Brittany Bittner, Digital Stories

Over the past year I have really become interested in integrating technology and education. Through my job, I was given key experiences and ideas for doing so in the future. Therefore this project simply gave me hand-on experience actually using technology within a classroom and making a product. The children’s reaction was enough to prove that technology is the “new” literacy and should really be emphasized at all ages. The technology I chose to explore was digital story telling and visual/print literacy. I had heard and viewed several digital stories beforehand, but I had never made one on my own. I decided to use visual literacy because the students I work with at the Child Development Center often times can't read or write. They do engage in story telling and seem to enjoy being read to during group times, but they mainly express themselves through drawing. I read them the book "May There Always be Sunshine" by Jim Gill. We then discussed what they would also like there to always be in the world. I then had them illustrate their idea and record their voices into imovie using a microphone. Since I work in the College of Education tech center I completed the rest of the project there. I scanned the illustrations in and then matched the voices with the particular pictures. I also imported the song from the book and have that playing throughout the story. This fits in with my current definition of literacy. Digital stories are becoming very popular and can be done in multiple ways. It is a way for students to interact with stories, develop their own stories, add on to stories, work in groups, use technology, etc. In most grades literacy is emphasized. In early childhood retelling stories, adding onto to stories, playing with language, and using creative language are all essential. Digital stories can be used across the curriculum and incorporated into all grade levels. Multiple standards and benchmarks can be addressed depending on what subject the digital story is implemented in and the process. For examples having students view and recall details from a story will meet different benchmarks then having students create their own digital story and present it to the class. Depending on the grade level, classroom interests, technology experience, etc. digital stories can be used in a number of ways. Students would need to be familiar with what a digital story is and view several. Digital stories could be an option when creating and presenting projects or could be done as a whole class. These days literacy includes using technology competently and on many levels. In order to be successful in the growing world, these skills are important. The literacy aspect is drawing out information and being able to adapt to new ideas and technologies. Using digital stories allows students to be creative while giving them experience with technology. Digital stories can also foster typing skills, presentation skills, group work, movie making and editing, retelling stories, identifying beginning, middle, and end, concepts of print, etc. These are all areas also influenced and impacted by literacy.

March 20th Post - New Literacy Project

For my new literacies project I decided to do visual literacy using graphic organizing. I chose visual literacy because I am a visual learner and thought it would be interesting to learn more about it. I found that visual literacy is actually a really great tool for students to engage in high-order thinking. Visual literacy is a fun and different way for students to be assessed instead of a work sheet or a test. Visual literacy is videos, pictures, graphic organizers, images, basically anything represented graphically. My partner also used graphic organizing to present visual literacy and we were a little disappointed in it. We all know what graphic organizers are and most of us have used some form of them one time or another. We were excited about learning more about it because we thought there was some new and technology savvy way to do them...there's not. At least what we could find, without having to pay for a program, the graphic organizers we found were the same old worksheets that we had done in school. However, when presenting our projects to the different groups some people came up with ways that you could make graphic organizing different and more fun. My favorite suggestion was using on a smart board and having students up and interactively creating their own graphic organizer.

March 13th Post

I think that word walls are a great idea for ELL classrooms and beginning readers classrooms. I was able to learn a little more about them in Chapter five, where Tompkins talks about word recognition and high-frequency words. My CT has a “word wall” but it is not used to its full potential. She has a few high-frequency words on it but not anywhere near what it could have. The students don't seem to know it is there let alone use it. A couple times when a student has asked me for help on a word like together, I have looked up at the word wall to see if I can use it to help them...it didn't even have the word to and get on it!

For my small group lesson I have been thinking about doing something that will help the two students that I choose with comprehension. Things like word recognition, word identification, fluency, etc. This chapter really helped me jump start on what I want to do with those students to help them become better readers and writers.

February 28th Post

I really related to the chapter on Facilitating Comprehension from Tompkins. My first grade classroom has been really big on folklore lately. My CT is doing a whole unit on comparing and contrasting different versions of folklore. For example, they finished a unit on Little Red Riding Hood stories and now they just started a unit on Cinderella. They have read the Disney version, The Rough Phased Girl, and Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters. They are also planning on reading Yeh - Shen. Although I haven't seen her actually compare and contrast these stories with the students...I have just seen her read the stories to her. I would really be great to see how the students do with this type of higher-order thinking.
Natasha and I almost decided to do this same type of thing for our Language Arts lesson plan. We were going to compare and contrast different versions of The Three Little Pigs. We decided that because they were already doing so much of this with Mrs. Kibbey that they might get bored of it if we do it with them as well. We did how ever use a different version of The Three Little Pigs for our lesson plan, called The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. We then taught them about plot and had them act out the different parts of plot.

Google Earth

For my technology Anja and I decided to do Google Earth. We were looking through the list and saw that integrative maps were on there, but we felt that the google maps would be a little boring, so we went with the Google Earth idea. I have worked with Google Earth many times, just kind of looking around to see what there is, especially looking up addresses that are personal for me. After doing this project I realize how much I have really missed in the many times that I have used it. There is a whole world out there and I had never even thought of "flying" to somewhere other than places that I have already been. Google Earth does a great job of tagging some default places on Earth that are mainly tourist sites, but when looking at them it really makes me feel like I have actually been there.

As we were trying to figure out how we would use Google Earth we wanted to be able to pin point some places that were important to us and then show the class. I was thinking to myself that this would be fun to be able to go to all of these different points with the class because I know that a few have not used Google Earth. However, this was a bit more challenging than I would have expected. Once we downloaded Google Earth we first decided on which points we were going to use and why we thought that they were important. Google Earth is great because it lets you flag those points and you can write an explanation with the points as well. I thought that this was a good idea because when the places were coming up through our presentation, people were able to see why we would have wanted to flag those specific places. There is a place in the top hand menu under tools that lets one change their options. We did not find this until later, but when we did it was really useful. It gave us options of changing our tour speed, the angle at which our tour was looking at the Earth, and an option to show the balloons. These were important because if the tour goes too fast, it does not allow Google Earth to become as clear as it can. There are places on Earth, such as Erickson that let us see what cars were actually in the parking lot. One important thing to remember though, is that this is not at the current time, it is only updated a few times a year.

The reason that we decided to use this for visual literacy is because it is clearly visual. It gives students a chance to view things that they read about in a whole different way. It also gives them the opportunity to search what they want to search. When using this in a school I would be certain to have a day where the students could just have fun with Google Earth. They would first have a list of things to search and then they would have the choice of picking a few other things. We would also go over the many options that you can choose in Google Earth, so that the students would be able to choose the perferences that best work for them. I think that this would be great for older students who are doing research projects because they would be able to find out a lot of cool things about their place or even person of interest by using Google Earth that others might not have heard or seen before. A really cool feature is that when you go to popular places such as the Grand Canyon, people can post pictures so that you are able to see some photos from ground level instead of from the satellite. The feature where you can type a description into the map is also great for the visual literacy part. You could have the students do a project of Michigan and instead of bringing pictures in, they could simply tag those locations and then have the bubble pop up that explains what that place is and why it is important. It would be a great way for all students and especially those who have special needs. It would help them because they would be able to type instead of worrying about their handwriting and it also helps them learn just by looking at something instead of having to read through many books. I feel that it would be another type of motivation for these students because they would be using something different than they use in many other reports.

Finally I think that Google Earth is a great technology and it is very fun to use. The important thing would be to make sure that the students are on track and that they understand how to use it.

New Literacies

I decided to work with social literacy within virtual environments for my new literacies project. I was enthusiastic to work with virtual environments because I had never used a virtual environment that would allow me to interact with other people. One of my friends met her future husband on a virtual environment and although I thought it was odd, I decided to use this opportunity to understand her situation better before making any further judgments.

What I found within second life was far from what I was hoping for. Plagued with advertisements, scams, violence, drugs, and sexual content, I was somewhat disappointed and unsure of how to continue with my project. It came to me that I should use this as a learning experience and share my findings with everyone, rather than scrapping it and trying something new. Although there were some worthwhile sites in second life I felt that the majority of what I found was something that the rest of the class should be warned about. I think I carried this out effectively by beginning my presentation on a much more positive note. As I began to unfold the world of second life to my classmates I began introducing them to the much darker side, and I think that I shocked and horrified several classmates. I think this was really effective because it allowed them to experience what I felt, except that they never had to actually witness or discover things that I found.

One of my favorite projects was Katie's map mash-up that mapped teaching salaries across the U.S. I think that this particular New Literacy brought me in because it made me think about my future and how where I choose to live and teach will affect how I live. It was a very extrinsic motivator but it was effective.

New Literacy Wrap-Up Post

The technology I chose to explore was digital story telling and visual/print literacy. I had heard and viewed several digital stories beforehand, but I had never made one on my own. I decided to use visual literacy because the students I work with at the Child Development Center often times can't read or write. They do engage in story telling and seem to enjoy being read to during group times, but they mainly express themselves through drawing. I read them the book "May There Always be Sunshine" by Jim Gill. We then discussed what they would also like to there to be in the world. I then had them illustrate their idea and record their voices into imovie using a microphone. Since I work in the College of Education tech center I completed the rest of the project there. I scanned the illustrations in and then matched the voices with the particular pictures. I also imported the song of the book and have that playing throughout the story. This fits in with my current definition of literacy. Digital stories are becoming very popular and can be done in multiple ways. It is a way for students to interact with stories, develop their own stories, add on to stories, work in groups, use technology, etc. In most grades literacy is emphasized. In early childhood retelling stories, adding onto to stories, playing with language, and using creative language are all essential. Digital stories can be used across the curriculum and incorporated into all grade levels. Multiple standards and benchmarks can be addressed depending on what subject the digital story is implemented in and the process. For examples having students view and recall details from a story will meet different benchmarks then having students create their own digital story and present it to the class.

Fostering independent learning

I thought the articles about having children figure out an unfamiliar world on their own were very interesting. I will use the strategies discussed because it fosters responsibility in children. It encourages them to take charge of their own learning and not depend on others too quickly. It think it also empowers them to believe they can successfully figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words and encourages them to develop strategies to use when reading in the future. As a teacher, I will use this strategy with all grades. It can be used from lower elementary to high school. I often still encounter words that I'm unsure about and have to look up online or read within the context of a sentence. I also liked how this strategy reaches across subjects because a student can be reading for science and still develop strategies for figuring out an unfamiliar word.