A Framework for Literacy 2.0 Thinking

I found this chapter to be very informational! I think that the internet reciprocal teaching strategy could be a very important routine that should be used in the classroom. This tool sounds great because the teacher can model to the students what they want to see them accomplish and then the students can have their turn to teach the teacher and the other students. The book says that it will “strengthen and differentiate the comprehension instruction in any core reading program.”

            I liked that the chapter gave us a list of many of the ways that technology can be incorporated in the classroom. However, it dawned on me that I have never even used half of these resources in my classroom before. The ones I have used or seen were the discussion board, interactive whiteboard, mobile applications, social networking, blogs, and web based software’s. The funny part is that I only have recently used these pieces of technology in my college classrooms or late High school. That means within the last four years the classrooms are already changing.

            The chapter talks about using instant messenger and chat rooms to be good online applications to use in the classroom. I do not really agree with this because I feel like the students could become very distracted with this and talk to their friends about other things that are not school related. I also feel like social networking in the classroom is only helpful to an extent. For example, in my freshman English class my teacher had us all add him on facebook and communicate with him through there. This was helpful because we all knew how to use facebook and it was easy to communicate with him but I was easily distracted. Who really wants to read a short story that your professor has posted online when some pictures from the weekend pop up from the party you went to. Overall, I feel like this is not just distracting for me but for many others and technology could be very great in the classroom but also many things need to be avoided in my opinion.

What is Literacy 2.0 and What Happened to Literacy 1.0?

I found this chapter of the book to be very informative. Growing up and going to school in the early 2000's has really changed with the advancements in technology, especially when it comes to working with technology in the classroom. As a student I personally enjoy reading from a textbook as to online. I feel like it is easier for me to concentrate and I like to be able to take side notes and highlight on the paper. It saddens me to read from this text that we are moving towards almost not even having paper books at all and leaning towards reading more on the computer.

When I was in first grade I struggled a lot with reading. I remember one day when my teacher was preforming a running record with me and she was marking off all of the words that I was reading wrong. This was making me very anxious and I continued to read the words wrong when I was trying to correct them over and over. My teacher noticed that this was making me uncomfortable and let me take a break before we continued. I feel like the opportunity to read face to face with my teacher with the book open together made it helpful for her to guide me. If I was taking a running record over the computer and reading aloud I may not have gotten the help that I needed. 

This textbook (Johnson, 2014) mentions that 93% of children from the ages of 8-18 will spend an average of 90 mins on the computer daily. If this is the case I think that if we put more technology in the classroom to read, then the time spent on the computer will increase dramatically. However, I do not think it will increase because they are using the computer to read. I know from experience that when I am reading on the computer or doing homework I get very distracted on other things such as the internet and social media (for example it has taken me over an hour to just write this much of my blog). I agree that reading online can help students learn with the extent of hyperlinks to define vocabulary and show you alternative links to what they are reading, but I think it should be monitored.  On page 7 in the text it gives a table of the differences between traditional print and digital print. I highly believe that both environments for reading and comprehending are beneficial for readers but I think the reader’s ability to read plays an important part. In my opinion a child that is new to reading may benefit better with a traditional book where they can flip the pages on their own and learn that print goes from left to right and from page to page in order. Where as a more advanced reader may benefit from the digital text so they can look up synonyms of words and expand their reading further. Overall, this chapter of the book really made me think about what the future is going to be like for upcoming students and how many traditional styled paper books are actually going to still be made.