Our students are increasingly engaging with literacy online and there is great debate as to whether this enhances, diminishes or has no effect on the development of reading skills. Some argue that children and teenagers should read what interests them and that many reluctant readers would not engage in reading in their own time if it were not for the internet. This is a valid point but is reading online enough?

As a child, unlike my bookworm sister, I had no interest in reading but my mother persisted in great vain and I will forever be thankful for her efforts. Reading books opens up unfamiliar worlds and allows us to experience the lives and ideas of others. We in turn can engage in visualisation and further formulate our ideals and understandings, as we become immersed in the words on the page.

Engaging our students with reading online is imperative. Not only is this often the medium that they are choosing themselves, it is also provides a real-world context and offers an excellent source for engaging students in critical literacy. However, we must also continually encourage our students to read literature for pleasure and personal development.

The article ‘Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?’ is an excellent read. It presents a variety of arguments backed up with thorough research and causes us to think about where our students are heading in terms of their personal reading choices and how we need to approach this as educators.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?ex=1374897600&en=81a364206914f90a&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Young children are naturally responsive to sound and rhythm. Therefore, Early Childhood Education utilises music extensively and successfully, as it allows students to experiment with grammatical rules and rhythm patterns in songs and other written texts.

However, this response to music and the power of music in teaching Literacy is not limited to the early years. Many teachers attest to this and utilise music if possible.

I commenced my teaching in Early Childhood and my students and I sang and danced our way through a never ending assortment of resources. As soon as I entered middle and upper primary this changed as the resources diminished considerably. Whether this is a result of the assumption that beyond Early Childhood music is no longer an effective tool in teaching literacy, or that students beyond this age do not respond to music in the same way, or that there is not enough time/space in the curriculum, I am not sure. What I am sure of, though, is if it works for young children then, dependent on the approach taken, it will work with all students of all age groups. Furthermore, whilst there may not be as many resources available in the form of CDs and accompanying texts, technology provides the perfect tool for combining Literacy learning and music. Through technology music can be used to engage listening, speaking, writing and reading skills and can provide that meaningful avenue we are always seeking in the learning experiences we provide.

Take a look at these links to get you thinking about how you can use podcasting and movie making to enrich your literacy lessons.

Flocabulary is a brilliant resource from the US that teaches literacy to primary and secondary through rap. Although the resource itself is not free, the website allows you to explore the concepts and demonstrates the possibilities of using this popular music genre.

Flocabulary is a brilliant resource from the US that teaches literacy to primary and secondary through rap. Although the resource itself is not free, the website allows you to explore the concepts and demonstrates the possibilities of using this popular music genre.

http://www.flocabulary.com/

The following address links you to the MTV website where you can view videos about the many Harry Potter bands. Imagine how powerful it would be for our students to write and perform songs about their favourite books!

http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/155156/harry-and-the-potters-unload-with-the-weapon.jhtml#id=1561807

The Flight of the Concords is not only, according to the many fans that watch it, an awesome show, it also demonstrates how easily music can be used to communicate in everyday life. Poetry might be interesting to all students if they could present it in such a form!

http://www.conchords.co.nz/

Although we are not fortunate enough to be able to join in his US based workshops, we are able to access his awesome videos. They can be used as demonstrations or they can be replicated for a lesson, particularly as most of the materials he uses are everyday objects. I know that I, and my former students, will forever be thankful that we discovered Steve Spangler!

Discover him too using the link below.

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/video/

For centuries we have been facilitating our students to critically engage with multiliteracies and, for a long time, the availability of material has been relatively confined. As we enter a new chapter in education, where students are engaging with omnipresent texts and media, we face a new challenge; we now need to facilitate our students in being able to effectively and efficiently engage with the information they have available to them. When our students are searching, we need to teach them how to quickly navigate and locate useful websites.

So it makes sense that teachers are now engaging students in critical literacy and evaluation of the texts that are available to them on the internet

However, as teachers, we all know that the creation of new tasks, criteria sheets and rubrics is often time consuming and difficult, as we need to be clear about the outcomes.

The following links provide information on how to engage our students in the evaluation of blogs and provide an exemplar of a rubric that could be used.

If you are reading this and can share any similar resources or information that would be useful for teachers, it would be great if you could let us and all our readers know.

http://21cif.com/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/valenza1.5_blogeval.html
http://21cif.com/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/blog_evaluation_assessment_v1n5.html

Watch the following short talk from TED U, where Joachim de Posada demonstrates this experiment with children. Not only will it answer your inquisitive mind (that is, if you are not already clued up about the experiment!) and make you laugh until tears roll down your face, it will amaze you how simple and true the concept really is. Conducting the experiment with your class or, even better yet, conducting it and showing this clip will empower your students with a valuable metaphor for learning and life.

Joachim de Posada

A report by Becta titled ‘How do boys and girls differ in their use of ICT?’ acknowledges the findings embedded in research literature. It makes suggestions as to how differences are manifested and their implications for education. The following summary of key points, taken directly from the report, is pertinent to us as teachers as we increasingly engage the use of ICT in our classrooms.

• The use of ICT in education improves the motivation and attainment of both girls and boys, though the increases are more marked for boys than girls.
• There are few significant differences in girls’ access to and use of technology within schools, but at home the differences are more marked: girls have lower levels of access at home compared with boys, and generally use ICT less.  Girls use ICT more for school work, whereas boys use it more for leisure purposes.  A large proportion of this difference can be accounted for by boys’ greater use of computer/console games.
• There is evidence to suggest that socio-economic background is more a factor for girls’ access to and use of ICT than it is for boys.
• Girls are more dependent than boys on school for their access to ICT and for guidance on how to use it.  Boys have greater experience of using ICT in the home, but the structured use of ICT girls encounter within school goes some way towards redressing the balance.
• Girls prefer social and creative uses of ICT.  They like to work collaboratively and enjoy using technology to learn, in both formal and informal contexts.  In the home, online social networking has become an extremely popular for girls.
• Although there is little evidence that girls are less skilled than boys in the use of ICT (indeed, in some areas they show greater skill), girls generally feel less confident in their ability to use technology.
• There is no evidence to suggest that ICT intrinsically suits boys better than girls; there is, however, compelling evidence that the competitive, skill-based, non-collaborative nature of many computer games (even educational ones) is de-motivating for girls.
• Whereas boys are interested in technology for its own sake, girls see ICT as a means of pursuing their interests and furthering their learning.  This may help to explain the lower number of females studying ICT or following a career in technology, but it can also mean that girls’ use of ICT is more productive in terms of learning gains.
• Overall, the evidence suggests that girls’ interest in ICT decreases as they progress through school.
• Gender stereotypes in relation to at least some aspects of technology can have a significant impact on girls’ attitudes towards ICT.  These stereotypes begin at an early age with parents and are reinforced by peers, the media and, in some instances, teachers as girls get older.  The idea that ICT is the domain of boys is particularly strong in relation to games and programming.
• The context in which girls use ICT in school is crucial to realising the benefits of technology: girls do less well when working together with boys, possibly as a result of their own and boys’ stereotypical views of technology.
• Mobile phones are more popular and more heavily used by girls than boys.
• Girls are more likely to both suffer from and engage in cyber-bullying than boys.
• Recent trends in ICT may prove particularly beneficial to girls: increasing use of social and collaborative technologies, a growing emphasis on ICT integration within subjects, and a move towards narrative and character-based games could mean that technology, both at school and at home, is increasingly aligned with girls’ interests and preferences.

The whole article can be found on the following website:

http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=15978

He talked about how many schools get caught up in the ‘buzz’ of technological tools and neglect to focus on the purpose; how these tools can empower teachers and students to creatively learn. Furthermore, he talks about the approach schools should take in the ulilisation of these tools to ‘bring the real world into classrooms’ and allow students to ‘access the studio, stage and community’ that technological tools provide.

Have a listen!

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2599225.htm

This thing is crazy! I don’t remember ever before being so excited about a search engine. Probably because Wolfram is so much more than that.

Still in it’s infancy, testing stage even, this new engine will still return the occasional error but considering the fun I was having, the glitches were ignored.

It’s a given; students can fly through the internet as if it were their own bedroom. Often I hear people associate ‘the internet’ with ‘wasting time on MySpace’. Sure, introduce a student to a school where they have free rein and they’re going to hang out in the playground. Right? It takes a teacher to show them the science lab to discover the wonders of space exploration.

If we are going to truly educate this next generation about the educational value of the internet, awareness of such brilliant tools such as Wolfram is essential. I’m no statistics nerd, but I couldn’t help but become engrossed in the wealth of data Wolfram was able to offer.

Enter a birthday to find out what time the sun rose that day, what time it set, what was the moon doing…? It’s a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a calculator, a stock report and… it makes learning fun!

‘Google it’ has become a household term. We know that. There’s dwindling value in asking a student to look it up, it’s too easy. The challenge I found with an extreme array of data at my findertips was; what do I ask it?! Then in the classroom, how can this be applied? That’s the fun part, the part that really got my brain ticking, the part that made me think hard, outside the box. First I tried ‘weather Brisbane’ – interesting, then; ‘weather brisbane 5 october 1973′ (my birthday) – pretty cool, then I went exploring and saw ‘compute the frequency and other properties of a musical note‘ – are you kidding?! So this science calculator would be brilliant in a music class!

I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about Walfram in the coming months. Who knows? We may even be ‘just wolfing it’ before too long?

This week Amazon unveiled the latest weapon in their armoury to secure the electronic reading market. The KINDLE 2 is a slinky, skinny, portable electronic book-reader. KINDLE 2 gives you access to more than 188 thousand bestsellers, magazines and newspapers.  Some have described the KINDLE 2 as Amazons book equivalent of Apples iTunes music library. Never fear, for those iPhone users Amazon have already developed an app.

I was originally a sceptic. Call me old fashion but I still love the feel of picking up a good book, thumbing through the pages or even smelling the fresh ink of a broadsheet over breakfast. But I will admit there is definitely a place for the KINDLE 2.

I could ooze with enthusiasm over all the extras this device has been packed with but most importantly it could and perhaps will revolutionise how our students consume traditional academic text.

Already you can access more than 188 thousands best sellers, magazine and newspapers. The Education sector is the next obvious market.  Textbooks while sometimes a necessity are heavy, expensive, in constant need of updating and reprinting and then there is the question of storage. The e book-reader solves all of these practical problems.

One day this may be the only item on a schools book list, with individual users (students) able to customise the texts they load dependant on subject choice. The device can be used anywhere, any time.  So while you will still find me curled up with a good novel and a coffee on the weekend. Monday through Friday I’ll be bragging about my new e book reader.