Thinking back over all the topics we discussed throughout the course, I tried to choose a topic that would directly effect myself, the students, and my fellow colleagues at school. I narrowed it down to two topics: blogging (interactively with students, how teachers can learn to blog, benefits etc.) and fostering a love for reading. I decided on fostering a love for reading through technology. I decided on this topic simply because I want to immediately begin employing strategies and investigating what works and what doesn’t work, when using technology to promote reading at a school wide level.
I hope to create either a Prezi or a Haiku Deck, to present my Vision for the Future project. I envision the project to be a resource that teachers can refer back to for suggestions. I hope to discover and promote the use of websites, apps, blogging, and other resources that encourage students to read in untraditional ways. I also want to link my presentation to my blog, for easy retrieval.
(click image to visit Prezi)
I’m hoping to gain insight from educators and experts in the field of literacy and technology, and be able to link my findings back to some of the readings we did throughout the course. I don’t want the presentation to be too wordy, so I will try to format important ideas and suggestions in creative ways.
At this point I have a lot of ideas for potential apps and websites that would foster a love for reading in schools, however I want to focus my discovery around technologies that I am at this point unaware of.
Lastly, I want to have a component about how technology can foster a love for reading actual “physical” books, instead of just using technology to read (if that makes sense?). My ultimate goal is to find ways to foster a love of reading in students, by directly and indirectly using technology.
At the learning commons at Katzie, we try to foster a love of reading through ICT and non ICT strategies. The 1.0 FTE librarian is a wealth of information for ICT tools, and has taught me many new approaches to fostering the love of reading, in such a short time already.
One strategy we use that I find unique is the use QR codes to access the learning commons blog. The students seem very excited to scan our QR code with their iPads, and see where it takes them. From here we have them search around the learning commons blog for a question we may have posted or a link we may have shared to a reading related game. We also have them look up information about the author of a book we just read together. For example, we are reading Kenneth Oppel’s A Bad Case of Ghosts, and we had the grade 2-3 students scan a QR code, find the Authour section of the blog, find O for Oppell, and then explore his page. We saw looks of wonder and excitement as they explored the authors website, and many students wanted to know of more books we have by this author. We then sent them home with paper bookmarks with the learning commons QR code on the back, so they can easily access our site at home. Simple things like giving the students a challenge to discover where an author is from, helps them understand there is a person behind every book, and I believe this fosters student engagement.
Here is a picture of Kindergarten students enjoying the use of iPads to listen to Stella and Sam. They have not yet mastered their ability to reading independently, but they show their love for reading by listening to and interacting with this App.
Here is a link to the Katzie learning commons blog, created by the 1.0 librarian at our school. Our librarian who manages this offers and shares many great ICT ideas.
Another strategy we use frequently is Tumblebooks and audio books. Students enjoyed hearing the fun Spanish accents of “Caramba” that would have been challenging for me to replicate. They also liked viewing various thanksgiving related books on Tumblebooks.
If you aren’t familiar with tumble books herein a quick sample I found off youtube
A study of two classes at a middle school in the Midwest of America, looked at literacy success rates dependent on teacher beliefs and practices. The study compared two teachers with relatively different teacher beliefs. The first teacher organised her students in homogenous reading level groups, and used a reading program she chose and implemented. The second teacher created book club groups, composed of students with varying reading levels. They engaged in multiple activities from listening to books on tape, to partner reading; students also chose their own reading material as long as it was appropriate for their reading level. The first teacher had students read 20 minutes silently, and write about random topics in their journals, whereas the second teacher modeled silent reading and read her own novel silently, for 10 out of the 20 minutes her students read for. As well, she connected journal topics to reading content and she linked themes they studied in science and socials, to what they read about as a class during teacher read aloud times.
It is rather obvious to see that the literacy success rates of the second teacher were more successful than those of the first. I think modeling silent reading is a great way to foster a love for reading. Although I have heard about this strategy, I have yet to implement it as a classroom teacher. As librarians we get to model a love for reading during read aloud; however, it would be interesting to see if a casual silent reading group at lunch, where the librarian also found a comfortable place to read alongside the students, would foster a love for reading. Although the second teacher did not use many ICT tools to foster a love for reading, I could see her practices open and conducive to new ICT ideas.
To end, here is a short video about one perspective on fostering a love for reading in the home!
Works Cited
Brock and Boyd. Fostering Meaningful Middle School Literacy Learning: Voices from the Middle, Volume 19, Number 1. Sept. 2011. Web. 9 Oct. 2015. http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0191-sep2011/VM0191Fostering.pdf
Social responsibility is an important element of the B.C. curriculum. If students are socially responsible, they care about society in a global, communal sense, and understand their individual and collective potential to make positive impacts for the benefit of more than just themselves. If we as educators include social responsibility as a integral part of the curriculum, there have to be mediums in place for students to enact these curricular goals and make tangible differences. With this idea as a starting point for inquiry, I began searching for research or examples of how students used technology as a primary medium to create and spread their initiatives. I had the idea in mind that technologies such as apps and social media could be fostered to not only create a philanthropist movements, but also spread messages and have an impact globally.
Initially I found many websites and articles that supported the idea of technology use in classroom for positive learning environments; many articles contained information about the need for teachers to help their students use technology efficiently to aid in their learning process; however, I did not find many examples or research about the use of technology to promote socially responsible students. Many examples included bake sales, book and food drives, car washes, and fasts. These are certainly initiatives that promote social responsibility and contribute to helping society on a global level. But in reading “Why School”, which asked the question why hasn’t education embraced technologies like other sectors of our society have, I wondered if any teachers were using technology to explore the social responsibility competency of the curriculum.
Eventually, I came across the term “globally enabled social change” and the idea of “digital citizenship”. These keywords led me to ideas about citizens using technology to make a difference or build awareness about a particular cause. Some methods included utilizing hash tags and charitable pages, while other methods used facebook private pages as activist chat rooms for those living in undemocratic countries.
In looking for instances that specifically included youth that were given opportunities within their education to make a difference, I came across a few examples. Some examples included students who created apps that helped impoverished people living across the world, while other examples consisted of teachers who were using ipads to allow students to create stories through stop motion, prezi, and the like, to increase engagement, share ideas, and make a difference. The teacher stated, “my students are creative and interested in changing the world.” You can read more about that story here: http://digcitizen.tumblr.com
Overall, it seems as though there is an absent of literature to do with technology and social responsibility in education; although I found examples on blogs and websites, I did not find scholarly articles and journals that touched on this subject in a substantial way; however, I do not doubt for a second that social activism in education which utilizes technology, is not taking place. Massive contributions such as We Day take place yearly, and reach many students across the globe. I know that students change their avatars, update their facebook statuses, sign e-petitions, and make online donations, all to support whatever cause that matters to them.
I do believe that as educators adapt and incorporate technology in the classroom more importantly and frequently, students will naturally use technology to create, plan, organize, support and carry out movements that are important to them. Collective grievances, whether environmental, social, emotional, etc., creates a desire in people to act. Students have the power to male a difference together, and technology can and does serve as a great vehicle for that change.
In inquiring further into the topic of youth embracing technology for social change, I have found the following articles and blogs useful in understanding this topic more clearly.
An article in The Globe and Mail, by Marlene Habib, was helpful in understanding a teachers role in equipping students to use technology positively and effectively to bring about good. In this article, Habib cites people who are proponents of the above idea, such as We Day contributors and university researchers. They believe that youth can harness technology for good and to promote social justice but they need to be taught how to use it and informed of the harms that can potentially come from technologies.
Another resource that helped me understand the topic of youth social activism through technology was the blog Speak Up for Change. This blog contains many articles about how youth are fostering technology to bring about positive change globally. Some of these articles included the use of Twitter hashtags to reach global online communities, Facebook charitable pages, and the innovation of Apps to make an impact. Although some of these ideas we not created by youth, many of them were. This resource is useful because it serves are direct evidence for what young people can do if they are introduced to technology and motivated to make a difference in some way. The best example I found was a teen who created an App to help underprivileged people in India.
The third resource that will prove very useful to me is the Social Good Summit 2015. This is a conference that is happening September 26-27 and you can listen to live. I have listened to these conversations that are happening and the focus this year is talking about the impact of technology and media on positive social initiatives happening globally. Speakers of this conference meet to discuss the impact technology can have to make the world a better place.I am hoping that I can access this resource over the next week and it isn’t just a one time “live” stream. One of the discussions touched on how we all can use Twitter and blogs to challenge the legitimacy of undemocratic laws. It also touched on the problem of how to access people that don’t have easy access to technology. A later topic being discussed at 4pm is “Digitally Enabling Citizens”. I think this could be very relevant to the topic I am researching.
http://mashable.com/sgs/
Lastly, I found an article on the Government Canada website titled, “Preparing Citizens for the Knowledge Society and Digital Economy”. This article did not touch on youth specifically, and it did not touch on social activism through technology, but it poses questions surrounding how our economy is changing and what that means for the future from a business standpoint. I don’t think it will help further my research too much, however the questions about the governments role is interesting to consider to gain a different perspective about who else is responsible for equipping citizens.
A main interest that I see arising in my career in the near future is the use of technology to share student initiatives relating to social responsibility. I am interested in how students can best use technology whether it’s social media or a particular program, to research and understand a topic or issue they are passionate about; then, use some form of technology to create and share their work to initiate change.
The curriculum related to this interest is greatly present within the “social responsibility competency” of the new B.C. curriculum. Within that curriculum the questions are asked: Can students take purposeful actions to support others and their environment? Can they initiate positive and sustainable change? Can they support diversity and defend human rights? (B.C. Curriculum, https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies/social-responsibility) These examples represent a few of the many competencies of social responsibility we want our students to engage in. I see a MAJOR need for technology to guide students in initiating this change. Whether they become environmental stewards or human rights activists, I am interested in how they can use technology to assist them.
Pedagogy related to this interest that would foster engagement would include inquiry based learning, collaboration, and digital literacy. Students would be the leaders in their learning, choosing an issue they are passionate about. Students would collaborate with each other and their community during their learning process, and students would develop digital literacy.
In the ebook “Why School”, by Will Richardson, some literacies identified by the National Council of Teachers of English, include skills such as sharing information for global communities and attending to ethical responsibilities. In order to foster/equip students with the tools and skills necessary to complete these goals, I see an issue arising in terms of teachers not being proficient enough themselves to really engage in this area of education. So while I am greatly interested in pursuing the above ideas surrounding social responsibility linked to technology, I am also focused on the need to educating myself, in order to educate others.
Keywords:
Digital literacy
Social responsibility
Inquiry based learning
Welcome to my blog! This is very new for me so excuse me ahead of time if I post something twice or if it doesn’t look visually pleasing ! PS I inserted this image just to play around with the blog; if you are curious, the picture shows a small section of the beauty that is the Oregon Coast.
