Today’s classrooms are filled with diverse learners each with their own unique needs and learning styles. Classroom teachers are continually challenged to find ways to engage learners in meaningful instruction. I found myself in this exact dilemma when I was a classroom teacher in an alternative education program for children (Grades 4–12) identified with emotional and behavioral disorders. Traditional “pencil and paper” school was not working for us, and I turned to digital reading and responding technologies to engage my students in meaningful literacy instruction.
eReaders come in many types and styles, such as Kindles or Nooks, and are available as apps for other mobile devices. I used the free iBook app on the iPad2. With options to change font style, size, and background color, the reader can personalize his or her reading experience. Also, ereading devices and apps offer a variety of tools, such as highlighting/underlining text and typing notes, to assist the reader in constructing meaning during reading. In our first ereading experience, six readers recorded 211 annotations and typed 80 notes while reading Tuck Everlasting in e-book form. Larson (2010) points out that by examining students’ notes and annotations, educators can gain valuable insights to students’ reading behaviors and comprehension skills.
The Internet offers many options for creating online literature discussions with students. Wikispaces, Kidblog, and Nicenet are just a few. After each reading session, students were encouraged to post to the electronic discussion board housed at Wikispaces.com. My students posted on the discussion board 94 times, and I was able to monitor the discussion and determine the types of responses students were making—aesthetic, interpretive, cognitive, experiential, clarification, and/or off-task (Larson, 2007, Hancock, 2004). My students also favored the online discussion board because it gave them 24/7 access to the discussion. If they remembered something that night at home that they wanted to add, they could do it. They also liked that the discussion was archived. They were able to go back and reread discussion posts if they needed to. Moreover, I found the electronic discussion board an excellent tool for involving my quieter students in the conversation. They really liked that they were able to step back and think about their responses instead of being “put on the spot” in a face to face discussion.
Alvermann (2008) argues that despite the complex digital world surrounding many of today’s students, schools still favor traditional, print-based methods of instruction. She further observes that even though digital images, audio, and video are changing the way we read certain kinds of texts, “online and offline literacies are not polar opposites” (pg. 16). Teachers need to deliberately tap into adolescents’ natural engagement with digital content and consider a wider range of learning competencies that currently go unnoticed. An estimated 64% of children ages 12-17, for example, are already using the Internet to create their own content (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007). Perhaps when students have regular opportunities to show themselves competent learners in a medium they already enjoy, they will find schoolwork more relevant and worthwhile. To that end, teachers should also ask students for their suggestions on how digital literacies might become a part of the regular curriculum (Alvermann, 2008).
References
Alvermann, D. (2008). Why bother theorizing adolescents’' online literacies for classroom practice and research? The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(1), 8-19. doi: 0.1598/JAAL.52.1.2
Hancock, M. (2004). A celebration of literature and response: Children, books, and teachers in K-8 classrooms. Merrill.
Larson, L. C. (2007). A case study exploring the "new literacies" during fifth-grade electronic reading workshop. (Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy). Kansas State University,
Larson, L. C. (2010). Digital readers: The next chapter in e-book reading and response. The Reading Teacher, 64(1), 15-22. doi: 10.1598/RT.64.1.2
Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A.R., & Smith, A. (2007). Teens and social media. PEW American Internet & American Life Project, October 28, 2012.
Kristin Webber is an assistant professor in the Early Childhood and Reading Department at Edinboro University and serves as program head for the Masters in Education Reading Program, kwebber@edinboro.edu.
This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association's Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).