Tara’s Web 2.0 23 Things Blog

I chose to view the 2008 Prove It! “Promise into Practice” presentation by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach dated Oct. 22, 2008.  When reading the abstract, I noticed that Ms. Beach was a director of English education, so I thought her presentation would be meaningful and relevant to my position as an English teacher.  The major premise of this presentation centered around the fact that our 21st-century student are literate in multiple ways due to the technology media by which they communicate.  Our schools, however, still mostly center around a “print-based” literacy.  She was a participant observer in “Mrs. C’s” classroom in which an action research study was conducted using the same content in all classes but different instructional approaches.  Other than test scores and students’ work, there were also interviews with students as part of the data collection.  The main difference in the instructional approaches were the incorporation of multiple forms of technology.  Students expressed that they did not view school’s provision of technology as allowing them to explore their literacies.  They felt “boxed in” by the many restrictions put upon technology by the schools.  One very honest student even commented when the technology was unreliable, “Can’t we just go back to worksheets?”  I found this comment interesting because a student at my school asked this exact question to another teacher in my building.  Students feel in many classrooms when they are expected to do worksheets that it is just easier to continue the trend in other classrooms, especially when the technology is faulty and the students have to fix it for the teacher!  I found this avenue of the online K-12 learning conference to be very useful.  I think more schools should access it and use it for professional development in lieu of bringing in a special speaker, especially in tough economic times.  I saw through the workings of this classroom in the study several instructional methods I already use, such as literature circles, independent reading, and writers’ workshops.  One idea I learned that I will incorporate next year is the assignment of the “literacy letter”, which asks students at the beginning of the year to introduce themselves as they relate to literacy.  An interesting idea was posed in the presentation that this letter could also be in multiple forms to celebrate the students’ multiple forms of literacy.  For example, instead of a letter, it could be presented in the form of a wordle(word cluster).  Another idea I found useful and applicable was the concept of showcasing students’ literature circle projects/products through a podcast and incorporating them onto the school’s website.  Blogging during the process of peer reviews within the writers’ workshop is another idea I hope to incorporate.