EDLA615 Language Arts and Technology

Glogster is a great interactive ‘New Literacies’ tool ELA teachers should take advantage of in their classroom. It offers many fabulous features, such as text, images, video and audio allowing users to present information in a fun, clear and simple way. Exploring the Glogster website and creating my own glog helped me learn how it can enhance classroom learning and bring ideas to a new level. Both, teachers and students can use glogs to organize information, demonstrate concepts and summarize ideas. Students can work collaboratively to write book reviews, create story timelines, outline the key elements of a text and much more. Very importantly, Glogster allows users to share their work with others to get feedback and support. In addition, teachers have complete control of the learning platform making it a safe learning tool for even the youngest students. I believe Glogster is a great learning tool! It provides students with many opportunities to use their creativity and sharpen t...

Click here  to view and listen to my VoiceThread.

VoiceThread is a great technological tool educators should use in their classroom to enhance their instruction. It offers many cool features, which promote student engagement and motivation. All learners, especially ELLs and students with disabilities can benefit from learning through this interactive medium. VoiceThread allows users to upload any combination of images, documents and video clips giving users the freedom of creating nearly anything they wish to. Students will enjoy the flexibility of this tool while producing their unique project and commenting on their peer’s work. This tool truly allows for collaboration and involves passive learners through the ongoing interaction. The shared learning process enables educators to pick up on student’s learning strengths and preferred learning styles. Moreover, students are given the opportunity to revisit topics as needed or gain access to learning activities they may have missed. As quoted from the article – The possibilities for...

Click here  to view my PowerPoint presentation on developing informed approaches to using new literacies in the classroom.

Click here  to watch my digital story on germs and ways to stop the spread of germs.

Today, with so much information being available digitally, students tend to spend less time accessing traditional printed texts. This shift in reading is strongly connected to young adults’ negative reading achievement. In the article,  The Impact of Using Blogs on College Students' Reading Comprehension and  Learning Motivation ,  Hsu and Wang aim to investigate whether digital texts can improve college students reading skills and learning attitudes and what role instructors play in the integration of new media in reading courses. To learn the effect of ICT’s on students’ achievement they chose to explore the use of blogs in a college developmental reading course. The study conducted revealed that although blogs offer a rich learning environment, which allows students to collaborate effectively, showcase their work, write for a real audience and much more, there was no significant increase in students’ reading performance and learning motivation noted between the b...