Literacy Now

Back to school time is upon us once again, and across the nation teachers are working overtime buying supplies, getting classrooms organized, attending beginning of the year meetings, and planning for the months ahead. As fall closes in, I encounter a mixture of emotions—a bittersweet longing for the freedom of summer, a bit of anxiety as I contemplate the changes that always accompany a new year, and excitement as I anticipate meeting my new students and putting into place all the plans I have spent the summer working on.

p: Photo Giddy via photopin cc

The weeks of summer tend to spin by at a dizzying pace, and many of us are still spending significant amounts of time working—teaching summer school, receiving professional development, or preparing for the coming school year. I take advantage of the time off to scour the Internet and interact with my online peers, looking for new ideas and resources. One of my discoveries this summer was the existence of a growing number of teaching magazines available in electronic format.

Electronic magazines (e-magazines) offer several advantages over traditional paper formats. Access to these resources is easy and immediate—no need to seek them out in a store, or go searching for back issues. All issues are at your fingertips, requiring no physical storage space, which solves the problem of untidy and disorganized stacks of magazines. Downloaded issues can usually be archived once the reader has finished with them, preventing the problem of taking up precious memory on devices.

In addition, most magazine apps are free of charge to download, and magazine subscriptions can often be acquired on a month-by-month basis, instead of having to commit to a full year of issues. This allows the reader to choose which issues to purchase based on content and avoid wasting money on issues that may not be particularly useful.

On top of all these benefits, most publishers are beginning to take advantage of the opportunity to use innovative publishing formats. E-magazines often boast clickable links, the ability to share articles and resources via email or social media, embedded videos, and other interactive content. Not only are these features incredibly handy, they are fun to use!

Education magazines are an excellent and inexpensive way for teachers to gain insights about their profession, read about new techniques and ideas, and learn about important resources that are constantly evolving in the ever-changing world of education. Here are a few of my favorite discoveries:

TEACHHUB (free; iPhone & iPad app)—If you frequently use the Internet to search for teaching-related content, you may be familiar with TeachHub. This site offers a wide variety of articles, discussions, and resources geared towards educators. TEACHHUB now offers a free monthly magazine in electronic format that boasts original content addressing Common Core State Standards topics, must-have apps, and even entertaining anecdotes that will remind teachers why they love their jobs.

EDUCATION MAGAZINE ($1.99/issue; iPhone & iPad app)—EDUCATION MAGAZINE is one of the most recent additions to the iTunes Store. It focuses on the use of technology in the classroom, and is a valuable source of product reviews, implementation ideas, and quality articles on all areas of educational technology. You can get a free trial of Education Magazine by downloading the app, which is an excellent opportunity to preview the content before committing to purchasing an issue.

TEACHING THE AVATAR GENERATION ($5.99/issue; iPad app)—TEACHING THE AVATAR GENERATION aims to keep teachers and parents informed about educational technology trends and topics. In each issue you will find articles, reviews, and resources, as well as a high level of interactivity that makes full use of the advantages of electronic formats.

TEACHING TOLERANCE (free to educators, iPhone & iPad app)—TEACHING TOLERANCE is published three times a year, and offers unique content geared towards teaching students to be respectful and accepting towards all their peers. In this publication you will find articles, lesson ideas, and resources for creating a classroom environment that promotes equality and justice for all students.

T.H.E. JOURNAL MAGAZINE (free; PDF & iPad app)—Geared towards both teachers and administrators, T.H.E. JOURNAL MAGAZINE contains articles on best practices, tutorials, and expert advice on all areas of educational technology and mobile learning. It is an excellent resource for K–12 professionals who are exploring the intersection of education and technology.

These are a few of my favorites from among the wide range of electronic magazines. They provide ideas and inspiration to teachers, not just as we return to the classroom but throughout the school year.

A side note: Many of these publications are new and are lacking ratings and reviews. If you find one you enjoy, please take the time to let the publishers know. Doing so ensures that quality educational content will continue to be available in the years to come, and that is something we can all appreciate!

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

Last week marked the maiden voyage of the #IRAchat. Teachers from all areas of education and from diverse geographic locations joined in to discuss digital writing and publishing in the classroom. It was a fun-filled, fast-paced hour of learning connecting and sharing.

As we concluded, I had several thoughts I took away from this experience that I would like to share with you.

Writing is writing whether a student is using a technology tool or paper and pencil.

The writing process does not change just because the tool does. Some students may enjoy writing in a journal with colored pencils, using a combination of words, poetry, and images, while others thrive on creating an interactive book on iBooks Author.

Maybe @seymouresimon tweeted it best: “#IRAchat Some things [are] so obvious, it’s embarrassing saying them. Perhaps we say them anyway: Printed vs. eBooks=who cares? Reading= Yippee.” I think the same applies to writing, no matter the medium. We want our students to become reflective, intentional writers who find a way to share their voices with their global audience across different writing genres. Whether they do that digitally or with more traditional methods does not matter. It’s the depth of the learning that does.

Students need to have choice when deciding how to publish…but we need to remember that technology is just a tool.

There are so many options, and new ones are being created every day. It’s easy to lose sight of what is important: our students’ learning. I think there is a real danger for us as educators to fixate on all the cool tools and then make the tool fit the learning needs of our students. It should be the other way around. We learn our students, and then we look for a tool that fits their needs as writers.

I often hear teachers speak about technology as a mode of motivation to “trick” kids into writing. If we approach writing and publishing in that manner, we are setting our kids up for failure. The problem with thinking that technology tools will motivate our students to write is faulty. I call it the “Christmas Morning Syndrome.” Everything is bright, shiny and new when it first arrives, but after time passes, that new “Christmas toy” is broken, lost, or sitting in some closet gathering dust, leaving the recipient no better off than when it arrived. By focusing on how a tool can meet a specific learning need, we are putting the focus on the student and his/her growth as a writer regardless of the tool that is selected.

As mentioned previously, the students in our classrooms are diverse. No two are alike. Today’s students can be masters and commanders of their learning 24/7 with the devices in the palm of their hands. By having students focus on the writing first, then guiding them in selecting a tool that will amplify their voice to their audience, we are giving them that control in their learning journey—regardless of how they publish.

Amazing things are happening in classrooms all around the world.

Sometimes, I think we get caught up in all the negative publicity surrounding education and we begin to believe the press. As teachers, so often we are behind our classroom doors, fighting the good fight with our students. With our guidance, students are growing tremendously, not only as writers, but also as individuals.

And we are not alone. I know there are success stories out there; all of you graciously shared them during the chat. It was inspirational. As teachers, it is important that we open up those classroom doors and share our success stories. Every educator is in a different place in his or her professional learning journey. We have more stories than the media could handle. Because we live in a digital world, it is now easier than ever to write and share our students’ stories through tools like Twitter, blogs, online communities, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.

You never know how much your story, no matter how small you feel it may be, will impact someone else. Give them encouragement. Be a model of a life-long writing to your students by sharing your voice with the educational community. Be the voice that inspires others to try new things with their students. (See Living Out Loud.)

We all have writing goals for our students, but we need to remember that the students should drive where their course takes them.

When the last question was asked in the chat last night, I was overwhelmed with ideas for answers. There are so many goals that I want for my students to reach during the next school year, while there are other practices or projects (Global Read Aloud, blogging, ePortfolios) that I would like to tweak in a different way. As I (quickly) pondered this question, the first response was that I wanted for my students to publish books and fill our classroom library and our digital library with their published books. This idea came from a keynote speech from Jane McGonigal who shared that 82% of Americans think that someday they will write a book. My thoughts quickly shifted as I realized that although that may be a draw for many of my students, it will not appeal to some of them.

Our goals are great. We all need them. However, I was reminded as I watched the answers coming through the chat, that although we do need a plan, our plans need to be flexible to meet the needs of our students. We will have students who are (initially) resistant to reading and writing. But, once we get to know them, their interests, their strengths, and their challenges, we will be able to guide them towards writing and publishing options that appeal to them. Where writing a book may cause complete shutdown for one student, writing a script and publishing a movie may send his/her motivation and enthusiasm through the roof.

This realization, and all of your wonderful comments, reminded me that the place we really need to begin is with our students. Once we know our students, then we can find the strategies and tools that will help us to propel them into the wonderful world of writing, giving them a voice in this crazy world of ours.

These were some of the insights that I gained from #IRAchat. I would love to hear your “take-aways.” If you weren’t able to join in the live chat, be sure to check out the Storify recap, and then add your thoughts in a comment here.

Best wishes on guiding your students into amazing writing and publishing activities in this next school year.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.

Over and over, I am asked, "What are the advantages of a 1:1 school setting?" I find it a difficult question to answer—not because I can't come up with a response, but because the person who asked often gets much more than they bargained for. I love teaching in a 1:1 setting, and the opportunity to do so has altered my classroom and my approach to teaching in innumerable ways.

p: Global Partnership for Education via photopin cc

One of my favorite aspects of teaching with technology is the ability to go paperless, and the surprisingly far-reaching benefits of doing so. Completing, editing, and grading assignments electronically is a budgeting bonus, while also saving me from toting reams of paper between home and school. In the classroom, I no longer hear excuses about lost papers, hungry pets, or a lack of supplies. I have no need to haunt the front office begging for more paper or ink, and spending my own money on these materials is a thing of the past.

But amazingly, these advantages are only the tip of the iceberg. In finding ways to accomplish tasks electronically, my students and I wind up stretching our creativity and our problem-solving skills. When I am able to give up the illusion of control and admit that I don't have all the answers, my students find me more approachable and we communicate more effectively. I ask for their invaluable input when I am out of ideas or feeling frustrated, and I invite them to work with me rather than for me.

A digital classroom also provides the opportunity to reenergize established instructional techniques. Apps and web tools breathe new life into well-known tasks, giving them a fresh appeal and increasing student engagement exponentially.

iBrainstorm

A free app available for Apple devices, iBrainstorm is a mind-mapping tool that offers a flexible range of options for classroom use. With the ability to draw, type, or arrange sticky notes, I often used this with my students to brainstorm or to create timelines and story maps. One of the cool features is that multiple iPads can connect and work together on a single project. The iBrainstorm Companion is a supplementary app that, among other things, allows users on iPhones to communicate with an iPad running the iBrainstorm app and contribute ideas to a collaborative project, even if only a single iPad is available. My students and I never tried this approach, but it has the potential to give the iBrainstorm app remarkable adaptability.

Tools4Students and Tools4Students 2

This pair of language arts iPad apps are priced at $0.99 each. Each gem contains 25 reusable graphic organizers that students can fill in, save, and email. The organizers are generic enough to be useful for a range of literature, non-fiction, and content area lessons. They can also be projected and filled in collaboratively in classrooms with a single iPad.

Apps like these hold great value and undeniably enhance the learning experience in my classroom. Yet they are only a piece of the puzzle. Whatever my initial response might be when asked about the impact of technology in my classroom, it is inevitable that I will eventually land back on this specific aspect of my experience: Incorporating technology into my classroom has created a positive transformation that encompasses everything from the back-to-school supplies I purchase to the ways my students demonstrate learning.

All these pieces make up a whole that has brought me to the realization that the type of technology is of little consequence; it is how we approach the implementation of that technology that makes all the difference in the world.

Join us for a Twitter chat on "Digital Writing in the Classroom." The one-hour chat is happening today, July 18th at 8pm EST. Use #IRAchat to join the conversation.

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

Recently, I’ve been engaged in several professional conversations about the role of a teacher in today’s world. As the debate rages on, I couldn’t help but wonder: If we, as educators, are resistant to change, are we really looking towards meeting the needs of our digital age learners? Are we strictly content disseminators? Do our students need us for that anymore?

Where do we fit into the picture?

As teachers it is our job to help every child grow and move along the learning continuum, but are we doing that if everything that we teach them could have been answered or found easily with a simple Google search? Is that really educating students? Is it about giving them simple facts they all could have found using the devices they have in the palms of their hands?

Of course not! Our jobs are to teach these students how to find the relevance in their education and apply it to other aspects of their lives. Today’s students are looking for meaningful ways to use what they are learning in our classrooms to create something new to share with one another or to apply it to solve a real, authentic problem.

Today’s students expect more than many of us received in our education. However, with these changes comes a new set of challenges. We now have an overwhelming amount of content to absorb and process before learners begin synthesizing, evaluating, and critically thinking about publishing something new for their audience. The vast quantity can easily become unmanageable and chaotic for our students, causing them to lose focus on their objective. How can we help our students curate and organize their content in a meaningful way?

Here are three ways that my students and I have found to curate information that assists students in gathering their content before they begin walking down the publishing path.

Wikispaces. Wikispaces, now called Wikispaces Classroom, was the very first collaborative tool that my students and I began using. I loved it instantly because multiple users from different locations could add, edit, and revise each page. If you have ever used a word processing document, using Wikispaces is intuitive. With Wikispaces, in addition to adding text, you can upload all kinds of files: audio, video, URL links, images, Word Documents, PowerPoint, and spreadsheets. Also, you have the ability to embed projects from other sites such as Voki, Voice Thread, Padlet, ToonTastic, Glogster, Google maps…the list can go on and on. Whatever content you or your students locate online can be connected and housed within Wikispaces.

One of the exciting parts of Wikispaces is that they are always listening and changing to meet the needs to today’s teachers and students. Wikispaces has added an easily manageable private social network to their pages where you and your students can communicate about the content being added to the wiki. It stretches the classroom time beyond school hours and gives students the opportunity to work collaboratively, leaving one another notes or comments upon their work. As the teacher, you have the ability to monitor complete history of student discussion, writing, and file uploads, giving you the ability to formatively assess their learning.

Through Wikispaces, students receive the support that they need to curate relevant, meaningful content for their publishing and adds the authentic audience and social aspect that today’s learner craves.

LiveBinders. I know that I have written about LiveBinders previously, but this is a tool that easily helps students (especially older students) manage the digital content that they encounter while building background knowledge. Because students are familiar with the organization of binders with tabs, this is a format that will be familiar to them. LiveBinders easily formats and organizes web pages, PDFs, videos and images all in one place. Instead of students running around all over the Internet, everything is housed right there in the binder ready for them to analyze and synthesize into their writing and publishing. LiveBinders also offers a collaborative aspect as binders can be shared and built upon by more than one user, which is great for students working together in group projects. In addition to being an online tool, LiveBinders is offered as a free app giving you and your students more flexibility in curating content.

EdCanvas. EdCanvas is the relatively new kid on the block when it comes to content curation, but it offers a lot of options that make one sit up and take notice. Once signed up, a user builds canvases of Google, Flickr, Educreations, DropBox, YouTube, Google Drive, URL bookmarks, and much, much more. You can even upload slideshows, PDFs, media, and audio files. All of these are all done within the dashboard of EdCanvas. Once an item is located within the dashboard, you can drag and drop it into the canvas. As a teacher, you can monitor the amount of time students spent on different resources within the canvas and see student’s comments or requests for help.

As an additional note, a couple of weeks ago, I was using EdCanvas with my students and was having some technical difficulty. I tweeted about this glitch and within a couple of minutes, EdCanvas began helping me troubleshoot and solve the problem. They are hands down the best tech support that I have ever had. They are very dedicated to providing teachers and students with a quality tool while continuing to update and adapt to meet the needs of today’s digital learner.

There are a multitude of uses for these curation tools across content areas and grade levels. I love that these tools are flexible for the students or the teacher to use, from school, home, or around the world. I have used each of these tools to curate content that I wanted to give every student access. But, we also have used all of these tools to curate a collection of each student’s work on one topic, such as their Innovation Day projects that they published on Wikispaces at the Twitter request of a class in Canada. With these three tools, students, parents, and our global peers have easy access to our writing and publishing.

So as the debate continues about the role of teachers, one thing that does not change is our privilege of working with students and guiding each one towards reaching their highest potential. Today’s world is ever changing; thankfully, we live in a time where, with technology, we can rise to challenge and provide our students with the best learning opportunities possible.

Join @JulieDRamsay & @IRAToday for a Twitter chat on "Writing in the Digital Classroom."  The chat will take place on July 18th at 8pm EST. Use #IRAchat to join the conversation!

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.

For my recent Engage post, I asked my students to review apps we had used to create presentations in our classroom. The apps included a variety of tools for making traditional slide show displays. But the beauty of the devices we are using in our classroom is that we can go so much further, and break past those conventional boundaries.

With that in mind, I would like to share some of the apps my students utilized in creating presentations that were of the less traditional variety.

Pic Collage

We used Pic Collage (available for Apple and Android devices) for a variety of projects, but it was especially useful early on when my students were first learning to use their iPads. Before we got into the more complicated apps, Pic Collage gave them a chance to start learning how to navigate on their device and use the media they captured with the camera.

p: flickingerbrad via photopin cc

Our first project of the year was a "getting to know you" presentation in which students created a collage of pictures to represent themselves, which we then shared and discussed. We also used it to create photo collages around topics or characters we were studying, which students could then use to explain their ideas to their peers.

My students liked Pic Collage because it offered a variety of tools, options, and fun extras that they could use to make their photos and presentations unique. It was easy to use, reliable, and didn't require an account log in. They ran into some issues with editing/cropping photos, but nothing that made it unusable. This is an entertaining (free!) app that students enjoy using, and a perfect choice for simple classroom projects.

Prezi for iPad

We were pretty excited about the free Prezi app (available for Apple devices), as the web version creates such amazing, beautiful presentations. And these presentations can be viewed, presented, and to an extent edited on the iPad app. Unfortunately, the app does not contain all the templates and tools that are available on the web version, which seriously hampers its usefulness in the classroom. We hope that an update in the future will bring more functionality to the app.

For my students, it was not convenient to have to wait until we had access to the computer lab to set up or make certain changes to their presentations. We needed a stand-alone app, and that is not what this is. But the app does allow for access to the free services of the Prezi site, and is certainly useful for presenting Prezis that have already been made, as well as doing some limited editing.

ScreenChomp

Screencasting and flipped classrooms are all the rage, and there are a ton of apps out there designed to facilitate these types of learning. We used ScreenChomp (free; available for iPad) as more of an in-class tool to teach and discuss concepts. It functions well as a whiteboard, allowing for annotations as well as voice narration and video creation.

The app is similar to its peers, but it does have some advantages over others that make it very useful for the classroom. First off, no account is needed. This simplifies things and makes it very quick and easy to utilize. The tools are basic and simple to use, making it perfect for younger students. My students liked the ability to add a slide as well as the ability to erase mistakes. Sharing is quite easy, and the finished video can be downloaded from the web.

The drawbacks are that the simplicity means it may not be quite as versatile as other apps in terms of tools and capabilities, and direct export onto the device isn't supported. But if you are looking for an easy-to-learn tool for creating quick explanations, this is an excellent place to start.

iMovie

This app ($4.99; available for Apple devices) is at the top of the list for classroom creation and presentation. For one thing, kids love to make movies. We used it to make videos about Martin Luther King, Jr., to explain aspects of weather, to record their reflections of our iPad classroom, and for a multitude of other projects. In my classroom, I had to specify that my students couldn't use iMovie for certain projects, in order to push my students out of an app rut.

iMovie is simply an incredible tool for creating video presentations. It can be used for anything from simple photo slide shows to more complex narrated videos. My students liked that all their media was easily accessible from within the app, and they loved using the premade formats for trailers. They also liked that they could use their own music as well as the provided tunes. Sharing and exporting were easy, and a number of options for social media sharing are built right in to the app.

iMovie has some drawbacks, as most apps do. The cost is prohibitive for some classrooms, although it does qualify for the educational discount. It is fairly easy to learn the basic functions of the app, but the more intricate tasks require some instruction and guidance from someone who is experienced with the app. It was not one that I could turn my students loose with and expect for them to discover all of its capabilities. One aspect that my students disliked was that text-only slides had to be created in another app and then imported as an image, as text creation is not an option within the app (except as captions).

Overall, though, iMovie is a flexible and incredibly engaging tool for students, and I cannot imagine my classroom without it.

The opportunity for creativity, for both students and educators, expands exponentially as technology becomes readily available in more and more classrooms. Moving beyond the barriers and expectations of the past is imperative if we want to see the full benefit of classroom technology, and apps like these are helping to bring about this exciting revolution.

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom.