Heather Houston's Blog on Literacy and Technology

Thank you Pageflakes.  I am going into my 9th year of teaching and just now have created my very own homepage.  I was able to do this for FREE through www.pageflakes.com.  I am going to use mine as a school page that my students and parents can access to keep up with what is going on in my classroom and school more easily.  It will also be a communication tool between my students, parents, and myself.  One flake I added was a blog to make communication easier between the three parties for general questions and comments.  I am surprised and a little discouraged that my school has not made it possible for teachers to have their own school homepage already.  Thanks to Pageflakes I now have my own homepage that I can use to keep my parents and students better informed and provide them with another opportunity to stay aware of what is going on in their child’s classroom and school.

During my Literacy and Technology class this week I learned about Webquests.  After learning about Webquests, as an educator, I find that webquests can be helpful tools.  A Webquest may be time consuming, but are a great way to create meaningful projects that are well organized and can be easily accessed by your students.  Also, you don’t have to worry about your students visiting pages you don’t want them to access, since you decide and provide the links for the students in the webquest.  Also, if there are files you want your students to access that you made personally, you may download those and get a link to them at www.badongo.com or zshare.net.

I am loving Jing.  There are so many restrictions to what we can get to on the web at school.  Jing eliminates a lot of those problems.  I can use Jing to record any video I want.  Granted it will only video five minutes at a time, you can always do more than one, it would just be like part 1, part 2 or a continuation.  I have already made several short videos that I can use in conjunction with some of the topics we read about.  I haven’t decided if I will use these clips as introductions to get the kids excited and motivated to read or after they have read.  Of course there are all types of ways video can be used in the classroom.  I also love that you can add voice to the video.  I used Jing in conjunction with VoiceThread so I could have ongoing voice in a video format.  Very handy tool!

Finally, thanks to my Literacy and Technology class, I am now a Skype user.  I feel, in a sense, I have shortchanged my students of past years, since I am just now beginning to use Skype.  I see Skype as being a very useful tool in my classroom that can connect my students to people and places from all over the world.  What a great way to connect students with authors of literature we read, via video-phone conferencing.  Also, each year we read pieces of literature on the Orphan Train, Sea Turtles, Chinese culture, Hispanic culture and much, much more.  How awesome would it be to connect with a former orphan that actually rode the Orphan Train, or a marine biologist that has studied sea turtles.  Wow-what it would be like to have a live video-phone conference with someone in China or Mexico.  With Skype the possibilities are endless and has opened a door for me in help meeting the global awareness needs in my school.

Before this class I was unaware what social bookmarking was or that it even existed.  Boy, I have been missing out.  What a unique tool that is going to make my life much easier.  Not only does social bookmarking provide people with convenience, but the social part is great too.  I don’t know about other teachers, but I don’t have a whole lot of extra time to search for good sites.  When I google for specific subjects or skills, often what I get is not useful.  Now I can look at other sites that teachers have already found and obviously felt it is useful since they have bookmarked it. 

Microblogging is often appealing as millions are now hooked on Facebook.  I do believe that microblogging could be beneficial to students.  First, it is a “cool” way for them to use their literacy skills in conjunction with technology.  I mean, anyway I can get students to communicate is a plus.  I also see how it could be very handy with students at home who have computers.  Teachers could quickly post assignments on Twitter and then those students who left their agendas at school could check Twitter, or parents who wanted to double check to make sure their students wrote down the assignments correctly could quickly check twitter.  You can do the same on a blog.  I suppose it is just someone’s personal preference.  I do believe the more we get our students exposed to and get them using the better off they will be in this competitive world we live in.

After creating blogs in two classes now, I have become a fan of them.  I have yet to create one in my own classroom since only learning to do it during this past spring semester, but plan to do so this coming school year.  I believe letting students be involved in blogging will give them a chance to enhance their literacy skills, while being motivated to do so because it is something different than the normal pencil and paper task.  Blogs also provide people with real audiences, in which the audiences can respond to the students’ writing. 

After our readings and discussions from class today, my definition of literacy consist of reading, writing, listening, and speaking so that one can communicate in a competitive world.

Technology, on the other hand, is anything tangible that can be used as a tool to enhance peoples’ lives.  Technology can be anything from math maniupulatives (counting bears, measuring cups, base ten blocks) to the more modern pieces (calculators, digital cameras, webcams, flip videos) which most people think of when they think about technology.  One piece of technology I am grateful for is the flat iron.  It does wonders for unruly natural curly hair!

We can use technology, combined with literacy, to make learning for students more exciting and bring purpose to their lives for doing the reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  Technology helps provide a broader, more global audience for our students, and does so in a timely manner.