Semester Finale

I can't believe this is the end of the semester already! I would like to say, what a journey around the literacy world! I still remember my wonder in the first class about if I would fit in the context of this class because my target audience is way beyond K-12. However, now that I'm close to the finishing line, I realized that I have my pockets full! I have been enjoying this class a great deal, mostly because this class itself is one sample class well fit into the TPACK framework. Technologies were not used for technology's sake. They are all well equipped with well designed pedagogical content knowledge. Moreover, Dr. Schmidt herself has also been modeling the teaching well within the TPACK framework. As Fulton (1989) state, "Teachers teach the way they were taught." Everyone in this class will be teaching the way that Dr. Schmidt has been teaching, which is the most important thing. In fact, I think it's one big gap to be filled in the professional development program for teachers. Technology education faculty should all be modeling their teaching integrating technology to facilitate their teaching and enhance students' learning. That way, the pre-service teachers will be teaching the same way!

The second piece is the resources that are introduced and put together on our class wiki. I'm mostly impressed with diversified online materials available for K-12 education. Along with the technologies introduced in class, such as Blogging, Ning, iMovie, Podcast, Etherpad, Kid Pix, online storybooks,etc., teachers wouldn't have to worry about spending too much time trying to locate appropriate materials for literacy development. Even though my target student are university level students, I can see myself using some of the resources in my classroom, such as Etherpad for collaborative writing, which I have already used for my tutoring project.

The third piece is the Blogging assignment, which has given all of us the opportunity to share with and learn from one another's experience. I'm also very pleased to know the use of Google Reader, which in fact has solved the biggest problem I have had when I first used Blogging to teach reading and discussion. With what I know now, I would have been able to plan the class more efficiently and effectively should I be given the chance to teach the same class again, of which I am confident students will benefit further.

As stated, this journey around the literacy world has been fruitful! This is the end of Fall 2009, yet, it's not supposed to be an end but a new beginning! What's truly critical is for everyone of us to continue doing what and how we have been taught and take the opinion leader role when you have your own classroom. That way, everyone of us will be able to make our contribution in teaching WITH technology, which we all know plays a big part in enhancing the learning among our students across all subjects!

So, dear colleagues, fasten your seat belt and Bon Voyage!

Google Site-a brand new look!

I am amazed by the new version of Google Site, fantastic! My first encounter was in Spring 2009 where it was introduced in a technology class. And I had build everything from scratch and it was very time consuming putting in those html commands/codes. It's all history now. Upon preparation for the CI201 class, I discovered the new look and features of Google Site, which is fantastic.

To begin with, it is provided a number of different templates for different purposes, among which some are great for classroom use, such as project wiki and classroom templates. With the preset templates, teachers and students will not have to spend as much time in page layout. Moreover, the improved tool bar makes it a lot easier to embed images, videos, and tables and the ready set links to Google Docs features makes it really easy to insert document and powerpoint presentation onto your Google site. One really cool feature is Google Forms, which you can use to create a test, have it inserted on the Google Site and collect testing results sorted.

What is Google Site good for in classrooms?

For Teachers
It can be used as a class management tool. Unlike WebCT or Moodle, Google site are free and you can easily build a literacy lesson with this new version that promotes and encourages interactive and collaborative learning. In fact, that's one tool that I have included for my Technology Lesson Plan. Moreover, like WebCT and Moodle, Google Site can be set as a private and secured environment where only people invited are allowed access to.

Here's one simple lesson plan that I have created for my CI201 lab on Google applications.
https://sites.google.com/site/ci201section8fall2009/Google-Application-Lab

For Students
It can also be a good tool for students to build their class portfolio upon. I know we are currently using iWeb for CI201 students to build up their portfolio, which is easy to use. However, with Google Site, students will have more flexibility to incorporate their creativity and build up high quality portfolio website for their credentials.

I'll continue exploring further how Google Site can be integrated into classrooms and put it to practice for my Listening and Speaking class in Spring 2010.

Etherpad-perfect for collaborative writing

Etherpad is awesome! I have been using Google Docs and Wiki for collaboration writing for my classes and my own studies, however, there are some limitations, including problematic same time multiple editing as well as tracking of individual works. With Etherpad, these two problems no longer exist. One more advantage is that each collaborator is color coded, which makes it easy to identify the collaboration among peers in the group. The activity we have done in class was a great example. In addition to demonstrating individual's writing, it gives students to learn from peers. Having the group to complete the story together allows not only construction and creativity of writing but also peer editing to occur in the production process. Etherpad definitely is one great tools for teachers of all levels to incorporate into their classrooms in literacy developing process. The only concern is that it's not a secured or private environment. Anyone can join or intrude the collaboration as long as he has the url. Teachers have to be extra cautious while working with young learners. Other than that, I'm confident that it will work well into all literacy classroom.

TPACK Lesson Plan Project Helps Me See Clearer...

This assignment has given me the great opportunity to go back and revisit the classes that I have taught and those that I have planned within the TPACK framework. I realized how some technology advancement has made the use of technology more accessible and feasible in classrooms. I am speaking from personal experience.

The first class I taught integrating technology was a reading and discussion class where the Blogger was incorporated in my class for students to share their thoughts. I created a blog for this class. At the same time, each student also had to create his own blog. The biggest challenge I had was to track every student's blog and for each student to track others' blogs, which would have been solved with Google Reader as what we have been using for our blogging assignments.

Another class was a reading class where it is designed for students to enhance their listening and speaking English through American Cultures, which was hosted on the university customized class management platform. However, it didn't allow me to upload listening materials nor did it let student to upload their recordings. By the way, it was a lot of work for students to record their speech and for me to get hold of the recordings. Moreover, students were left with not much choice but PowerPoint for the final presentation they were required to deliver. This class would have been taught completely different should I teach it again now knowing what I have known. There will be more alternative tools that can be incorporated into my classroom that will facilitate my teaching and enhance studnets' learning, which is what technology is all about. In other words, it is critical for teachers to keep themselves up to date about what's available at all times so that technology can be incorporated nicely into the content and pedagogy of their classrooms. This is in fact a big help for me in the write up for this technology lesson plan assignment. :-)!

Kiss the Cow

While I was reading the book this morning, it just came to me that I should be able to use children books like Kiss The Cow with my adults students who are L2 learners. This book in particular focuses on past tense verbs as well as comparative and superlative adjectives. A lot of children books tend to have one particular theme or lesson to learn with specific focus on sentence structures or certain genre of vocabulary, which might fit perfectly for L2 language learners. I would like to start exploring this possibility of using children books for adult L2 learners.

On the subject of children books, I would like to say that I'm happy that I have learned about all the resources about online books. I had an opportunity to teach one particular class where all my students were mothers who would like to learn how to read English story books to their children, which is by the way a fascinating teaching experience for me. Back then, I wasn't aware of all the resources that we have. In fact, maybe there were not as many back then. However, I'll be able to plan and teach the class with a brand new pedagogy should I be given the opportunity to teach the same class again. I actually would love to teach again knowing what I have known now. :-)

Part II: Successful digital stories in language classroom

Digital storytelling can be used by language teachers at all levels in many ways, from introducing new vocabulary/phrase/grammar, structures to helping students enhance and synthesize language output, spoken and written. It also can help students organize thoughts/ideas as they learn to create stories for various audience and present their ideas and knowledge through target language in an individualized and meaningful way. Here are some successful stories to share with you.

Rance-Roney (2008) successfully took her students exploring English and their feelings toward US culture through “What Is an American?” digital story project. Learners’ first digital story production involved writing an “I AM” poem and producing that poem in a digital format. YuLing (Lucy) began her story by saying: “I am Lucy. Lovable. Kind. Open minded. I love nature. I hate complaining.” This project of restricted writing allowed learners to focus on learning how the technology works, mainly inserting digital images. Then, they moved from defining who they were to describing “Americans.” Sunwha, through search on Korean Google, found a website that contained sketched figures illustrating emotions, which fit perfectly with the message she was trying to portray. Her voice spoke:

“One tradition of the Korean culture is for people to take off shoes when they go into their houses. I moved to America. People do not take off shoes. One day, my landlady and her family came up to my room. They didn’t take off shoes. What a day! What a dirty shoes on my floor! I can’t imagine that there are dirty germs on my room….After they were gone, I cleaned up my floor, scrubbing, brushing. Finally, I’m down with my work and I enjoy it. Look at my shiny floor. Ooh-la-la.”

Rance-Roney (2008) stated that at completion of project, each student had captured a slice of life in the United States that was a keep-sake memory, but more than that, they had acquired and practiced a great deal of languages. Moreover, they become entranced by the power of their own voices and their own images.

Another effective example occurred in Even Start, a family literacy and parenting education program at Three Oaks Elementary School. Bamibi Fischer teaches immigrants to increase literacy using digital storytelling successfully. Fischer stated that she felt that digital storytelling was a unique and progressive way for the adults to learn. She said, “Because of the process of writing and speaking, it was a winner in promoting the acquisition of language skills.” (Feldman 2007)

The third successful story is in Anna Bowe’s French class at Lely High School in Naples. She stated that learners’ reaction went from tentative to very positive and they seemed proud of what they were able to pull together. Most importantly, the production process brought a diverse class together and she subsequently saw one of the more reserved learner started regularly offering to help other. She concluded that digital storytelling has revealed its potential in language classroom because it helps create a genuine community among learners where the language of the written word is embedded and enriched by visual image and aural elements, so catchy for today’s students. She said, “They never mumbled at the idea of editing and re-editing, because their product is real and they see the reason it should look good, sound good, and feel good.”

Hazel Geier, a retired Lee County teacher who has been chronicling use of digital storytelling technique in local high schools, took part in the National Writing Project at FGCU in 2004-06. She found that students in three different high schools all have embraced the new approach of writing, learning new technology skills, demonstrated creativity and critical thinking, and have developed social skills that involve supporting one another, listening and evaluating and appreciating one another’s efforts.”

Iannotti (2006) employed digital storytelling in her digital storytelling projects for ESL students. Through the process of creating the story, students were developing an understanding of story organization and transition. It is also brought to light the contrast between spoken and written English. Moreover, Iannotti used students’ digital stories for diagnosis on individual pronunciation problems which was included in the lesson plans targeting on discrete sounds that students have the most problems with. The scripts were used to explore sentence-level stress, encouraging students to consider what words and ideas should be emphasized, contrasting function and content word stress. She concluded that digital stories rule one: keep it simple. Iannotti stated that she has learned two very important lessons as an instructor: first, you need a manageable project with realistic goals to ensure success for the students; second, a young wife trying to make crab soup for her mother-in-law’s birthday makes for an amazing digital story.

The digital story made by Meg Garcia, a high school English and Art History teacher from southern California, is an outstanding example of authentic, object-based storytelling (Springer, Kajder, and Borst Brazas 2004). Meg's story revolved around the child she hopes one day to have - a daughter, to be named Matisse after the French early Twentieth Century artist. His colorful, decorative paper cutouts provided the visual foundation of the narrative. The story starts as follows:

Matisse Margaret Garcia will be the name of my daughter. I want my child to be unique and use her personal pair of scissors to craft the shape of her life. I want her imagination to be as vivid as gouache on paper . . . I want her to be named after Matisse, who, in the face of crippling arthritis could not keep the sea snail in the depths of the ocean . . .

Several factors make Meg's digital story successful. First, she chose a subject that she is comfortable enough in her knowledge, Matisse and his work to allow her personal reflections to remain center stage. Second, she strikes exactly the right emotional chord throughout. Her sensitivity to the artworks is keen and the associations gleaned from each personal and real. Third, words are chosen with a precision and economy that allow the individual images to carry the force of the story. Last but not least, what cannot be conveyed here, in writing, is the expressive power of her own voice, which, in fact, is the most powerful element of digital storytelling.

The same factors can be found in some of the digital stories that Dr. Schmidt showed us in class last week. Some of them are absolutely powerful, which is the kind of impact a traditional written story can never achieve. In fact, I have made one based on my first midwest adventure in summer 2008, which has been a fascinating experience for me. I know how much impact it will have on students through the production process because I have gone through it myself, which is one critical step for teachers to go through. I will continue exploring and I have to say that digital storytelling has definitely found its place in my classroom.

Why digital storytelling in language classroom?

It is commonly said of ESL/EFL practitioners that we are constantly looking for new ways to teach language as well as new materials and new tricks to keep learning interesting for the students and for ourselves (Iannotti 2006). Technology offers a number of opportunities for connecting classrooms to the world and learners have many options for learning and communication ranging from instant messaging to blogging to podcasting. Why digital storytelling? I have personally experienced the power of digital storytelling, undergoing the whole process, from pre-production, production, post-production, to showcase, I have realized that digital storytelling can be a powerful tool from the applied linguistics aspect. Digital storytelling can be a compelling and satisfying process that helps learners explore the meaning of their own experience, give value to it, and communicate personals experience on multiple levels to others through the production of their language output, both spoken and written. Moreover, it is learner-centered in the best way imaginable as it asks learners to make meaning out of experience we acknowledge significant. I have a strong passion about what digital storytelling can bring to the language classroom and would like to share the literature review that I have done, including some successful stories.

Digital storytelling has been found facilitating the convergence of four student-centered learning strategies: student engagement, reflection for deep leaning, project-based learning, and the effective integration of technology into instruction (Barrett 2006). Moreover, Gils (2005) suggested many advantages of using digital storytelling in education, including personalizing learning experience and improving the involvement of students in the process of learning. Furthermore, Combs and Beach (1994) study indicated that storytelling improves learners’ communication skills as well as creates a class bond through shared experiences.

Studies have also found that digital storytelling facilitates the language learning process. For language learners, producing a digital story engages them in creating, using, and perfecting all of their emerging language skills in remarkable synergy (Rance-Roney 2008). In other words, in the process of storytelling, learners become more creative, gain speaking skills, and improve their verbal organizing skills and ability to empathize. Moreover, with the advancement of technology, it is made easier using digital images to enhance the visual communication and appealing of storytelling, which involves planning, writing, editing, illustrating, and producing the components so that we communicate “the heartfelt essence, not just the events.” (Benton 2006)
Tsou, Wang & Tseng (2006) found that integrating digital storytelling into language curriculum is a creative language learning technique that can improve learners’ level of learning in reading, writing, speaking and listening. In addition, it also enhances the teaching in the language classroom. In Ohler’s DAOW of literacy, four major literacy components involved in the process of digital storytelling, including digital, art, oral, and writing, blend well in a digital storytelling environment where all components can reinforce each other and lead to improvement in learners’ literacy and expression in all area. In a language classroom, the emphasis should weigh more on the last two components even though the former two definitely have added value to the performance of language output. The writing may not be the final product of a digital story, however, the writing skills that students employ in the process of creating their digital story embrace many aspects of writing that are considered important in school as well as the world outside school. The oral literacy, an important role in digital storytelling, usually shows as the final outcome which provides learners varied and abundant opportunities to learn, produce and acquire spoken language. In other words, digital stories require students to synthesize the techniques of both creative and expository writing as well as compelling narration (spoken output) in order to produce a successful piece of media, therefore, are considered as an effective and efficient tool in language learning.

In addition to findings of the previous studies, whether to use digital storytelling in language classroom should lay on learners’ responses, which may lead to strong motivations and have an impact on learners’ outcome. Students from an L2 language instructor, Kristy McGeoch’s class appeared to respond positively to their digital storytelling experience.

“You will remember it if you see it in two year, I will remember every single person and funny moments – I think that was the motivation for everyone to work that hard.” ~Juergen, Austria
“So when I showed the digital story I was very proud of me. Also I thought I got the best present from AU.” ~Betty, Korea
“ I really feel like we are a family, to do the whole thing and show each other our own story – it make each other feel warm. I really think we have been close friends. So that’s why I loved these classes.” ~Nicole, China
Retrieved April 28, 2009 from http://www.kirstymcgeoch.com/

I personally have incorporated digital storytelling in the curriculum for one writing class. The digital story about one Taiwanese Mythology, the Origin of Moon Festival, was made with no narration but only key vocabularies to go with each digital image. The assignment for the students was to write a story based on their interpretation of the visuals, music, and key vocabulary, which had generated quite amazing quality works, both in content and language. Then, the follow up assignment was for students to tell a digital story from their own cultures, which had given students another opportunity to not only demonstrate their language proficiency level but also bring their cultures to the awareness of the peers. I consider it a successful evidence of what digital storytelling can do in language classroom. Even though my students are at university level, I am sure that digital storytelling can work effectively for younger learners. In fact, through the literature review process, I have not found many studies or research done among university level students, which actually makes me excited because it means that there’s plenty for me to do!

Electronic Reading Workshop for preservice teachers

Larson, L. C. (2008). Electronic reading workshop: Beyond books with new literacies and instructional technologies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52 (2), 121-131.

Research has shown that embedding technology in literacy methods courses is an effective factor in preparing tomorrow's teachers to weave technology into their lesson plans and consequently, affect K-12 students during field experience and in future classrooms. Therefore, Larson decided to help her undergraduate students explore ways in which new literacies can be intertwined with the electronic reading workshop (ERW) that has four components: literature selection, literature response journals, literature conversations, and project response options, with technologies incorporated.


Literature Selection
Instead of print text, ebooks, online reading materials, and hypertexts were used. Larson stated that electronic reading experience was unique to individual readers, several trends emerged. One preservice teacher stated, "As I read, I would highlight passages that i thought to be important to the story and then use the text box tool to explain the significance of those passages....I personally used those tools as a reflective element on my own progress and thoughts throughout the story." In fact, in Larson's Language Arts Method course, 17 of the 22 assessed at least one editing tool. Moreover, while enjoying these features, the preservice teachers identified possible uses for such tools in their future elementary or middle-level classrooms, such as to attach a document with spelling words, definition, questions or prompts related to the text. Prior to engaging in this experience, 20 of the participants perceived the idea of an ebook as "daunting or unfavorable", however, at the end of the book, all participants rated the ebook reading experience as positive even though still favored traditional literature.

literature response journals
Larson introduced emails and blogs for the correspondences between teachers and students. In class, the preservice teachers were also introduced Rosenblatt's (1978) transactional theory or reader response and encouraged participants to write in a literature response journal to provide a continuing account of "thoughts, emotions, ideas, and textual transactions" using a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word.


literature conversations
This component allows students to discuss their reading experience with their peers through electronic forms of communication, including emails exchanges, message board threaded discussion groups, and real-time online chat. A quick overview of the message board and its functions along with a lesson in composing and assessing quality literature response prompts were provided for the preservice teacher before the first discussion prompts were posted. A list of ideas why traditional face-t0-face literature conversations may not meet the needs of all students were generated and advantages and disadvantages of online discussion were identified. .


project response option
The preservice teachers collaborated with their group members to generate a unique literature extension project that reflected their personal interests as well as their ideas for potential implementation in their future classrooms, of which a distinctive projects emerged, including an example of a virtual guide to the literature, which is a series of PowerPoint slides with internet links serving as a resource for children reading the book. The second example is a digital oral history, a multimedia presentation created with sounds, digital photography, scanned documents and a voice recording. This group also shared steps for creating this project. The other projects include a 1870 newspaper project, a live broadcast, and more.

Larson stated this ERW not only provides an accessible framework for teachers who wish to enhance their current literacy curriculum by integrating commonly available technologies but also helped prepared the preservice teachers for the upcoming challenge of integrating new literacies and differentiating instruction to meet the needs of their future students. I think it's critical for the preservice teachers to go through the actual learning process, which situates them better into the TPACK framework while preparing for their curriculum.

A total PK-6 Shock!

I am serious about the shock that I have gone through in class last week! I have always been aware that extra precautions need to be taken into consideration and implemented bringing young learners online. However, listening to real stories and experience from Denise and classmates has brought me to realize how big the challenge is for Pk-6 teachers to include technology in their classrooms, which is in fact beyond my anticipation. However, I still think it's absolutely worth the efforts trying and making it happen for the following reason:

"What makes today's kids really sip up and fires their neutral fibers? Technology. Kids don't see laptops, MP3 players, cell phones, PDAs, DVD players, and video games as technology, it's just life. Therefore, schools need to connect education to their students' lives with technology."~ Todd E. Wright, a forth grade teacher (Barone and Wright, 2008)

I have been dealing with university students who are fully functioning adults, therefore, I had never worried about getting parents consent forms for any of the online activities from my syllabus. However, the discussions have alerted to my attention in terms of the security issue and their reaction to online crisis management for young adults, which has been overlooked in my teaching career. For that, I'm grateful to have the opportunity to sit in the discussion.

A successful case study in teaching literacy with technology

Barone, D. & Wright, T.E., (2008). Literacy instruction with digital and media technologies, The Reading Teacher, 62(4), 292-302.


This is one teacher's experience of using laptops in his fourth-grade classroom demonstrates successful approaches to teaching with technology. Todd, the second author teaches at Fernley Elementary, a rural Nevada elementary school with about 565 students. In order to gain an understanding of what learning is like in this classroom, it is shared from a narrative centered perspective of a student, Michale, to bring the use of technology as a tool to life.

Routines in Michael's Literacy Instruction

As soon as Michael entered his classroom, he takes out his laptop to check the class webpage and pick up files that his teacher has prepared for the day, including learning centers, writing prompts, graphic organizers, digital worksheets, URLs, media files, or corrected work. He then synchronized his class calendar with the teacher's so he has the up-to-date homework and event schedule. Then, he checks to see what the morning sponge is (an activity to keep students engaged as Todd checks in with individual student). This activity, along with the class webpage, demonstrate teh hybridity evident in new literacy documents, where students use word processing, drawing, or music in a single document. (Lemka, 1998)

The teacher leads the class through a short lesson on a reading comprehension or vocabulary strategy. When the story is completed, Michael spends a substantial part of their literacy block arranged in a Seat-Center-Circle organizational structure, where technology is integrated throughout the first two parts in which students work independently. In Michale's case, he does one of the three things: respond to a writing prompt on his computer that is directly related to the story that day; complete a digital practice sheet or worksheet; or a book study where multiple titles of books related to the theme of the core program are offered.

During breaks, students can stay in classroom and engage in non-instructional activities, which is particularly enjoyable for those who do not have internet access at home.

Differentiated Literacy Instruction

It is expected for Todd to prepare students for high-stakes assessment, like the other teachers, therefore, students shifted to a differentiated literacy instruction, written. He has students read articles from the KidBiz website and then complete the thought questions which are questions or written prompts related to one article that call for students to use information from what they have read to write a constructed response, very similar to criterion-referenced test constructed response questions. Then, he leads students i a discussion about the writing traits, ideas and content before they actually start writing and confers with individuals about their writing and how to improve it while students are writing, which demonstrates the movement from traditional literacy practice, such as reading a book, to new literacy through web writing.

End of the Day Routines:
Michael picks up his homework from the server and tucks his laptop into his backpack, getting ready for out-of-school learning.

Do new technologies result in student learning?

Corio (2005) indicated that there were improvements noted in comprehension when teachers were give instruction in new technology use. Warschauer (2006) also documented gains in motivation, writing competency, and critical thinking when laptops were used in the classroom. However, the biggest hurdle when using new technology in the classroom is that most assessments evaluate student's performance on their traditional literacy and content knowledge. Teachers at Fernley routinely examine the assessments that students complete, both formative and outcome, and then refine their instruction. Since 2002, Fernley has made AYP (adequate yearly progress) each year and during 2006-7, they qualified as a high achieving school for the growth in students who reached benchmark criteria.

It's encouraging to see it happen at Fernley successfully taking students on the journey of new literacy through technology. It takes not only the fund and support from the principal/school. The more important issue lays on teachers' knowledge and attitudes about new literacy and the use of technology. In other words, helping teachers understand the advantages of using technology in their classroom and providing them professional training in the use and application of technology in classrooms are on top priority. As Dr. Schmidt and Denise mentioned in class last week, it has been found that students surrounded by new literacy instruction do not do worse in traditional assessments, which I think is critical. This at least has won us a ticket to bring technology into our classrooms. What we need to do now it to continue trying until we find ways for technology to take our students performs better, both in traditional as well as in real life assessments!

One word of note, this article is actually long. I chose to show Michael's typical day because the example speaks for itself in establishing new literacy among students through technology. If you are interested in reading the whole article, I can send you the file.

The missing piece of the technology integration course

Sosa, T. (2009). Visual Literacy: The missing piece of your technology integration course. TechTrends, 53(2), 55-58.


The author, Teri Sosa, discovered this missing piece through her redesign of an undergraduate instructional technology lass for preservice teachers. The purpose of this course was to teach how to use technology to design and enhance instruction, including both training in technology skills and instruction on how to apply technology to the classroom in a meaningful way, pretty much like our CI 201. The list of technology competencies includes a newsletter project, a PowerPoint project (including sound and video), a grade book project, a web quest project, and a portfolio web page. She found that students demonstrated mastery of skills and were able to translate these skills into projects that enhances instruction, however, "confusing and inconsistent visual cues of class-crated products often made navigation difficult." (p56) In other words, the products do not "look good!"

Realizing that students had done everything that they were asked to do, Sosa recognized that one important element was left out and additional instruction on "visual literacy" should be included in pedagogy, including balancing of images and text on a page, use of fonts, displays fo word art, color, selection of applicable images, and appropriate spacing. Experimenting with an action research approach that involves five steps covering the principles of visual design and analysis and comparison between pre- and post-instruciton products, Sosa found that students' products "look better" after receiving visual literacy instruction. One additional interesting result was the change in students' attitude toward their own work. The evidence was that students exchanged their URLs for their portfolio web pages and forwarded them to family and friends. The results of this study indicate that visual literacy truly is the missing piece of many technology integration course. Sosa stated that students in her experiment course produced work that was more usable and more professional looking when they attended to visual design principles. She also mentioned that the benefit of introducing design principles lies beyond the implementation, but in teaching students to consciously attend to the visual as an important element as well as to inspect visuals with a critical eye.

I personally agreed with Sosa in terms of including visual literacy in instruction, which will definitely enhance the products students produce to a more appealing level where they can be actually used in classroom. Teachers, who have gone through the complete production process, will understand better the advantages as well as the difficulties students might encounter in the process. Moreover, being able to show their own works puts in the same seat as students, which help build the collaboration and learning community mode, definitely a project based learning approach. I think it is worth some efforts and class time for instruction on visual literacy, which students can apply beyond classroom after all.

New Literacy? or Not?

Dr. Schmidt's comments about new literacy inspired me to look further in this subject. I have been working on one project for a literacy class where I conduct a discourse analysis in the differences between written text and spoken language. An extract about the term, digital storytelling, was extracted from the Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling website (hosted by University of Houston College of Education) for comparison with three interviews describing the same topic. Those three speakers are graduate students from TESL/AL/ALT program of English Department, of whom two are native speakers and one L2 speakers, therefore, considered high proficiency speakers. Upon the preliminary analysis, the spoken discourse are found to be filled with pauses, fillers, repetitions, false starts and discontinuity in thoughts, single clauses and syntactic fragments whereas the written text is well organized and constructed with grammatically accurate complete sentences, which is due to the nature of how two sets of discourse were produced. The discourse analysis confirms the existence of the linguistic differences between the two different modes of language, which I would really love to share with the students of the CI 201 Lab hoping to help them understand the characteristics and see the needs to improve their written language and style. Grading their first assignments got me wandering if they are aware of the fact that written literacy differs from spoken literacy. Nowadays with so much socializing for the young generation takes place in texting and chatting contexts where they practically write what they would say, therefore, the differences between spoken and written discourse may not always be obvious. Fang (2008) also pointed out that young generation can’t tell the difference between oral and written discourse because they are used to text and chat. Furthermore, according to Thompson (2009), 38% of the writing that Stanford students did took place outside of the classroom, in other words, life writing. Maybe technology has pushed us on the road to new literacy. That is to say, the only place where the differences between written and spoken discourse are significant is in schools (Crowhurst 1999). However, I agree that students need to gradually “reconstitute their lexical grammar in the more abstract written mode” (Unsworth 1994) to meet the written literacy standard of academic works. It is obvious that, with the practice of students’ new literacy with technology, it will take them some time to become competent in handling both the production and the comprehension of written language. What's important is that teachers are aware of the differences, so they are in a better position to offer support and help to their students. As Perez (2004) puts it, “When teachers can see the strategies that children are using to interact and make sense of print and when those strategies can be viewed within the context of a natural, ordered, developmental process, teachers can support, reinforce, and provide a context for the continued development of these processes. “ (p 71)

References
Crowhurst, M. (1994). Language and learning across the curriculum. Scraborough, ON: Allyn and Bacon Canada.
Fang, Z. (2008). Going beyond the Fab Five: helping students cope with the unique linguistic challenges of expository reading in intermediate grades. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51 (6), 476-487.
Perez, B. (2004). Writing Across writing systems. In Perez, B. (Ed.), Socialcultural contexts of language and literacy (57-75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Thompson, C. (2009). Clive Thompson on the new literacy. Retrieved September 11, 2009 from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson.
Unsworth, L. (1999). Developing critical understanding of the specialized language of school science and history texts: A functional grammatical perspective. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42 (7), 508-521.

Modeling the TPACK Framework

Our class last Wednesday has set one terrific example of a class that is conducted in the TPACK framework! Instead of lecturing about it, Dr. Schmidt walked the walk adopting a constructivist approach where students play active and critical roles in making contribution to the knowledge generated and the learning occurred in classrooms. The three major elements of TPACK framework have been thoroughly planned and executed in instruction and I walked out of the classroom with confidence that the goal of understanding the TPACKI framework is absolutely achieved, which motivates me to get on with the revision of one paper about applying digital storytelling in language classroom within the TPACK framework for publication. I would like to extend my personal thanks to Dr. Schmidt. Solute!

Adventure in Literacy Wonderland

Have a safe ride!

Literacy is my theme of my Fall 2009 because I'm taking two literacy related classes, which gives me the opportunity to take a closer look at the subject and to be honest, it's been interesting and inspiring to some extent. The fundamental question raised was what exactly literacy is. From the second language learning perspective, I find it easy to define because learning and teaching English in an EFL environment,which is where I have been, has made it simple where English literacy happens in classrooms, which is an isolated and decontextualized environment. However, I have always had the feeling that there's something missing in the picture. Students do well in the exams, including those standardized tests, such as TOEFL and GRE, however,they found themselves lost win an English speaking environment, which has happened to most cases. I have come to realize that what's missing is the social and cultural aspects of literacy in the curriculum. Literacy evolves with time and generations and across societies and cultures, which I think is best described in our reading this week, "literacy is described as a 'moving target' that will continually change according to what society expects from a literate person" (Kinzer & Leander, 2003, p547, cited in Schmidt & Gurbo, ). In results, we, as teachers/educators, are responsible to keep ourselves on top of the latest and our students in touch with different faces of literacy, especially for EFL language learners. I can't wait to take on this adventure in the literacy wonderland where I will explore the subject from different aspects and hopefully discover ways to help my students become literacy both in classrooms as well as in the real world.

Theme of Fall 2009

Technology in Literacy- PK to 6? Or university level?

I have had worries that I won’t fit in this class because it is specified that this class is for PK-6 teachers and my target audience has always been EFL/ESL (English as foreign/second language) students at university level, which might make the direction of my thoughts and opinions deviate from the class. However, I have decided to stay in this class. It’s not that the worry has disappeared, but I felt like the discussion and the hands on activities motivate me to think harder and most importantly, outside the box. Even though technology applied for different level literacy classes should vary, I realized in the last two weeks that the foundation and the baseline are the same and some of the technology/software can be applied to all level literacy classes as long as the pedagogy content has been thought through and justified. Therefore, I have decided to take on the challenge from this perspective, which in fact is exciting. Wordle is one good example. Different uses of Wordle for PK-6 literacy classes have been identified in class, however, it can also be used as a tool to investigate the uses of vocabulary in writing classes at university level. Wordle makes it easy to identify the frequency of target vocabulary appeared in writing assignments of each individual and of the class, which serves as a check point that helps students understand their writing better and teachers learn about students’ status of vocabulary uses. Another example is the use of Webspiration. It definitely can be a useful tool for PK to 6 classes, yet, it can also serve the purpose for university level students, speaking from my personal experience. I have used Webspiration as a pre-writing tool to guide my students through their writing assignments. On this note, people use Webspiration to create their mind map by starting a chart most of the time. However, it can also work the other way around, which is very effective as well. Students can choose to start by writing down the outline, which then can be turned into a mind map in Webspiration. I believe there will more yet to come in class, which will challenge my creativity in pedagogy content knowledge and help me learn and grow. I so much look forward to it!