Robert Moore's Epic Blog!

(I nearly forgot to post this!)

Have you ever wondered how to Implement a Digital Reading and Writing Workshop Model for Content Literacy Instruction in an Urban Elementary (K-8) School? I have! I doubt I phrased it that way though. Anyway…

The times they are a changin’! Is a good Bob Dylan song, but who cares! Digital tools have come and changed the game. More content is within our grasp than ever before. How lucky are today’s children to be born with it already at their fingers? But fear not, after years of administrators coming out of their burrows, seeing technology, and running back outside, the school systems are reading to spring into action. That’s right the media specialists, curriculum planners, and other unknown, low-level bigwigs have finally decided to stop banning and avoiding technology opting to instead take this bull by the horns! Now is the time to utilize and control these phenomenal, digital tools! This begs the question, “How can digital/electronic texts possibly be used?” Luckily, we’ve got this article.

Unfortunately, before the positive aspects of the change is addressed, the text decides to give us the bad news first. As if the hardcore traditionalist teachers that refuse to accept and apply electronic literacy wasn’t difficult enough to deal with, the studies are showing that most of the teachers, many of whom are for implementing electronic text, have received no real training on how (according to their research from Calkins & Tolan, 2010). Even less surprising was that the teachers working in schools with higher socioeconomic stats received notably more of said training than their more socioeconomically challenged counterparts.

This led to the text expressing its motivation for the professional development workshop.

… to assist the urban elementary school teachers with the workshop model through the facilitation of teacher learning as an actual workshop,
… to increase the teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK; Koehler & Mishra, 2009),
… to assist teachers in integrating a digital workshop model in their content literacy instruction.

The text that follows primarily consists of statistical data that I personally find to be little more than something to keep in the back of your mind. This is likely because it honestly doesn’t matter to me how many teachers took a survey at Luna Charter School and I consider myself very comfortable with technology and could likely use it within a classroom with as few days of professional development required. I’m not bragging. I’m just young. I grew up surrounded with technology. The text lists some decent websites to use, but most of them I’ve already heard of and/or used. In addition, I apologize if I didn’t read very carefully, but most of what I’ve read contains either the author telling me what they’re going to have their guinea pig teachers do or them patting themselves on the back for obtaining data they’ve collected. The actual information on how I can use technology better is far and few in between!

But it’s not all bad. I happen to like this quote very much, “As teachers strive to make students critical consumers and producers of technology in the 21st century, they are seeking instructional applications of technology tools to build literacy capacity in their students. To support our students’ experiences with Web-based and digital resources, we must interact with these resources and texts. Teachers cannot just read about Web-based and digital resources; they must begin exploring these resources for themselves.” I feel that this summarizes the spirit of the entire document. Not to mention, it’s incredibly true. If what we desire is well-rounded, well-informed students, we need to push technology into more elements of classroom teaching! (I also believe that establishing a love for non-tech resources is important too, but that’s an argument for another time.)

Finally, the text actually asked the reader a few questions. That’s a little heavy handed, but whatever. I mean I would have subliminally hidden these questions in the text so that the readers would have been asking themselves that as they were reading, but whatever. Anyway, a question that sticks out is “What does it mean to be a teacher of writing and reading in the 21^st century?” Honestly, I think it means the same thing it meant in the 20^th century. You have a passion for opening the minds of your respective disciples. Doing so means reading and writing along with your students. As far as I’m considered, the difference in centuries only adds a few screens in the mix.

Robert Moore's Epic Blog!

Module Seven

Module Six

Module Five

Module Four

Module Three

Module Two

Digital Times In Urban Elementary Schools

Module One

An Old Assignment and a Dialogic Sample

Module Ten