Effective integration of new literacies skills into the everyday routine of your classroom takes time. The teacher needs to thoughtfully find ways to embed Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into their lessons. But...this is not impossible...and it's well worth your time. Take a look at the following example, and use it to help you figure out ways to authentically embed new literacies and other ICTs into your classroom.
The following takes place in the average sixth grade classroom. Mrs. Steele has just finished teaching her sixth grade class about ancient Egypt, and wants to embed some of these new skills...all while finally working on that interdisciplinary lesson with her ELA teacher next door.....
After she was sure her students had mastered the content, she showed them a VoiceThread built by some students and discussed the "facts" contained in the piece.
With
each section of the VoiceThread she asks her students about the
validity of the facts presented. How do they compare to what was taught
in class? She tries to build the "healthy skepticism" in her students
of online information. Mrs. Steele then replays the section of the
VoiceThread that concerns the invention of writing. She asks her
students who they think "invented writing".
After some discussion and initial ideas about who may have invented
writing, Mrs. Steele asks the students to go to their groups and search
online to find out who exactly did "invent" writing. The students
search online using their battle tested strategies and write up an
email to Mrs. Steele informing her as to what the group found the
answer to be. With the overall answer, the groups needed to give the
top five sites that gave them their answer...and judge the overall
usefulness and truthfulness of each website. They constructed a set of
questions to help them gauge the usefulness and truthfulness of each site. They also had to identify the keywords used while searching, and think about how these decisions affected the results they found.
After Mrs. Steele had consulted the responses she received from her
students, she emailed them back that night with permission to continue
on and work on a way to present their findings. They could choose to do
so using any format they felt comfortable with (powerpoint, website,
video, podcast, animation, etc.) The final product would be presented
in their ELA classroom.
The culminating activity would take Mrs. Steele's class about two weeks to finish. There are two important things to note. The first is that Mrs. Steele found an authentic way to embed the new literacy skills into a unit that she already knew how to teach well. She also spent time previously in the year working with these students on their online reading and online searching skills. She strategically scaffolded her students to success throughout the school year.
But it doesn't end there...in subsequent years Mrs. Steele investigated using Google Earth to give her students the opportunity to travel to Egypt on a virtual field trip. She also suggested that her building start geo-tagging digital pictures taken on field trips so students over the years would be able to keep track of where they had been.
If you were a colleague of Mrs. Steele...what would you suggest that she do?
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Posted by: hotel tuerkei | 01/23/2010 at 02:30 AM