English+Integration+Strategies

English Class Strategies for Technology Integration

Overview
The essential tasks of English courses are to improve students’ literacy, to cultivate in them an appreciation of literature, and, in the process, to develop skills like critical thinking, argumentation, and writing. Technology can serve as a means to both ends. We can use technology to engage students in content like vocabulary and grammar, to permit them easy access to more literature than any library could contain, and to connect with authors themselves. More deeply, though, technology can serve as a medium through which students can express themselves and their understanding of literature in creative, authentic, and meaningful ways.

The Internet affords students an exciting opportunity to publish their work and immediately reach a worldwide audience. Self-publishing helps students to engage skills and content associated with traditional, more familiar conceptions of literacy. The Internet and computers also introduce new literacies that the academic community is only beginning to fully understand. Because our job is to prepare students for their future, we must strive to understand these literacies as well.

The University of Connecticut, through a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, put together a website the explains the distinction between “foundational” literacies and new literacies:

What's new?
Foundational Literacies
 * Small set of skills used to comprehend information.
 * Necessary when reading any type of text, online or "print on paper."
 * Include:Strategies that can be taught through explicit instruction
 * activating prior knowledge
 * connecting
 * visualizing
 * inferring
 * questioning
 * synthesizing
 * Research proven instructional models for teaching these strategies include Reciprocal Teaching and Questioning the Author
 * Research proven instructional models for teaching these strategies include Reciprocal Teaching and Questioning the Author

New Literacies (Source = http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/carnegie/overviewnlfl.html)
 * Specific to text on the Internet
 * Skills necessary, IN ADDITION to foundational skills, when the goal is to understand and communicate new information on the Internet
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Include:Strategies that can be taught through explicit instruction
 * Identifying a question to be answered
 * Searching for possible answers on the Internet
 * Critically evaluating the information found
 * Synthesizing a variety of information
 * Communicating the new information to others
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Multiple instructional models through which these strategies can be effectively taught including:
 * Internet Reciprocal Teaching
 * Internet Questioning the Author
 * Internet Workshop, Internet Inquiry
 * Internet Workshop, Internet Inquiry

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Literature!
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Reading and writing are essential to most interactions with the internet. Accordingly, students are reading and writing more than ever. The problem, of course, is that the quality of the writing that is on the Internet is often very low. Rather than try to fight this particular battle, we can utilize students' comfort with expressing themselves and consuming massive amounts of Internet content to draw them to literature. What distinguishes proper literature from a blog? Why are conventions of grammar and spelling worth maintaining? How do authors utilize these conventions (or challenge them)? Can there be a great piece of literature written via Twitter? Why not? What did William Shakespeare do in his writing that a student can't do on Facebook? In short, to recognize the limitations of reading and writing on the Internet is also to identify the potential of literature. We can situate literature in a new context, and good literature will justify itself.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Vocab, Grammar
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">You will find on this wiki tools that students can use to learn grammar. Grammar and vocabulary aren't going away, but we must be willing to allow the kids to learn in a way that suits them. These tools are often more effective than traditional methods as well.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Creativity
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Digital storytelling and similar means of creative expression present new options for students to demonstrate their mastery of ideas while fostering their creative growth.

<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Questions for you:
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you teach new literacies, foundational literacies, or both? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">What do you need to help you teach new literacies?

<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">To do now:

 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Think about new literacies, identify how familiar you are with them, and continue to master them
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Consider how we can better meet the standards delineated in the technology curriculum
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Utilize web tools like flashcards, social reading sites, and blogs to engage students in the work they are already doing
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Communicate with other content areas in grade-level to determine introduction of certain technology skills
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Browse through the many links on this site and identify potentially useful resources for your class
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Make use of Edline’s “extending the classroom” features like blogs and discussion boards
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 15px;">Consider moving elements of your class to Google Docs