Digital Literacy in Language Arts

Instruction Cathy Danahy, River Edge Schools Literacy Coach

Patrice Pintarelli, Grade 4 Roosevelt School

Digital Reading and Writing as a genre

  Writing workshop is genre based

  Our world of print has expanded

  Should we be recognizing digital literacy as a genre?

  What role does digital reading and writing play in Language Arts Instruction?   Digital Literacy in terms of standards and NJ ASK

Blogging   Using a blog as a way to explore teaching digital literacy

  Finding a co-researcher

  Created 2 blogs, one to serve as way for us (teachers) to practice blogging

  Kidblog as a way for students to blog

  Blog 1 also served as a record of our teaching   Kidblog needed to be secure and allowed for teacher controls   All district protocol for internet use were adhered to   Parental consent   Writing was supervised and monitored closely

Blogging is Writing!

  Blogging is writing

  Immersion to the genre - Mentor blogs, “author” visits

Outcomes of Immersion

  2 kinds of writing – commenting and posting

  Posting is idea based and opinion based writing.

  Blog posts resemble personal essays

  Commenting lead us to teach digital citizenship and netiquette

Writing Blog Posts   To teach how to write blog posts, we used what we

know about process writing. In process writing students draft, revise and edit.

  Whenever we were stuck on where we needed to go, we talked together and relied on what we know about teaching writing to guide us.   Ex blog posts were not long enough, details not

developed or elaborated on

  We realized that we not teaching technology we were teaching writing!

What we learned   Blogging is a way to publish writing and make it public

  The same skills used to teach students how to write in non-narrative form are utilized in writing blog posts and comments

  Allowing students to comment on each other’s blog posts makes writing seem valued. It allows us to teach responding to reading skills as well as digital citizenship

  Blog writing is standards based

  Blogging is a student motivator!

Our unit is now a mentor for others

  This kind of teaching is new and exciting and educators everywhere are looking to find examples of how it's being done. Visitors from Mexico, Australia and all over the US have visited and commented on our blog

  Troy Hicks, a professor of education and author listed our blog on his syllabus

  Two writing teachers

  LitLife