Notes on Teaching Literacy in Digital Age

pg. 6 "...the Common Core standards will be seen instead as a rationale for doing wonderful projects and activities that foster student experience and that are highly engaging."

• I liked this defense of the standards and that the book includes standards for each chapter/activity presented.  This practical approach makes utilizing the technologies discussed a simple and painless process.

pg. 8 Chart of standards addressed for each activity, includes standards for AASL, ISTE, and CCSS.

• Really useful resource for taking the activities into the classroom, also includes literacy topics addressed to give educators an easy way to find activities they want for their classes.

 pg. 10 "In order to be effective as the booktalker, I read young adult literature in all genres.  Goodreads (www.goodreads.com) is a social net working site that allows users to share book recommendations, join groups, participate in book discussions, see what friends are reading, keep track of what they're read, and organize books into virtual bookshelves."

• Neary's role as a booktalker is something I was unaware of in schools.  I was unaware that libraians pitched books to students, largely because I knew what was looking for at the library and privileged enough to buy books fairly often.  I have used Goodreads every now and then, but was similarly unaware of the other features the site has besides community book reviews and ratings.

pg. 18 "My favorite digital book trailer resource is Animoto (www.animoto.com).  Animoto offeres a free version to educators, which provides access for up to 50 students who may create unlimited videos of any length for a six-month period."

• Animoto seems like a very cool resource and being free never hurts.  The book trailer activity would be a way for teachers to engage reluctant readers.  The some students at the D.J.J. practicum mentioned how they liked getting suggestions from their peers and this activity would perform a similar role to provoke interest from students.

  pg. 20 "...This is a good opportunity to discuss copyright infringement with your students..."

• Given the focus against plagiarism in school discipline codes it makes sense to continue this trend into respecting copyright laws.  

pg. 23 "It makes my librarian heart very happy when, as a result of a booktalk, a student reads a book and is enticed to pick up another and another and another."

• I can relate to this experience, reading the chapter's conclusion made me want to implement book trailers in my own school someday.  

pg. 27 "Important: This 'thing' should have metaphorical value or 'suggestiveness.' It should be the controlling metaphor and the title of the story."

•  The very specific instructions will be very beneficial for student's who consider themselves to be less creative.

pg. 28 "This generated interest among other teachers and further collaborative Web 2.0 projects emerged."

•  Collaboration between classrooms would be a great way to try out new technologies, allowing coworkers to share their collective experience to further the project.

pg. 35 "Another option is to have students upload the video to a password protected wiki page, such as Wikispaces Classroom (www.wikispaces.com).

•  I had not considered using Wikispaces for storage, but this would be a cheap/free way to store student multimedia work while also limiting who can access the files.

pg. 38 "I also remind students that emphasis must be placed on story analysis, not acting or editing, since the purpose of the video is for them to show their understanding of the story."

•  This activity heightens analysis to other high level Blooms, such as evaluation and creation.  Students have to evaluate which parts of a story are worth doing shots for while creating their own video rendition of it.

pg. 55 "Students have the opportunity to work in small groups over a six-week period with a clear project scope."

•  While this work period is likely aimed the the elementary age students, it seems like an awful long time to work on a fairly straightforward project.  If I were to implement this activity I would cut it down to a 1-3 week project.

pg. 71 "I began using Edmodo as a place to do simple 'quick writes': I post an open-ended question about the anchor book students read during a particular unit, and students must post one response to the question and two comments about other postings.  This is a quick way to determine comprehension for all of the students before continuing the next day's reading."

•  I like the potential for using Edmodo as a social outlet for response separate, yet connected to class.  Students may also be more willing to do out of class school work because of a lack of anonymity with responses.

pg.77 "I teach in an ideal situation.  Discovering m passion for books, I was transferred from my position as a computer technology teacher to the ELA department, but was allowed to stay in my computer lab."

• The idea of teaching English in a computer lab is not something I had thought of, but I like this model.  My AP Language teacher also taught journalism and had a small lab set up with 5 computers in addition to the regular classroom.  Being able to access the web for projects during class without having to leave for library or a larger lab was helpful, and in a modern classroom I can only see benefits for teaching English in a computer lab.d

pg. 96 "The format of the graphic novel approach to content creation offers a number of unique slants on literary learning.  For one thing, it offers an opportunity for students to learn from grappling with spoken dialogue and text presentations of a character's thoughts.

•  While not often tested, high school and college students alike have issues with creating dialogue for characters in their own work in my experience. 

pg.105 "Interactive fiction (IF) is a tool that teachers can use to bring excitement and motivation to students who may not care for other kinds of reading."

•  As a fan of role playing games, I like the idea of implementing IF in the classroom.  I am not sure that this will work for all students, but there is a lot of potential for with this method.

pg. 114 "These connections of action and language are especially strong in Shakespeare.  Performance-based approaches based on the premise that Shakespeare's plays were meant to be enacted and not simply read have been popular for the last 25 years."

• Using comics to depict scenes from Shakespeare could be a lot of fun for students.  Shakespeare's work can be overwhelming at times with its immense depth and multiple dimensions so breaking the plot down into comics would help students check their comprehension while also digging into the higher Blooms.

 pg. 137-149 Chapter 12 Evernote

•  With the move away from paper in schools Evernote seems like a natural fit for the research process, though I had never considered using the website for such a purpose.  My own research notes when writing papers are generally sloppy bulleted lists, and while this method works for me personally, it is not very efficient.