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When I first approached this class, my definition of literacy was pretty limited to print literacy—letters and numbers—but since being in this class and dealing with new technologies I now know that there are more distinct types of literacy that I had not included. These types of literacy are visual and technological. When I was attempting to create a website page and a link to a classroom Blog where students could share their own realistic fiction stories, much of the help I receive came from following the specific directions that were imbedded into the internet resources I was using. If I had a question about how to create a link, I needed to be able to negotiate the language that was being used in an attempt to help me achieve my desired goal during website construction.
Because of this project, I have changed my out look on what English Language Arts is and what it can be by incorporating new technologies into the curriculum. Many students come into the classroom with a highly developed sense of technological literacy and I feel that a marriage between technology and print literacy can take place within the classroom so that there is an opportunity for learning and growth. If students enter the classroom with one type of literacy highly developed while the others are lagging, I have learned through this project that there are ways to have students participate in English Language Arts without them really knowing it and therefore they give learning a chance subconsciously.
For my projected, I thought about how I could make reading and writing realist fiction more engaging and fun in the fifth grade classroom that I am currently placed. I have talked to the students before about their technology use and it has come up how they would like to create a classroom website (technology literacy) where their could share their own interests with the world. Taking these conversations, I thought that I could create a web page that was connected to the website I had created for my CEP 416 class, however my intention with this page is that it would be a class collaboration, perhaps using a Smart Board so that all the students could see what they were creating. Next, I wanted the students to have a way to share their work with “the world” and I thought that by having the students contribute to a Blog specifically meant to share their realist fiction stories. Next, I thought about how the fifth graders that I would with are obsessed with taking digital pictures and I thought that it would be fun and interesting if as part of this lessons, students were able to take real pictures about “what happened” and then to take pictures that answer the “what if” question. Using those pictures students would be able to create a slide show of illustrations to accompany their realist fiction stories that were Blogged and as a challenge to students that are more technologically advanced or wanted the challenge, they could create a digital story using their pictures and their spoken story.
I feel that by incorporating the different technologies into a writing students, even the most disconnected English Language Arts students could find some aspect of the assignment that they could really get involved in, all the while developing their self of literacy. I know that as a learner of technology that it can be a great source of frustration, so to support those students who felt particularly challenges, I would want to have two class periods where the students all had the chance to learn, use and play with the technologies that we would be using so that they had a better grasp on the tools as to avoid frustration when it came time to use the technology as part of an actual project. I know that for me personally, I like to play about with the technology before I have to take it seriously and use it in conjunction with a project.
I feel that this particular technology and the other new technologies that were presented during our virtual class are very important for complete literacy education because literacy isn’t only printed text, spelling and numbers. Literacy has evolved and grown as our society has evolved and grown as well so that it now included social, visual, emotional and technological literacy that must to used so that one can navigate the adult and professional world. More and more, information is held not between the covers of a book, but can be found using search engines and communicating with an expert through email. Times have changed and because of this so has my definition of literacy and thus my approach to a complete literacy program must include technology resources and that is what my project strives to accomplish.