Matt Heath's List: Technology & Literacy

• Literacy Through Technology: The Power of Digital Storytelling
• Date: July 2007
• Summary: With funding from an NWP Technology Initiative grant, the Maine Writing Project is using digital storytelling as an instructional practice to improve student writing.
• Words, voice, music, and images: these are the essential components of a digital story, according to Debra Butterfield, a language arts teacher at Gardiner Regional Middle School and a teacher-consultant at Maine Writing Project.
• a pioneer in the state of Maine in this promising blend of technology and writing.
• Literacy Through Technology Initiative
• University of Maine Writing Project in 2005
• investigate the effectiveness
• Butterfield, Terri Kane of Warsaw Middle School, Jamie Heans of Brewer High, Seth Mitchell of Lisbon High, and Dave Boardman of Messalonskee High piloted digital storytelling with their students in the first year of the program. The team experienced striking success.

• In 2002, a state initiative called the Maine Learning Technology Initiative was funded, providing every seventh and eighth grade student with a laptop computer to use in school.

   

  “For the seventh- and eighth-graders in Maine, the new laptops make the digital storytelling process very easy.”

   

  Too many times since the technology revolution hit schools, it seems, a new gadget or piece of software has been touted as the answer to improving student learning. Members of the Maine Writing Project digital storytelling team tell their colleagues, however, that DS produces authentic, engaged writing.

   

  “It is the story that is important. The technology is secondary,” says Kane.
• ©   2013 National Writing Project

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  Critical Issue:
  Using Technology to Enhance Literacy Instruction
• This Critical Issue was coauthored by Ann Holum, Ph.D., and Jan Gahala,    M.A.

  Holum's doctoral work on the use of interactive media to improve children's    story-understanding skills sparked her ongoing interest in integrating technologies    in K-12 literacy settings; she currently is an independent educational consultant.    Gahala is a technical specialist in NCREL's Communications department.
• ISSUE: Educational    technology is nudging literacy instruction beyond its oral and print-based tradition    to embrace online and electronic texts as well as multimedia.

• Computers are    creating new opportunities for writing and collaborating. The Internet is constructing    global bridges for students to communicate, underscoring the need for rock-solid    reading and writing skills. By changing the way that information is absorbed,    processed, and used, technology is influencing how people read, write, listen,    and communicate.

    
• Although technology promises new ways to promote literacy, educators' reactions    to it have been mixed. Some have embraced technology with unbridled enthusiasm    while others have held it at arm's length with a healthy skepticism. Yet the    growing influence of technology has caused many educators to acknowledge that    they need information on teaching literacy skills in the Digital Age. To serve    that need, this Critical Issue offers research, best practices, and resources    that support integration of new technologies into literacy instruction.

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  Wednesday, January 16, 2013
• Are You Distracted by Technology?
• By MICHAEL GONCHAR and KATHERINE SCHULTEN
• Two recent surveys
• students have shorter attention spans because of their constant use of digital technology.

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• During the 1950s, programmed instruction emerged as the first true educational technology,
• in the 1980s, educators began to perceive the importance of computers as productivity tools.
• The development of inexpensive multimedia computers and the eruption of the Internet in the mid-1990s quickly changed the nature of educational computing.
• in order to learn, students should teach the computer or use the technology to represent what they know rather than memorizing what teachers and textbooks tell them.

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• Critical Literacy
• A

  ubrey

  Feeney
• Impact of Digital Technologies on Education
  Pedagogies of reading continue to evolve with times. Before the idea of critical literacy, students were taught to be submissive readers and assessed only on their ability to recall information taught to them. However, the goal of education changed as the demands and responsibilities transformed within the workforce.

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