Harnessing
new technologies ‘a reflection’
Having a greater
understanding of digital technology allows teachers to build upon their own
subject knowledge which they can use to scaffold children’s digital literacy
skills. Using a multimodal context within the classroom will help children to
gain collaborative, creative and critical understanding of literacy according
to Futurelab (2010) There are a variety of ways that this can be accomplished
such as linking phones that have video footage to film making (Futurelab 2010),
which is a form of storytelling; through to class website that again help
children to work in a collaboration thus gaining social skills (Hasley 2007).
However I used Tagxedo which is similar to wordle and felt that this could be a
great tool for writing such as storytelling and poetry as children can build
their word banks up to use within the frame of the picture, this allows
children to keep focused on what their purpose is, whilst still being creative.
Boyd (2010) agrees, suggesting that this is a simple tool that can help
children to ‘build their vocabulary on a whole range of topics’. One of the
biggest benefits to having a multimodal classroom is that it inspires,
motivates and challenges children, at the same time being achievable to every
child, whatever their ability (Hasley, 2010)
As a ‘digital
immigrant’ (Futurelab, 2010) I find it very daunting when thinking how to teach
digital literacy to children in a way which will motivate and inspire them to
progress with their literacy knowledge through different modes. However,
according to Fountain, 2005; Huffaker, 2005 and Valenza, 2006 (cited in Hasley,
2007, p 104) ‘web based technologies are an ideal entry point, as they require
little technological expertise’ this will be something worth considering when
looking for inspiring lesson concerning literacy.
Word count 294
Boyd, B. (2010) The Literacy Adviser, Literacy for
the 21st Century [Online] http:// www.literacyadviser.wordpress.com/tag/tagxedo
(Accessed 10.02.2013)
Futurelab (2010) Digital Literacy Across the
Curriculum [Online] http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf
Hasley, S. (2007) ‘Embracing emergent technologies
and envisioning new ways of using them for literacy learning in the primary
classroom’ English teaching; Practice and
Critique 6 (2) pp 99-107
Using word clouds to support poetry as you described is a lovely idea. Shape poetry could be a useful context as children who struggle with drawing could use the website's shapes. Also they would have to pick out the most effective words or short phrases, or simply descriptive words about whichever picture they choose.
ReplyDeleteThe downfall to wordclouds in general, as I found, is that not all of the shapes will relate to what you are doing.
This ties in with what Futurelab (2010) mentioned - learning about which digital technologies are appropriate for the task.
As you wrote, it is a brilliant way of building vocabulary and they can always be referred back to. They could also support elicitation as could digital mindmaps.