Teaching English
Technology in the English Classroom
How do schools succeed or fail in utilizing the kinds of literacies students bring with them into the classroom?
I wrote a paper based on observations of an actual classroom which attempted to answer that question. Naturally, technology came into play a lot in my discussion of the issue. I wanted to see how "in-touch" schools are with the multiple literacies with which students are already engaged.
My discoveries can be summed up by these three main points:
I wrote a paper based on observations of an actual classroom which attempted to answer that question. Naturally, technology came into play a lot in my discussion of the issue. I wanted to see how "in-touch" schools are with the multiple literacies with which students are already engaged.
My discoveries can be summed up by these three main points:
- Students have a wide range of skills that aren't being utilized in the classroom. Think, for example, of how much content many students generate in online forums of their own volition!
- Part of the problem facing schools is the focus on state-mandated testing. Finding ways to incorporate students' digital literacies into the academic setting while adhering to the testing-based standards is a difficult, but essential duty teachers face. Otherwise, if you teach to the test but ignore the literacies students bring with them into the classroom, students will be left in the dust. It'd be like teaching to what we wish students were, rather than what they are.
- There are solutions out there to this problem. Teachers can use a method like Sara Kajder's digital story-telling as a way to bridge the gap between how students experience their academic and personal lives. That's only one of the solutions I discuss in the paper.