Embracing Technology

The World Wide Web has been woven and many students have been ensnared in the web. Students have embraced new technology and they use it everyday out of the classroom. Students navigate the Internet in order to acquire information, engage in writing and receiving e-mails, live on Facebook and Twitter, engage in instant messaging and play online games on a daily basis. Yet in the classroom, teachers are still stuck in the traditional mould where we practise "chalk and talk" almost exclusively and we still wonder why students are not motivated and engaged in the classrooms!

Teachers need to embrace the changing technology if we are to motivate students and have them engaged in authentic learning situations. As such, we need to remodel not only the physical structure but the pedagogical elements as we reexamine not just how we teach but how students learn in this digital world.

Kist (2005) identified some characteristics of classrooms which seek to embrace new technology. Some of these are:

• Daily work should be featured in varying forms of representation.
• Teachers adopt instructional strategies such as Think-Aloud in order to model best fit practices.
• Students are actively engaged in constructing their knowledge.
• Students participate in individual as well as collaborative activities.

Therefore, it is imperative that we embrace change if we do not want to share the fate of the dinosaurs which perished because of their inability to embrace change. We cannot afford to be left behind as many of our students are way ahead in the digital world!

Inspiration and Kidspiration

Educational software has opened new and exciting windows of opportunities for literacy instruction. Students can be exposed to software such as Inspiration and Kidspiration as they explore ideas and synthesise information in order to produce concept maps.

Tompkins(2009) cites Silverman as describing Inspiration as an online graphic tool which aids in students' ability to "visualise, think, organise, and learn." The software was targeted at older students from Grades 6 to 12 or in the English Caribbean education system from standard 5 to Form 6. Kidspiration is designed for students from kindergarten to Grade 5 or from kindergarten to Standard 4.

Inspiration allows students to create diagrams which can be used in writing or other literacy activities or in any content area. Teachers need to prepare students for their existence and survival in this competitive and digital world and the use of educational software helps to facilitate this. Students need to be taught to interface with these new literacies as they develop skills while interfacing with the software. They learn to navigate, represent information not only textually, but graphically and use multimodal media in creating literacy projects.

Teachers must first become competent in the use of the educational software if they are to actively engage students in the classroom.

Blogs and Literacy

Teachers have to endure competition from different media as we struggle to motivate students and have them actively engaged in their learning activities. Some students rarely read for pleasure and only write what is necessary to compete assigned tasks. As such, teachers need to present students with opportunities to engage them in authentic reading and writing activities. One way in which this can be achieved is through the use of blogs.

Kadjer and Bull (2003) identified some Literacy activities which can be used by teachers in blogging activities. They are:

• Character Journal- this approach challenges students to write as a fictional character.
• Character Roundtable - this allows students to make posts as multiple characters.
• Open Minds - students are encouraged to fill a picture of an empty head with images representing what a character would say or do in a given situation.
• Think-Aloud Postings - this facilitates students posting reflections or responses to readings using the approach that would be used during reading.
• Literature Circle Group Responses - students are encouraged to post reports on literature studied in the class
• Nutshelling - this is a review technique which encourages students to examine a paragraph and select the most meaningful line of the paragraph. This line is then used to begin a new paragraph.
• Devil's Advocate Writing - facilitates interactive dialogue among participants thereby encouraging various arguments to be explored.
• Exploding Sentences - this strategy encourages students to revise sentences and expand them into rich, thick, descriptive detail.
• Photoblogs - allow for images to be incorporated into blogs.
• Storyblogs - allows for or encourages students to submit literary pieces which were done in Creative Writing.