Literacy Now

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.

As we are approaching the 2012 Olympic Games, our busy minds are beginning to focus on our place in the world. Hearts swell with patriotism as we see our country’s athletes compete with athletes from all around the world. Who doesn’t get a little choked up seeing someone reach their life’s goal in spite of many challenges and obstacles?

For our students, it’s an opportunity to connect and build an understanding of other cultures, traditions, and perspectives. The Olympic Movement is a philosophy that doesn’t just promote physical competition, but also education. It promotes a sense of brotherhood, understanding, and peace among all people. Isn’t this what we want to provide for our students as well?

Regardless of their age or geographical location, with today’s technology tools, most students (even the ones in the Title I school where I teach) have access to a world of resources, information, and experts in the palm of their hands.

Because learners today have always known a life filled with technology, they expect to be able to connect and collaborate with multi-age peers for authentic reasons. They want a global voice. As one of my students said, “My friends are depending on me to say something worthwhile when I write [my blog]. It’s my job to teach them something and cause them to think about something differently.” That’s quite astute for a ten year old, huh? She understands the importance of speaking up and participating with peers, not just in her classroom, or her school, but all over the world.

So the question that many educators ask is, “How can we bring these global opportunities to our students? Where do we start?”

Often making those global connections can be a challenge. However, one fifth grade teacher from Wisconsin, Pernille Ripp, had a vision of connecting classes from all over the world through a project called the Global Read Aloud. The concept is elegant in its simplicity: One Shared Read Aloud, One Global Connection. A piece of literature, that can be found worldwide, is selected; a reading schedule is created; students connect to discuss the literature.

My fifth graders participated this last school year and they will tell you that it was one of their favorite learning activities. There was a K-3 book and a Grade 3-6 book selected. There was even a French Global Read Aloud.

The book we read last year was TUCK EVERLASTING by Natalie Babbitt. My learners had such rich discussion while reading this book with all of its depth and real-world themes, but the excitement escalated exponentially when they learned they could share their thoughts and ideas with students from all over the world.

Last year was the Global Read Aloud’s second year. Many teachers joined in the planning stages and set up different venues where the students could communicate their ideas and create projects to share and inspire their global peers. What I loved about it is that you could get as involved as you wanted. There were so many avenues. Any teacher, who was interested in having their learners participate, filled out a Google doc with their basic school and geographic information, and how they wanted to connect.

If you are on Edmodo, there is an Edmodo group to facilitate student connection. If you wanted to Skype with other classes for a real-time book discussion, you contacted a teacher who indicated on the Google doc that they wanted to connect on Skype. There was also a Twitter feed so that classes who tweeted could connect in that way as well. Classes also could connect through blogging on KidBlog. And for any classes who were unable or uncomfortable in participating in any of those forms of social media, there was a Global Read Aloud wiki set up with the reading schedule, and a place for students to publish any writing or projects that were inspired by the book.

Over three hundred classes participated worldwide last year.

The great thing is that you can customize it to fit your teaching situation. We have a very prescriptive curriculum and schedule. Time is always a challenge for us. In spite of that challenge, we were able to participate. My students already blog and tweet, so it was a seamless transition to include the Global Read Aloud into our classroom routine. We do a lot of collaborative publishing on wikis, so that was a way to participate with which my students were already familiar. (Be sure to check out some the amazing projects from last year on the wiki.)

My learners were so enthusiastic about participating that they would beg to have 10 minutes to read, blog, or create a project for their collaborative partners. They didn’t see this as work; they saw it as an opportunity to share and have their voices heard for an authentic audience.

Because Pernille had such a global perspective on the power of collaboration, she quickly welcomed in any teacher with their ideas to help this program grow and adapt to meet the needs of all students worldwide. If you have a challenge or are apprehensive about connecting in a new medium, you have a large collection of teachers eager to help you find success. After all, if we want our students to work collaboratively, what better place to start than by doing it ourselves?

We know the power of reading; it takes the readers on new adventures, challenges their thinking, and inspires them to action. Thanks to Pernille and all of the teachers who’ve connected through the Global Read Aloud, we can bring the world into our classrooms, giving our students an authentic and exciting way to discuss literature and have their voices heard globally. We don’t have to wait every two years to connect and celebrate brotherhood, understanding, and peace. We can bring it right into our classroom through the Global Read Aloud.

Won’t you join us this year? I guarantee that it will be a highlight of your school year. Your students, like mine, will be asking, “When can we do this again?”

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.



Engage: Plugged In

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.

Where Do We Begin? Taking a Sip from an Open Fire Hydrant

When you mention “technology in the classroom,” usually one of several responses is elicited. You have those educators who get excited about the new possibilities and you have those who cringe and leave the conversation as quickly as possible.

Embedding technology into our classroom environment can often feel like trying to get a small sip from an open fire hydrant. It’s very easy to get sprayed in the face or knocked to the ground, leaving us vowing to never try taking a sip again.

The world of technology is ever-changing. There is such a mass quantity of tools and apps available, where does one actually start? Better yet, why would someone want to start? Don’t tried-and-true teaching methods still work? Isn’t good teaching still good teaching?

I think the example of my young niece will illustrate this very well. At the age of two, Annalise was already able to play and strategize with Angry Birds. Now, she regularly sends me text messages with photos, knows how to pull up her favorite Sesame Street YouTube videos. When we get together, she will usually ask to see my iPhone to create music, draw, or listen to songs that inspire a dance routine. When her dad was doing mission work in Norway, she even learned how to use Skype.

Did I mention that Annalise hasn’t entered kindergarten yet?

Students entering our classrooms today are very tech-savvy. They have no fear in trying new things that involve technology because their daily lives are engulfed in this digital world. Are we giving them the best education if we ignore this aspect of their lives? Absolutely not. Good teaching looks at what best meets the needs of each learner. The world, and our audience, is changing and so must we.

So, where do you begin? For me, I started by searching for simple tools that could support work in which my students were already engaged. Since I teach in a Title I school, I had to keep in mind that many of my learners don’t have access to technology at home. And since our school was in the midst of a reading initiative to encourage a love of reading, we were strongly encouraged to have students engage in meaningful activities with literature.

I knew that my readers needed to move beyond just telling about a book to actually connecting and analyzing it. In my classroom, I let my students have choice in the types of projects they publish. They must always be able to explain how a project, whether it’s digital or not, will support their learning and the learning of others.

One of the book projects that my students created was scanner collage book reports. In this project, the students would choose 15 or more three-dimensional objects that represented key parts of the story. They would compose a piece that would explain the relevance of each item to the book. All of the three-dimensional items were put face down onto a flatbed scanner and scanned. Usually, we would print these to display for their classroom peers and we posted them online for their friends, family, and the students in other classes from around the world to see. (See some examples here.) Once they started playing with these, the learners began creating them without the book title included so that their peers could try to figure out the mystery book.

My learners began creating other ways to use this technology project to support their learning, including making a digital quilt where each student created one block to a science themed “I Spy.” Once, when the scanner wasn’t working, they arranged everything on their desk and took a digital photo of their collage instead.

Another simple project in which my students engaged was making their own READ posters that were inspired by American Library Association’s posters with celebrities. (See examples here.) These projects required the students to really think about the point of view of one of the characters to retell the story. The students dressed up like one of the characters and had a peer take a digital photo of them. One struggling reader said, “Mrs. Ramsay, I wish we could have a book character parade every day. I’ve got a book I’d love to read and share with everyone.” Did the tool inspire her? No, it was the learning in which she had been engaged.

As peers in class and online began to see their scanner collages and READ posters, it spurred much discussion about literature. It led to my students finding new authors and reading everything that they had written. They became avid readers.

Are either one of these two projects “cutting edge?” No, they are not. However, they were an easy transition from what I was already doing in class to what my students craved….a digital medium to create their projects.

See, what I realized is that it’s not really about the specific tools. It’s really about meeting students where they are on their learning journey. You don’t have to be a technology expert—you just have to realize that these are tools to support their learning.

Often our students have an understanding of what they need to learn. All we need to do is listen and plug into what they need most to support their learning.

Put the tools into their hands, guide them in making good choices (you are the content specialist and strategist) and you’ll discover that the fire hydrant won’t be knocking you over any more.

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.



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