Teaching Channel has just finished up a four-part series on Literacy in the Digital Age that is worth a visit. The posts are by Nancy Franzi and Steve Figurelli.
They write:
Kids have access to information; we must teach them how to navigate a world constantly evolving where content is at their fingertips. The traditional application of ELA isn’t enough for future-ready learners. We would argue our students read and write more now than they ever have before — between texting, social media, gaming, and everything else they do in their digitally fueled, online lives. Our vision must evolve to incorporate a new approach to literacy instruction, one in which technology becomes an accelerator to personalize and create meaningful learning contexts.
The four posts in the series cover quite a bit of terrain that focus on technology and tools around some domains of literacies, connected to the Common Core shifts and “Future Ready” ideas. Even if it bothers you that this is the organizational strategies, the series is worth investigating as the writers put the technology into learning contexts.
I’ve included my own “key find” for each post that I want to investigate further for my classroom or my own writing (sometimes, those two goals merge together; sometimes, not).
- Speaking and listening tools
- Key find worth exploring: Booktrack (which allows for a merging of music and text for reading experience)
- Tackling text complexity with annotation
- Key find worth exploring: Text Compactor (which provides summaries of longer text and allows for adjustments of analytics)
- Informational Text
- Key find worth exploring: Newslea (news with readability levels … I know a lot of teachers use this and I need to explore it more)
- Writing with digital tools
- Key find worth exploring: Draftback (a Chrome browser add-on that uses the revision history of a document as a visual … allowing you to move through time with a piece of writing)
Lots to explore …
Peace (and remembering: it’s not the tools or technology),
Kevin