Welcome back to Season Six of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!

This week we look at strategies you can use to connect technology with literacy skills!

Welcome to our Guest Host Jason Menth, Technology Integrationist at Talahi Community School in St Cloud, MN!

If you want a one-hour CE/PD certificate for this topic, you can finish our short course from this podcast episode.

The Basics:

Schools are all about building good literacy skills for students, and the library is an important part of that work! Sure, there are probably a bunch of good books to read – and that’s important. And then, what else can we provide to help kids build their literacy skills?

A few tech tools can go a long way toward encouraging kids to connect with reading, to find some books they enjoy, and to improve performance in school and beyond!

As library people, we dismiss entirely the idea that kids must sit quietly and read a paper book as the only tool for improving literacy. We toss this requirement on the trash heap of history, along with library staffers indulging in shushing behavior and the need for a library to provide only morally uplifting or improving material. Those bad old days are gone, and good riddance to them!

Let kids play games in the library! Encourage the use of new technologies! Provide devices and tools for kids to try!! And for sure: encourage reading across formats; paper is lovely, and so are audio books and e-books! (Mary is going to scream loudly in annoyance the next time she hears a paper book referred to as a “real” book!)

It’s not helpful to just say “now go use technology” without some guidelines, training, and backup for making it work out. Using tech in the library or in a classroom can be a challenge.  In an article by Diane Barone and Todd Wright, they talk about some of the issues. “These include problems with resources (lack of technology, time, or technical support), teacher knowledge and skills (inadequate technological and pedagogical knowledge), school leadership (lack of school planning or scheduling), teachers’ attitudes and beliefs (not valuing or being fearful of the use of new technologies), and assessments (traditional rather than matching new literacies’ expectations).”

The University of Texas at Arlington says “Literacy development that includes technology can take various forms in educational settings. It can both support traditional literacies and introduce new forms in the classroom. Technology can help students discuss their ideas by bringing readers and writers together in the same classroom, and it can help students work together at different times through google documents and blogging.”

We found several different ways to integrate tech into good literacy teaching including these steps:

• Online annotations of articles using the  Scrible app
• Making videos and podcasts
• “apps like Kidblog, Popplet, and Explain Everything. These apps help students organize their information but rely on the students to add their knowledge and develop a way to share it.”
• Setting up a class website
• Establishing quick writing sessions – just 10 or 15 minutes of writing a first draft
• Integrating graphic design with reading sessions

Resources for you to consult:

• Flashcard Exchange: Teachers can input information for flashcards and students access them online.
• Gaggle.net: This website allows students to e-mail and blog.
• Google Earth: We use this so they see where everything is in the world.
• Inspiration graphic organizer/outline software: We use Inspiration as a graphic organizer before we write or as we read a story. We use it for note taking in science or social studies.
• KidBiz: This website integrates technology and routine classroom curriculum
• netTrekker: This is a search engine made especially for schools. Sites have all been previewed by educators. Sites are rated by reading level and they have a speech function built in. Also, sites can be searched by state standard.
• QuizStar: Teachers enter in quizzes for students to take online. The site gives a breakdown of each question so teachers can see how many students got a question right or wrong.
• Thesaurus.com: This site provides information about a word of the day, a dictionary, and thesaurus support.
• Unitedstreaming: Teachers use this to access educational videos.
• WritingFix: We use this to teach writing traits, and students really like the interactive prompts.
• Student-Created Videos in the Classroom
• How Does Technology Affect Literacy?
• Integrating Technology and Literacy
• Literacy Instruction with Digital and Media Technologies
• Technology and Literacy – The Reading & Writing Project
• Literacy Instruction with Digital and Media Technologies
• Partnering Literacy and Technology to Improve One School
• Technology and Literacy Education in the Next Century
• The Science, Technology and Literacy Connection
• New tools for teaching and learning: Connecting literacy and technology in a second‐grade classroom

Books Read

And now we have one of our favorite parts of each episode: sharing books! Each of us will share a book we are reading. Links to each book will be on our show notes page, with a link to Amazon.com. If you buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits. Thanks in advance!!

Recursion, by Blake Crouch

Rosie Revere, Engineer, by Andrea Beaty

Hurray for Rosa!, by Sheila White Samton

Conclusion

Thanks to Jason  for working through all these ideas with us!

Thanks to you for joining us this week! It’s always better when you are here with us!

Be sure you are subscribed to Linking Our Libraries in your favorite podcast app – or just stream it on our website.

If you want to hear more about books, subscribe to our podcast Reading With Libraries.

Check back in with us next week for another library skill!