Using+Technology+to+Enhance+Literacy

WELCOME!! This wiki page is intended for you the educator to find some valuable resources about why it is important to use technology in our classrooms for Literacy and how to use those technologies. There is a large amount of resources that you can use that are completly free and somtimes finding them in a pinch is the tough part. Well search no more! Using technology is important to inhance the learning enviornment for our students because it really catches there attention. From kindergarten to 12th grade, there are the NETS (National Educational Technology Standards) from which every teacher should abide by and can be used within the literacy relm. You will find a link to that resource as well as many other tools to help support a great literacy learning enviornment. Scroll down to see more!



http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/ This link can lead you to so many valuable resources to use in your classroom. There are a few that can be used for reading and writing. As a teacher, this is by far the most abundant resource of "stuff" that can be used in the classroom. I would share this with any teacher I know to help pep up the learning enviornment. To begin for our purposes, check out the link and click on the writing tab on the left hand side. This will give you a plethra of sites that will allow you to help teach writing in the classroom. Many of them allow you to sign up for free and include a class on them as well. The class accounts are nice because if you are sharing copmputers, then every student can be logged on and looking at the same thing. Also, this is great for the educator to go onto Storybird and design your own stories for the content in which you will be teaching. For example, if you are teaching reading and your topic is Main Idea, you can create a story on whatever subject matter you choose using their artwork and just type in the words. This is a simple way of using technology in the classroom instead of having your students stare into a book clueless. It really brings reading into a new "light"!

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PhotoStory3 is a free download where you can make your own story for students to read with pictures of your own. It can be used on a wide variety of subjects and you can even use your own students as part of the story. Make sure you get permission from their parents first before publishing pictures with your students in! You also can narrate very easily per slide so that the transitioning is done all by the program and you don't have to record a short or lengthy script before working on Photostory. At the end, you can also add your own background music to the story or you can compose your own with a wide variety of music genre that is part of the program. You can preview your project before you publish it as well. This would be great to compile a project you are working on in class if you are building a class story, it can be used as an end of the year or season piece for teachers and coaches to describe wht the studetns have been doing and cshowcase their work or just to make an informative story to teach your students how to do something. (ie. find the main idea of a story, what to look for when you don't understand words, etc.) It just makes for a great visual and really can get your students attention when trying to introduce a new topic or for them to be assessed on the enew topic by creating their own and answering questions about it!

You can have students make a google reader account where they can research and have specific topics loaded to their page. They will love this because they can read things that THEY like to read and get them excited about any other given topic. Students really don't have to work to hard to get text that they will like either! The following video is shared in Plain English which is the simpilest form there is. ( I love all the Plain English videos!) Have students find their favorite websites that share information and they will have it uploaded straight to their page. If you are giving them a research paper to read or write, here's where they can store all those important websites and subscribe to their feeds. Check it out! media type="youtube" key="VSPZ2Uu_X3Y" height="349" width="560"

I just HEART ( you will get that as you browse this webpage) Storybird. It is super easy for the educator and a student to use. media type="youtube" key="T00YjRBIcIw" height="349" width="425"

[] Check out this link on using technology in the classroom to enhance reading. I thought it was pretty interesting.