Week 4: Building Digital Literacy with a Critical Eye

I chose articles that focused on digital literacy for primary students.  I also focused my reading on e-books in the classroom.  As teachers we are often faced with an abundance of resources that don't appear to be connected to our classroom.  As you have read my blog hopefully my philosophy and learning style show through.  As we digest and gain new information about technology in the classroom I believe in reflecting on what this means to the educational community, what this means for my classroom specifically and analyzing the possible challenges that lie ahead.

I started reading an article by Hillman and Marshall (2009).  This article focuses on how we as teachers and family members can incorporate technology in a meaningful and powerful way into the classroom.  The most powerful piece of the article that stuck with me was the quote, "It is our role as the parent, teacher, and caregiver to model how to make sense of the world and then guide the child into searching for, finding, analyzing, organizing, and evaluating the plethora of information that will soon be at his or her fingertips" (p. 261).  I has always known that technology is going to play a key role in the future of my students. This quote really made me realize that we can no longer stand passively by and wait to be told what to do.  We must treat digital literacy like we teach learning to read and write.  Without our help we are sending our students into the world ill equipped to be critical thinkers of a world filled with endless information.

In addition to having a call to action Hillman and Marshall (2009) discuss guiding questions that can be very helpful when analyzing the use and value that technology has on early learners. Here are the questions that are were discussed.

• Is the role of the child integral to the activity?
• Does it increase the child's familiarity and ability with technology?
• Does it reflect a global perspective?
• Is this targeted to young children?
• Does it provide knowledge of results a child can understand?
• Does the program promote participation (collaboration) among children, parents, caregivers and teachers? (p.258)

These are the questions I plan on using when thinking about activities in my own classroom.  I especially liked the piece about collaboration.  As teachers we are expected to teach, learn, explore, master, reproduce and be experts on many things. I think this collaboration piece allows us to really open ourselves up to learning from our students and families.  Technology knowledge is all about building off one another and this is a great opportunity to do just that. 

The other two articles I read focused on e-books in the classroom.  Yokota and Teale (2014) summed up fear perfectly, "We find these digital picture books to be the most exciting innovation in literature for children in a long time-and also the scariest" (p. 577).  My classroom library currently had about 1,700 printed books in my room.  All of these books range from different interests to different levels.  2nd grade is an amazing time for literature, children go from basic readers to reading books with theme, characters and books in a series. As I read this article I realized that most of my reading takes place on my iPad. This connected to the need to teach children about the information they are going to get.  Am I doing a disservice by not promoting more e-books in my classroom? How can I go about this?  What does a balanced classroom look like?  This article reinforced that idea that balance is key.  In addition, it also gave some helpful key questions to ask when looking into e-books in the classroom.

Zipke (2014) focused their article on how to build a strong e-book library.  The first plan of attack was making a list of things that I value as a teacher.  This tied a lot of to many point brought up by Yokota and Teale (2014).  As a teacher I value easy to read print, highlighting words as they are read and e-books the make a print book better.  I don't value a book that is just scanned in just for the sake of it.  I want my students to be able to engage with text.  This is something I work on all the time with my students as it is something I struggled with in school.  I like the idea of having words that are defined or activities that extend learning.  I also want to find e-books that can make students read the books on their own.  It would be great to find e-books that record the child reading. This would greatly help with fluency.  By being able to make a list of things I value as a teacher I am now able to focus myself on the type of e-books I would like to add to my library.  

I have attached an e-book I found on YouTube.  This is an example of an e-book that might not be the best fit.  It has sounds that might make a student more engaged but might take away from the text.  This book also does not highlight text as it is read.  In addition, each page id read separately so you can't see the whole book.  I enjoy this book a lot but with my guidelines that I have developed it would not be a fit in my classroom at this time.