It’s here: Beyond the App launches today for middle-grade educators. You can still join us and stretch your teaching muscles this weekend. We begin at noon Eastern Standard Time / 7 PM Cairo Time. Register here https://lnkd.in/gQjiYVP
Beyond the App is an interactive online conference for middle grades teachers, teacher educators, parents, and educational leaders. For just $10 you get to work with experts in the field to improve your online teaching of literacy.
Visit our website and register (Your registration helps us fund the conference in the future): https://bit.ly/beyondtheapp
If you are registering from Africa, please send a note for special instructions to BeyondTheApp@Cortland.edu
In addition, participants can choose to donate to our EgyptReads! Initiative to put books in school libraries.
Some of our speakers:
Jack C Berckemeyer Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey Maha Bali Vicky Mac Arthur Cardullo Zoi Philippakos Troy Hicks Emily Smothers Howell Ian O’Byrne Danny Brassell Keisha Rembert Jill Castek Timothy Rasinski Julie Coiro Richard Beach AND MORE!
Beyond the App invites teachers to interact with experts in online and traditional literacies. In contrast to many professional development activities, Beyond the App participants will co-construct approaches to teaching upper elementary and middle school students with colleagues around the globe. The event is a joint project with the Literacy Department at the State University of New York at Cortland and Graduate School of Education at The American University in Cairo.
Participants will have the opportunity to choose strands or themes such as building fluency, motivation for learning online, assessment practices, and more. You are likely familiar with the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model represented by the phrases, “I [the teacher] do, We do, and You do.” Our focus is on the difficult challenge of providing appropriate literacy practices within the we do [it together] phase when teachers are working online, and students are learning. But, how do you do that when you are teaching online?
Join us to go Beyond the App.
Sign up for details via email on our LeadPages site.
Guess what today, April 23, 2020, is! It’s World Book Day, a UNESCO project. While Literacy Beat celebrates books and reading all year round, World Book Day offers an extra opportunity to honor the books (and other texts) we love. Here are some resources from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and others to help you party like the Dickens.
UNESCO’s World Book Day page with hashtags, toolkit, and links. #worldbookday
National Day‘s page with ideas to celebrate. Find other celebration days for all 365 days of the year, too.
The WorldBookDay.com website has a number of #StayAtHome suggestions.
*I may earn a small commission for Amazon Affiliate links to any products or services from this website. Your purchase helps support our work in bringing you Literacy Beat.
Recently, I participated in a Twitter chat hosted by the International Literacy Association #ILAChat and Sam Patterson (@SamPatue) on the topic of the Association’s latest What’s Hot in Literacy report. While there, I met the Story Shares team.
Story Shares in their own words, “Story Shares is a non-profit organization devoted to inspiring reading practice and improving literacy skills.” The organization leverages technology to bring books worth reading to teens and young adults who struggle. As most readers of Literacy Beat who work with adolescents know, finding material that is not overwhelming is a challenge.
Story Shares Home Page
Story Shares has created an online space that provides opportunities for writers to publish their work in a variety of genres and fills the need of teen readers for something meaty but not impossible to read.
Story Shares Digital Book
The online book collection is searchable by the usual indicators (author, title)
but also by interest level and three readability indices. The books are easy to navigate by chapter and by scrolling. Controls include a bookmark, a word lookup tool that brings up definitions of challenging words, and a tool to mark a book for reading later. Some readers prefer books on paper, so Story Shares makes some of their collection available for purchase as a paperbound book.
Because some readers benefit from hearing the words of a book read aloud, the Story Shares team has built in a text-to-speech reader. As the reader speaks the words, the written words are highlighted on the page.
Nelson Mandela: In His Own Words for iPad. Author: Ruth Chasek
I sampled the books on my computer and on my iPad. Both worked perfectly with the books on Story Shares.
For authors who wish to write for the teen and young adult audience, a user-friendly interface allows the writer to focus on the narrative and not the technology. I tried it and found the graphic user interface (GUI) very easy to use.
Because Story Shares is a nonprofit organization that serves students around the world, they also appreciate donations. Just click here to help them out.
This posts describes how students can explore complex texts through a hypertext literary analysis. By using PowerPoint—a common program that is readily accessible on most computers—students are able examine the multiple layers of meaning in a passage through hyperlinking words and phrases to written explanations and related media. Multiple modes are employed—including text, music, images, animation, and videos—to help students dig deep into the textual features, intertextual connections, and personal responses that produce meaning in fiction and poetry.
Creating a Hypertext Literary Analysis in PowerPoint
This strategy uses PowerPoint to create a multimodal hypertext with interconnected slides. The composing process begins by inserting the text to be analyzed on a blank PowerPoint slide, which functions as the anchor of the hypertext. Next, students can create a deck of blank slides that can easily be linked from the analyzed text. Words or sections of the text can now be hyperlinked to other slides by using the ‘Insert’ menu and designating the desired destination for the link. The majority of links will lead to other slides within the document, but hyperlinks can also be used to connect to other documents or to websites (video tutorial on hyperlinking in PowerPoint).
Once a clear and fluid structure has been established in PowerPoint, it’s time to begin incorporating multiple modes for analysis. Analysis slides will, of course, include written explanations of the textual features being explicated, but this strategy also asks students to use media to deepen and support the analysis. PowerPoint allows users to embed images, audio, and video and offers tools for editing and layering these media. Students can manipulate their chosen media to reflect themes in the text or to illustrate their personal response (see Smith & Renner, in press for more information about integrating a hypertext literary analysis in your classroom).
For example, in a hypertext literary analysis of Lucille Clifton’s poem “Homage to my Hips,” the composer hyperlinks from a PowerPoint slide that contains the original poem to other slides that include Clifton’s biographical information, intertextual and pop culture connections, a YouTube video of Clifton reciting the poem, analysis of literary devices, and personal response. Images, color, videos, and music are also used purposefully to organize, supplement, and extend the written analysis.
Example hypertext literary analysis for the poem “Homage to My Hips” by Lucille Clifton
There are a variety of ways a hypertext literary analysis can be adapted. Melanie Hundley at Vanderbilt University asks pre-service English teachers to explicate poems through hyperlinks and multiple modes (Hundley & Holbrook, 2013). Nicole Renner and I used this assignment in a 12th grade AP Literature and Composition class for students to analyze important passages from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Through hyperlinks, students examined literary elements, such as metaphors, irony, and theme. They also hyperlinked to intertextual connections, including other literary works, films, and popular culture references, as well as key words and phrases, questions, and personal reactions (Smith, 2013; Smith & Renner, in press).
This type of nonlinear and multimodal analysis supports students to develop important literacy skills, including reading and comprehending a complex literary text, interpreting words and phrases with connotative and figurative meanings, and examining themes, structures, and points of view.
References
Hundley, M. & Holbrook, T. (2013). Set in stone or set in motion?: Multimodal and digital writing with preservice English teachers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(6), 500-509.
Smith, B. E. (2013). Composing across modes: Urban adolescents’ processes responding toand analyzing literature. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.
Smith, B. E. & Renner, N. B. (in press). Linking through literature: Exploring complex texts through hypertext literary analysis. In T. Rasinski, K. E. Pytash, & R. E. Ferdig (Eds.). Using technology to enhance reading: Innovative approaches to literacy instruction. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Phi Delta Kappan has just published a themed issue on “Literacy Instruction in a Brave New World” (November, 2014, volume 96, No. 3). For a short time period, you may view and download all of the articles online, for free.
As literacy and technology expert Mike McKenna states in the opening to his article,
“Technology integration into language arts instruction has been slow and tentative, even as information technologies have evolved with frightening speed. Today’s teachers need to be aware of several extant and unchanging realities: Technology is now indispensable to literacy development; reading with technology requires new skills and strategies; technology can support struggling students; technology can transform writing; technology offers a means of motivating students; and waiting for research is a losing strategy.”
We have a lot to learn, a lot to accomplish, and we need to pick up the pace! I found this issue both practically valuable and thought provoking.
Please go to the Kappan website http://pdk.sagepub.com/ and search for the current November 2014 issue, or click on http://pdk.sagepub.com/content/current to go directly to the table of contents. I’ve listed the table of contents below (note that Jill has a piece on online inquiry and I have a piece on eText and eBooks). Enjoy!
Literacy Instruction in a Brave New World – Table of Contents
Michael C. McKenna, Literacy instruction in the brave new world of technology
Joan Richardson, Maryanne Wolf: Balance technology and deep reading to create biliterate children
Christopher Harris, Fact or fiction? Libraries can thrive in the Digital Age
Samina Hadi-Tabassum, Can computers make the grade in writing exams?
Melody Zoch, Brooke Langston-DeMott, and Melissa Adams-Budde, Creating digital authors
Bridget Dalton, E-text and e-books are changing literacy landscape
Diane Carver Sekeres, Julie Coiro, Jill Castek, and Lizabeth A. Guzniczak. Wondering + online inquiry = learning
Gail Lynn Goldberg, One thousand words, plus a few more, is just right
Kristin Conradi, Tapping technology’s potential to motivate readers
When I received a copy of Forward Thinking I was immediately struck by the calibre of the authors (Elizabeth Dobler, Denise Johnson and our own Literacy Beat blogger De Vere Wolsey). In turn, each author is well respected within the literacy community for situating their research in classrooms and making strong research-to-practice connections. The six modes of the Language Arts- reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing and visually representing provide the organisational framework of this etext. However, it is the enhanced etext publishing format which I want to particularly draw attention to in this post.
A number of distinctive features encourage active learning environments by combining traditional and electronic content. These features allow the reader to transact with the text in multiple ways through media elements such as, video, graphics, and audio which are embedded in the etext. Readers can watch lessons being taught in real classrooms; have instant access to multiple resource ideas that are shared through video clips (e.g. writing workshop); listen to podcasts of teachers and students; view graphics of work samples and follow hyperlinks to websites. In addition, links between research and practice are featured in interviews with scholars like Don Leu, Dorothy Strickland and Nell Duke. Finally, the etext incorporates a note sharing feature which could be used to create pathways to learning through listening, reading and viewing within a community of learners.
The authors of Forward Thinking note that the book models ways in which electronic resources can be integrated with and used to augment traditional classroom instruction. Forward Thinking allows us envision the possibilities when technology is integrated in meaningful ways to enhance literacy and learning in the 21st century classroom.
When friends write a book, of course, you’re excited for them and can’t wait to read it. What’s even more wonderful is when you read the book and it’s terrific – one that you know you will use in your own teaching. Using Technology to Improve Reading and Learning by Colin Harrisonand fellow Literacy Beat bloggers Bernadette Dwyer and Jill Castek is just such a book.
I found this book to be exceptionally useful for many reasons, but I will highlight just two of those reasons here.
First, Colin, Bernadette, and Jill are not only experts in technology and new media; they are first and foremost experts in literacy instruction. They have taught children how to become engaged and successful readers and writers, and they have taught and collaborated with teachers on effective literacy instruction and technology over many years. Their deep knowledge and on-the-ground experiences with children and teachers is demonstrated in every chapter. They speak directly to teachers, acknowledging the realities of today’s schools and the pressure to achieve high academic standards with all students, while offering a vision and concrete classroom examples to inspire us to embrace the challenge.
Second, this book provides a comprehensive blueprint for integrating technology so that children are more successful with print-based reading and writing AND are developing the new literacies of reading, learning, and communicating with eBooks and on the Internet. Bernadette, Jill and Colin complement a chapter on reading eBooks and digital text with two chapters on Internet inquiry – one focusing on the search process and the other focusing on how to compose and communicate through multimodal products. These are areas where we need to make tremendous progress if we are going to prepare our students for a future world that will be more multimodal, more networked, and more dependent on individuals who are creative, strategic, and collaborative.
I’ve copied the table of contents below. You will see that this book offers teachers multiple pathways for moving forward on their own journeys of technology and literacy integration. Enjoy (I know I will)!
Table of Contents
Using technology to make the teaching of literacy more exciting
Strategies for capitalizing on what students already know
Strategies for using digital tools to support literacy development
Strategies for using eReaders and digital books to expand the reading experience
Strategies for teaching the information-seeking cycle: The process stage of searching for information on the Internet
Strategies for teaching the information-seeking cycle: The product stage of searching for information on the Internet
Strategies for encouraging peer collaboration and cooperative learning
Strategies for building communities of writers
Strategies for building teachers’ capacity to make the most of new technologies
Bridget Dalton
berdwyer
Blaine Smith
danagrisham
jillcastek
TDWolsey
Literacy Beat 