Chapter 9: Technology in English and Language Arts

2/16/09

For this week, instead of a preleture podcast, we had a reading. The reading was about how to integrate technology into language arts, and why it is important to do so. They began by discussing the changes in literature over the past couple of decades. The definition of literacy needs to be expanded. In order for us, as teachers, to expand this definition we will need to use our new resources, which include technology. This goes back to shift. Students learn in new ways know and we need to recognize this. One of the new things that we can teach them is to learn how to learn to new literacy technologies. As a teacher they need to start discovering things for themselves and this is possible through technology.

Some of the key terms that we learned in the reading were QWERTY keyboard. This is the name for the way we type of with a keyboard. Those letters are the first 6 letters on the keyboard. There is a debate as to whether we should teach keyboarding as a prerequitsite to using computers, so if they shuold learn to type through using the computers. There are diffrent views but many people take the middle ground. They do a short lesson on keyboarding and then do more practice as needed while using the computers.

Other things that we need to think about as teachers are the fact that technology always us to be very social and that we are teaching a more diverese set of students. Technology allows us to have a world wide classroom. You can communicate with people in other countries and learn many different multicultural ideas. Along with communicating across countries, we are beginning to have more diverse classrooms. There are many different nationalities, races and ethnicites. It can be difficult to teach literacy and english to these students, so there is definitaly a new challenge. You can use things like CD's and online workshops to help these students learn english.

In the reading there were three technology integration strategies. The first was in Language Skills Development. This means decoding words and phonics; acutally learning to spell and read.There are many websites online that can benifit children. They make learning into fun and games. The reading listed some acclaimed sites such as GameGoo: Learning That Sticks. These are very motivational for students and allows them to practice outside of the classroom. Electronic dictionaries, thesaureses and Talking Word Processors can also be used to help with language development. The second strategy was Literacy Development. This is reading and comprehending. There are things like interactive storybooks that allow children to read a book online, that will talk back and allows them to choose different endings and paths. Also tracking system like Accelerated Reader and Blogs are very benifical All of these things allow students to share thier ideas about what they learned or be tested to see if they truely understand. The final strategy is the Process Approach to Writing. The techonology of a Word Processor has been such a help with the writing process. It allow students to fix errors during the revision process very easily. It also gives students the ability to use things such as spell check, grammar check and word choice helpers. There are also technolgies to help students prewrite, by making diagrams and outlines.

Overall technology is a very useful and helpful resource in the Language Arts area. All teachers should begin to integrate it and to realize it is a very substantial part of the new students of this ear. There are so many resources to take advantage of. It may be hard work but it will be worth it.