Assignment #1 (Article from database)

In response to "Embracing emergent technologies and envisioning new ways of using them for literacy learning in the primary classroom" by Sue Halsey
https://acts.northwestu.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://firma.northwestu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true%26db=eric%26AN=EJ832191%26site=ehost-live

Summary:
This article is written by a primary school teacher, Sue Halsey, in New Zealand. Halsey writes about her experience over the school year as she not only integrated technology into her classroom, but made it one of the focal points of her literacy curriculum. Throughout the article, Halsey argues that technology cannot be ignored by teachers. Instead, technology must be embraced in the classroom because students are surrounded by technology throughout the rest of their day. Her main goals for the year were student motivation, metacognition, bringing the world into the classroom, and taking students' learning out into the world.

Halsey and her students created a website which they used in several different ways throughout the year to promote literacy. The first thing Halsey and her students did was create a podcast. This podcast was done every Friday. First, the whole class would discuss what they had learned throughout the week. Second, two students write, re-read, edit, and record their podcast. This is then posted to the class website. Throughout this process, students are practicing their writing, reading, speaking, and listening skills. One of the biggest benefits to this is that the students have genuine audience (outside their classroom), and therefore purpose, which motivates them to do even better.

The second component the class added to their website was "Exciting Writing." This portion of the website is used to display all of the students' writing. Halsey believes that the main benefit to this is that it provides students with a real purpose and audience to write for. Because of this, she saw an improvement in her students writing. Parents also love this because they can go online and see their students' work.

"Events" was the next component added to the website. "Events" contains all of the memorable events from the classroom recounted by the children. Not only does this give them more practice writing, but allows them to reflect on previous learning.

Two other components added to the website were "Word Power" and "Book Reviews." Both of these components are meant to encourage improved literacy and student initiative. In "Word Power" students list any words they find interesting from the things they read. This creates their own word bank and thesaurus that they can use when they write. "Book Reviews" is a place where students can post reviews on the books they have read, but the students have to initiate it. Halsey will not approach the students and convince them to write a review, but the students have to come to her and ask to post one. Halsey says it is so rewarding when a 6 year old runs up to you excited about a book he/she has read and wants to post a review. This system also encouraged reading and discussion about books between students.

Although it is a lot of work, Halsey believes that it is worth it. Despite criticism from some of her peers, she reminds herself that her students are indeed becoming literate in a way that will strongly benefit them in the future. She understands that there is a balance between using printed material and web-based material and has designed her program around that. She concludes her article by stating that many teachers take to much time to research an aspect of technology to determine if it is really beneficial for their classroom instead of taking the advice from other teachers who are already implementing it in their own classroom. After all, wouldn't that time be better spent actually using the technology and using it to educate students?

Reflection:
There was plenty of useful information in this article. First of all, I really liked reading through everything that Halsey has done with technology in her classroom. We have been learning about different components and strategies for implementing technology as teachers, but it really helped me to see how technology can be seamlessly integrated into a class and not just added on top of everything else. I liked the real-life examples and the testimony of how it actually worked in the classroom.

Another thing I learned that I had not thought about is that using technology in the classroom is very beneficial outside the classroom as well. This is true in a coupe different ways. First, the students love having a real purpose and a real audience. Halsey noted that this motivated her students more than anything. The students could access their website, and therefore their work, from home or anywhere else for that matter, and show it to their friends and family. This brings me to the second point. Because Halsey used technology in her classroom, parents benefited from it as well. Parents could go to the website and watch the podcast to find our what their child had done in class that week. The parents could also go onto the website with their children and see all the work they have been doing. Even further than that, links to the children's work could also be sent to grandparents and other family or friends that wouldn't get to see it otherwise.

The motivation factor and the benefit of global access were the two things I learned and appreciated the most from this article. I also realized that integrating technology does not have to be extremely difficult. The teacher was able to do all of this from the creation of one website. Yes, it does take time and work, but when the students are motivated to learn and are having fun at the same time it makes it all worth it.