Keeping the Literacy in 21st Century LIteracies

This was one of the online conferences I selected to view because of the issue of literacy. Drew Schrader is an ELA high school English teacher and spoke about incorportating the technology tools and reading and writing strategies for a more successful experience in English. He referred to Chris Tovanni's book I Read It But I Don't Get It and the importance of thinking or metacognating about their reading and that the following tools can be used to this purpose. The three tools and strategies are using Screentoaster for Think Alouds, Diigo to create Annotated Text, and Prezi for Mind Mapping. To use screentoaster, the teacher would read the novel aloud and stop and do a think aloud on screentoaster for the student to replay. Modeling what good readers think about it important to make visible to students and this tool would help both struggling readers and successful readers. A second tool to use in Enlish is Diigo. Mr. Schrader is concerned about students making use of text conventions and by modeling once again what good readers are thinking while reading, he would provide an annotated text to guide students on Diigo. Like Del.icio.us, Diigo allows the user to highlight text and add sticky notes to make their thoughts visible. His final connection was to use mind mapping with Prezi. Students need to organize their ideas before writing and this tool makes that possible. I would encourage all teachers to view his conference to see how to incorporate these tools into our classrooms.