Helping kids READ & WRITE

1.  How have these readings changed, confirmed, or complicated your thinking about the effects of digital media on young people's abilities to read and write?

I initially was skeptical about digital media effecting students abilities to read and write, but had never outwardly believed one way or the other.  On many topics I tend to “plead the fifth,” to remain impartial allowing others to argue their views and beliefs.  I enjoyed delving deeper into the readings this week to learn more viewpoints and research findings. 

The readings swayed me towards texting as a good thing.  I surprise myself by writing this even now.  In my classroom, phones have been a hot-button issue, but I guess it is all in the way you redirect the use of them and make them part of the learning instead of the detriment to it.  The article Can Texting Help With Spelling? made me want to test integrating texting responses in my classroom.  You may think with an art classroom that this can be difficult, but I am always outside the box here folks..  I often use dry erase boards for students to draw representations of their thinking or write answers to share as a quick activity to keep the class on their toes and keep the lesson moving.  Texting would just be an additional tool to channel their creativity and focus.  I am excited to see where this concept takes me, but I only have 4 more days with this group, so I will have the summer to deliberate procedure and how to effectively use this tool in my classroom.  The readings definitely swayed me and made me more excited about the possibilities in the future.  Excellent! 

Other digital media appear to not have adversely negative effects on students abilities, so I lean more on the positive with facebook, emailing, etc..  I will say that I personally feel twitter is a bit excessive.  I think people use facebook too much to air every single thing they do, say, and feel – but twitter is even more disturbing!  I think twitter heightens a person’s need to feel affirmation from the amount of “followers” they have hung up on every word and thought they don their feed with.  I can see twitters potential uses, but overall feel that there are other more effective communication methods that encourage us to be less self-centered and narcissistic. 

2.  How have these readings changed, confirmed, or complicated your thinking about the effects of school-based writing instruction on young peoples abilities to read and write?

The readings confirmed what I already knew to be effective in school-based writing and in student abilities to practice reading and writing.  Traditional approaches are effective, but teachers consistently need to come up with new ways of making the writing fun and interesting to the kids.  I would suggest to teachers to perhaps increase the amount of writing the students have to perform on a weekly basis.  I think varying the type of writing would be particularly beneficial.  I was always encouraged to jump around in my writing style growing up, I would write short stories, poems, journals, and news articles to keep my style changing and to help me learn how my tone as the writer should be reflected to my readers.  This flexibility is essential to keeping students interested in writing and to instill the desire to want to write, which is the biggest struggle now.  Many students don’t want to put in the work and don’t understand how reading and writing can be fun or beneficial to them.  This is a constant struggle in education and is not likely to change any time soon.  We can hope and be sure we encourage these teachers to keep things flexible, fresh and intriguing to their students.

I was enlightened by the fact that new-media writing puts constraints on traditional writing styles because of certain factors like bandwidth, screen size and software.  I did not consider these when thinking about traditional writing and how new-age technology effects it, so this was an eye-opener.  This exposure to new ideas is what makes me excited about pursuing digital media in my Graduate Degree.  The possible topics are quite vast and the learning curve ever changing.  I like it!

3.  What changes do you think educators need to make so that reading and writing in school have a more positive effect on children's abilities to read and write?

I definitely believe that educators need to study up on what is getting students interested in reading and writing today.  If teachers keep up-to-date with the interests of their students, writing assignments can be more enjoyable if the students are allowed to express their interests and the teacher really connects through understanding of things that are important to them.  I recently developed a lesson focused around pixel art because I found the age group of students I teach are greatly interested in it right now.  Pixel art is a simplified drawing of something constructed from cubes, like Minecraft if any of you are familiar with the game.  I gave students images to choose from and they use graph paper to count out the squares and construct the picture for themselves.  I later give them the flexibility of constructing their own pictures once they have the technique down.  They absolutely love it!  This was my way of connecting with what students are into right now.  It isn’t always a huge success, but at least when we try, as teachers, students know we are serious about making the content personal and meaningful to them. 

I realize this cannot always be done, but I have flexibility in my curriculum, so that helps a great deal.  I do strongly believe that educators need to find ways of making the content more interesting along with having some flexibility with the tone in which the students write for particular assignments.  I made the comment in the last question about encouraging students to write in varied styles and methods to communicate their ideas and keep learning exciting.    I think this flexible approach paired with online resources could greatly improve reading and writing assignments in school for children.

4.  Find a video, online article, and. or blog post that supports your line of thinking. Summarize the information and explain how it provides evidence to support your thinking about the role of digital media on young people's abilities to read and write.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ0SOitEEdI

The link above will take you to a short youtube video a 9-year-old girl created about her R&B idol, Beyonce Knowles.  Allowing students to choose a topic that deeply interests them provides the fuel for students to gather and apply knowledge through their own motivation.  This young student gave her idea life by learning new media techniques and increasing her reading and writing skills in the process.   A youtube video isn’t always a great solution, but new media options are endless, teachers just need to allow students to inspire themselves along the way.   

I chose to link you to an example of an assignment instead of linking to an informational video about new media and learning because it feels more relevant to my ideas in this post.  Hope this gets some of you excited about the learning possibilities available and how we can customize it to connect more effectively with our students.  

5.  Find an image that supports your stance on the value of using digital media to support reading and writing instruction in school. Please provide proper attribution for any images you embed in your Blog (see support for providing attribution below.)

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/o/online_blogs.asp

Link above takes you to the image I chose.  I like the second cartoon.  The teacher asks the students What did you do on your holidays?  One student responds “Can’t I just email you a link to my blog, miss?  I think this is a classic example of students doing reading and writing work voluntarily with topics that interest them.  A blog is a very relevant means of communicating ideas.  Why not give your teachers a link to your blog as long as your content is clean and relevant?!