One new tool that I have been using in my classroom recently is a Google add-on called speaked. As I mentioned in my previous blog post my students are currently working on writing opinion essays. One challenge that my students how often have with their writing is clarity. I often ask my students to whisper read their writing to themselves so that they can hear whether or not they're writing is portraying their ideas clearly. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, many of my students decide not to do this , and the quality of their writing is lowered. Speakd is an add-on for google docs which reads the writing in the google document out loud. Well editing and revising the last essay they wrote, my students used speakd to hear their writing read out loud to them. I found that many more students were willing to listen to their writing using the add-on then we're willing to read their writing to themselves. Many students told me that this helped them to improve the quality and clarity of their writing before turning in their final essays.
It did not take long to learn how to use this add-on as it is very simple to use. I realized that part of my students enthusiasm for using this tool was due to its novelty and that some of their enthusiasm might decrease in the future as it becomes more normalized in our classroom routine. One limitation of the tool is that the prosody of the reading done by speakd is very mechanical. As I am always encouraging my students to improve their reading prosody , I thought it was important to explain to my students that this was a writing to all and not an example of how they should read out loud. Other than that I thought that this add-on was an excellent addition to my students editing and revising tool bucket.
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As I have been learning about digital literacy this week, I have repeatedly been struck by the thought that teachers should not think of digital literacy, or even media literacy, as being something separate from the literacy skills we teach daily in our classrooms. Digital literacy is simply the skills that students need in order to successfully exchange information with the digital world. But like all information literacy , students need guidance and teaching in order to maximize and realize their potential. According to Anya Kemenetz, in her article on Mind/Shift called 5 Things To Know About Kids and Their Screen Time, children make up 33% of internet users worldwide (Kemenetz, 2018). This means that children are already impacted by the digital world in a huge way and that we as teachers need to address the growing need for digital literacy.
In my own class I have noticed that while my students are very good at gaming and using platforms like snapchat and youtube, they lack critical digital skills that they will need to be successful both in school and in the work world. My students for example are very unfamiliar with platforms such as Google docs or Google slides that would help them to present information in a new way. My students are also in need of instruction on how to properly use social media as well as how to analyze internet sources and cite them correctly. While this may seem like a lot of extra instruction, i believe that these literacy skills can easily be combined with the literacy skills we already teach. For example, my students are learning how to write opinion essays at the moment. I could easily assign students topic to write on, ask that they find two opposing opinions on their topic online, evaluate the strength of each opinion, and use that information to formulate their own opinion. During the time that my students are writing this essay I could teach mini-lessons on online researching skills, evaluating the legitimacy of sources found online, as well as how to cite online sources accurately. By combining the literacy skills I am already teaching with new digital literacy skills I can find the time in my schedule to teach both media literacy and digital literacy. I also believe that digital literacy presents and opportunity for teachers to help connect what students learn in school with their lives outside of school. I teach at a low income school where students often experience vastly different environments at school and at home. This causes them to feel like what they learn in school does not affect their lives outside of school. But technology use is one of the few things that my students experience in both worlds, and by teaching my students the digital literacy skills they will need to be successful and safe in the digital world, I can help to bring those worlds a little bit closer together. Kamenetz, Anya. “5 Things To Know About Kids and Their Screen Time.” MindShift, 3 Jan. 2018, ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2018/01/03/5-things-to-know-about-kids-and-their- screen-time/. According to Common Sense Education students in grades 3-5 can think abstractly, make broad connections, and have a passionate interest in morality. They are beginning to be able to understand each other's motivations, and most crucially are beginning to form cliques which test their existing social skills. I have seen all of these traits in my fourth grade students. Because they often struggle with balancing their desire to have tight social friend groups and their desire to be fair to everyone, they need a lot of "effective communication" lessons. My students are also almost constantly connected to social media when they are outside of school and this means that digital citizenship and digital communication skills are also essential for a happy childhood.
In my own class there was an instance where digital communication was used in a hurtful way which disrupted the classroom atmosphere and left several students very upset. I only wish I could go back to that time, knowing what I know now about the importance of digital communication instruction. That being said I am excited to begin teaching my current students about healthy digital communication. The first lesson I would like to carry out would be an introduction to cyber-bullying. I think it is important that students understand why cyber bullying happens, how it is much easier to say something mean to somebody online than it is in person. This will lead to a discussion of why people should never say something to somebody online that they would not say to them in person. Students would be invited but not pressured to share any experiences they had had with cyber-bullying and would then discuss healthy ways of responding to cyber-bullies. The second lesson I would like to teach my students in regards to digital communication is focused on safety. Many of my students have YouTube channels and I recently discovered that many of them do not have their privacy setting restricted at all. I have discussed this with their parents, but many were unconcerned. I, however, worry that people they don't know may try to contact them in some way so I want to make sure they know how to respond in case that happens. We will discuss why it is important to never talk to people whom you have connection to on the internet. Without scaring them, I will make clear to them that that is an excellent time to talk to a trusted adult who can help them evaluate the validity of the person contacting them and appropriate further actions. There is a great game on Interland where students have to identify a phisher in their midst in order to cross a rive. I thought this would be a great fun way to bring the lesson to a close. I would also like to use digital communication to strengthen a positive atmosphere in my classroom. Every Friday my students give each other compliments. They are assigned a person to compliment so that everybody compliments everybody throughout the year, but I would like to create a forum where they could leave each other shout outs. These would be compliments given to a classmate of their choosing. I think knowing that a classmate went out of their way to give them a compliment would be even more rewarding and the digital aspect of the forum would engage those who might be uncomfortable giving a shout out in person. My main take away from this week has been that technology is going to be an integral part of our students lives and to not adequately prepare them for all aspects of that life would be to fail them. I am excited to start talking to my students about digital communication and digital citizenship in general! |
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April 2018
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