authentic audience beyond the teacher.

    For instance, year two students at Point England School in Auckland, New Zealand, created blogs to communicate with education students at Furman University in South Carolina. This partnership was established prior to the university’s study abroad program to explore international perspectives of education and visit schools in New Zealand. The use of technology to connect prior to their travel allowed these two groups from opposite sides of the globe to learn about each other, their communities, and the role of digital citizenship when communicating in online spaces.

    Both sets of students created their own blogs using Blogger and were then paired up to share. They began with a multimodal “All About Me” post including image, video, and text to get to know each other and become familiar with the technology. In Ozzy’s blog, he shared about where he lives, some of his favorite things, and mentioned the use of iPads in his classroom.

    The second blog post focused on information about their communities. Ozzy posted about the traditional Maori waka, or canoe, that was at his school as part of a cultural celebration.

    He later posted about Anzac Day, a holiday celebrated in New Zealand to honor fallen soldiers during war. Ozzy’s posts helped Ashley, his buddy from the United States, learn more about the culture in New Zealand.

    His blog is public, so anyone from around the world can view it and learn about Ozzy and life in New Zealand. In fact, his blog was visited by users in 165 countries. As he says, “Anyone can see my blog… because it is on the Internet.” Ozzy understands the significant role blogs can play to connect with the larger online community, making our global world much more accessible.

    Using a blog as a shared space to bring together two communities halfway around the world  fostered a sense of a digital community. When the university students arrived in New Zealand and met their buddies face-to-face, a clear connection was already established. When the college students arrived, Ms. Nalder’s year two students, in matching red uniforms, were gathered on the carpet reading with their teacher. In unison, they all whipped their little heads around to see the long-awaited American visitors.

    fig 4 rangi and abigailRangi, a year two student, jumped up, ran over to Abigail, her American blogging buddy, and wrapped her arms around her. She then eagerly grabbed her iPad and promptly displayed Abigail’s blog. Rangi instantly recognized Abigail and explained that her favorite part of blogging was “meeting our buddies on the computer.” Abigail agreed, “I am so thankful for the way this blogging project allowed me to connect with this beautiful girl who lives on the other side of the world. Meeting her face to face is one of those memories that I will hold on to for a lifetime.”  

    Blogging mediates literacy practices for today’s global citizens while connecting us despite the miles between us. Some suggested websites for blogging in the classroom include Kidblog, Edublogs, and Quadblogging.

    Katie Stover is an assistant professor of Literacy Education at Furman University in Greenville, SC. She can also be found on Twitter.

    This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association’s Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

     
    Read More
    • Blog Posts
    • Digital Literacies
    • Administrator
    • Job Functions
    • App a Day
    • Teacher Preparation
    • Professional Development
    • Digital Literacy
    • Literacies
    • 21st Century Skills
    • Topics
    • Tutor
    • Teacher Educator
    • Special Education Teacher
    • Reading Specialist
    • Other/Literacy Champion
    • Literacy Education Student
    • Literacy Coach
    • Librarian
    • Classroom Teacher
    • Content Types

    There's an App for PD in Your PJs

    by Jen Jones
     | Feb 02, 2016

    FullSizeRenderTeachers, by nature, are social networkers, connectors, and collaborators of ideas, knowledge, and best practices. Periscope is the latest in teacher professional development in the form of a hot, free app. Teachers using Periscope to share their ideas with the world are the same types of teachers who are also blogging; however, Periscope is an easier, faster, and more efficient platform for sharing ideas because you speak and express your ideas through a camera instead of writing and composing your ideas through a blog. Followership is growing rapidly because teachers would rather listen to someone speak their ideas, watch his or her facial expressions, and interact by commenting and asking questions right alongside that person. “This new form of professional development is personal, intentional, and informational” says Sarah Cooper, fifth-grade teacher in Tennessee (@rockytopteacher).

    Periscope is a live streaming video platform similar to YouTube in that the user, who I will refer to as the scoper, as we call ourselves, is creating a video, but different from YouTube because the scoper is live, meaning the video is being created and uploaded to the Internet simultaneously—there are no second takes. However, once the scope is done, the scoper has the option to keep or delete the Periscope (Scope). When your scope is over, it is saved for 24 hours in the app, unless you make it available for replays using another app called Katch, which you need prior to making a scope. The video is also saved to your camera roll if you opt for it. As viewers listen and watch a video, they can write comments in a text box, ask questions, or tap the screen. Whenever a viewer adds a comment, everyone else watching the scope can see the comment. Viewers can also tap each other’s comment box and reply directly to one another.

    There are two ways to add content to Periscope: by being a scoper or a viewer. When you are the scoper, anyone can watch you live and people can find you in several ways, most commonly by following you, similar to Facebook and Instagram. Followers usually enable notifications so they know when you are live. People can also find you through the map icon if you have enabled your location setting. I do not recommend enabling the location setting if you are scoping from home, but I do recommend turning it on if you are scoping from somewhere interesting like a museum, Central Park, an active volcano or, say, the Eiffel Tower.

    Teachers have turned to Periscope to share and connect with a broader geographic community, delivering content in a real-time, raw, unpolished, and unscripted format. Because of the interaction between scoper and viewer, the scoper is able to tailor the content to the needs and questions of the live viewers.

    “As a second-grade teacher, I enjoy using Periscope to watch other educators share perks of the classrooms and best practices for kids. There are so many fantastic educators on Periscope, and I can get quality professional development in my PJs on any given day,” said Kayla Delzer, Periscoper in North Dakota (@mrsdelz). Some districts are turning to Periscope as a PD requirement—not requiring that teachers make videos, but watch them. Sheila Jane, educator and founder of the iTeachTVNetwork, has gathered the best educator experts in the United States to do weekly scopes in their respective areas of expertise. On using Periscope for PD credit, Jane says “Periscope is really moving in the right direction as a powerhouse platform to get teachers connected with other teachers who are doing amazing things in the classroom.”
    There are many possibilities for Periscope in education. Teachers at a conference can Periscope during a presentation (with permission, of course) for teachers who were unable to attend. Teachers are sharing classroom arrangement and design from inside their classroom walls after the students go home. Periscope also could be used for peer coaching of classroom lessons. Because I do staff development around the United States, I often turn on Periscope while I’m delivering a workshop or presentation to give my followers a peek at my ELA staff development. For the most part, teacher scopers try to keep their scopes between 15–30 minutes, as teacher minutes are precious.

    Teachers such as Kami Butterfield, a third-grade teacher in Baxter Springs, KS, who teaches in a 1:1 iPad classroom, stops instruction when I start scoping because the students like learning from me, too. She shows my scopes to her students during class, when I scoped about and encouraged students to make a Winter Break Reading Plan. Students loved my “18 Ways to Keep Kids Reading Over Winter Break,” accepted the challenge, and shared their winter break reading on social media using the hashtag #merryreader. 

    Periscope is available in the both the App Store and the Google Play store, for both iPhone and iPad, and both front-facing and back-facing cameras can be used to film. Periscope is an offshoot of Twitter, so you must have a Twitter account in order to create a Periscope account.

    So how are you going to use Periscope to get your teacher voice heard? Do you have ideas worth sharing in videos? Share them now!

    jen jones headshotJen Jones is a K–12 reading specialist, Common Core Trainer, blogger, teacher-author, Periscoper and cofounder of a monthly teaching Blab called #chalktalkedu. She travels the United States to speak, present, and facilitate workshops to schools and districts about 21st-century literacy. Read her blog, Hello Literacy. Follow her on Periscope, Twitter, and Instagram at @hellojenjones.

     
    Read More
Back to Top

Categories

Recent Posts

Archives