Week 3 (J2, Bruek, O'Byrne)

This week's readings have me thinking about literacy tools in new ways. Both the TPACK and the IRT models of incorporating technology into everyday instruction show us that the purpose of using new literacies is to deepen student knowledge of content. The seamless merging of content, technology, and pedagogy seem like common sense as I think about use of new literacies in my classroom (they are meant to deepen content knowledge - duh!). But when I began thinking about the reality of how we use technology in my school building, I realized that what seems to be so simple and straightforward is not happening in classrooms at all. Instead, teachers are using laptop carts and iPads to almost just "entertain" students because they are simply playing games and using interactive gaming websites to practice skills. Content is not being thought of as a guiding force for using the technology in the first place. It's almost as if students are just getting play time, so that the teacher can work with small groups or assess a group of students, which I understand the need for, but then the technology is not being used to deepen any content knowledge at all. Do you guys see this in your buildings as well? Or are teachers using technology in ways that either assess, or build upon content knowledge? Does it look different at the secondary level, Angela?

One program my school used to utilize, and that almost served as a middle ground between what I see teachers doing in my building and the IRT model, was tickettoread.com. One this website, students were reading stories and assessed on comprehension strategies to build their 'club house'. The students loved how interactive it was, and teachers loved that students were deepening their comprehension through practicing on digital devices. We were able to teach them to highlight text and search new vocabulary words, also. It wasn't the perfect program, but it served a great purpose if used in the right way. We were so sad when our administration decided not to buy licenses for our building again! Something else that I have downloaded onto my phone that can be used to practice comprehension skills is the app called Epic! On this app on my iPhone, I can download books from the Epic! library for students to read on my device. Each book has a GE reading level, lexile level, and most of them even have AR quizzes for them (another program my school utilizes). I allow certain students to use my phone to read in the hallways during bathroom breaks, etc. and they absolutely love it! This isn't following a TPACK or IRT model of integration, but it does provide good practice for my kiddos. Has anyone taught or used the TPACK model to integrate technology into their classrooms, for the purposes of deepening student knowledge? How so?

In the Bruek and O'Byrne articles, I found the idea of the open learning network very interesting, too! It seems to get pretty tricky when thinking through sharing licenses and things, but it made me think of the way so many teachers use teacherspayteachers.com to reuse and reinvent things for their classrooms. I know this isn't a way to share strategies and experiences with other educators, but this is the closest thing I know that related to what the articles were saying. Has anyone had experience with Open Education Resources that support access to knowledge for teachers and students?