Literacy Exploration Project

For my project, I decided to use a scrapblog (www.scrapblog.net). A scrapblog is an online scrapbook creator. You can incorporate videos, audio, photos, and text into an easy to use program. Scrapblog also provides designing tools including stickers, backgrounds, and frames, and text boxes. What made this technology so easy to use, was the “grab-and-drag” technology. Everything that you wanted put onto your scrapbook page could be dragged onto the slide. Also, through scrapblog, videos could be easily uploaded directly from other websites, like youtube.com, with just the click of a button. Once you have successfully created your scrapblog, you can choose to publish it. Once published, the scrapblog can be viewed by anyone. Uploading the project onto the class wiki, was made easy because of the “share” option after saving my scrapblog. When viewing the scrapblog, the project can be watched as a slideshow, or the viewer can click arrows to move from page to page at their convenience. Anyone viewing your published work, can leave comments directly under the blog.

If my technological literacy was less developed, I think that scrapblog would have taken me a lot longer to learn. Even so, a fair amount of time was spent just learning the dynamics of the program. For example, I had to learn how to access videos, and how to share and publish my scrapblog.

Before I was accepted into the teaching school, I thought of literacy as being the ability to read and write. When I took TE 301 last fall, I realized that there was a little more to literacy than reading and writing. When I began this class, I could define literacy in one sentence, “the ability to use language to read, write, listen and speak”. My conception of literacy changed again, when I had the opportunity to explore different kinds of literacy during class, for the first part of this project. When reading about different kinds of literacy including emotional, cultural, and environmental literacy, I found that literacy can be defined in much more general terms. I can now say that my understanding of literacy is a lot more developed because from researching environmental literacy and viewing my classmate’s literacy assignments. I someone were to ask me to define literacy now, I would say literacy involves “stepping stones” in learning that enable an individual to develop knowledge and potential, and to participate fully and effectively in society. For example, an environmentally literate person will have the knowledge and skills to make decisions about environmental issues that are affecting their community. A person who is emotionally literate, can express their emotions in an appropriate way which is an important communication skill. And a person who is technologically literate may be able to gain more from their educational experiences.

I now have a better understanding of the importance to provide effective literacy instruction. Effective literacy instruction incorporates all different kinds of literacy into a curriculum. The traditional view of literacy (reading and writing) can be taught through learning of all kinds of literacy in the classroom. Effective literacy instruction results in the development of every student’s literacy knowledge. Also, multiple types of technology can be used in order to teach literacy effectively. If I were to teach scrapblog to Mrs. Tillman’s second grade classroom, I think they would be extremely motivated to use the new technology in their writing. They could make scrapblogs to teach their classmates about a book that they read, or an animal that they researched. Students would be able to revise and edit their projects online. In order to be successful with the technology I think that students will have to be able to: W.PR.02.01 set a purpose, consider audience, and begin to use styles and patterns derived from studying authors’ craft when writing a narrative or informational piece (GLCE’s). Students need to have a plan and set a purpose before they start to use scrapblog, or else their thoughts may be too unorganized. A lot of class time would have to be given to teach the students how to use scrapblog, and the students would have to learn to be very patient when learning the new technology. I think that the benefits of learning a new technology would outweigh the wasted class time, because students would be able to communicate in a new way while developing their literacy skills.