Reflection

The most striking revelation I had this semester about teaching new literacy skills to my students is that learning to read on the web is a complex process and involves several skills that traditional reading does not. I had never really thought about the difference in reading on the web vs. traditional reading, but there is so much more students need to know how to do when reading online. The internet is filled with millions of different web pages, each with their own unique layout and design. Children do not always instinctively know how to scan a web page for information. Web pages are also full of links that take you to other websites or to different parts of the webpage you are on. Children do not always know which links are worth clicking on or how to navigate back to the original web site. Another consideration in reading online is the grammar and syntax of a particular web page. Some web pages are more kid friendly and easy to read and some are more academic and difficult to read. Before this class I had always assumed that if you could read a book you could read online. I now believe differently. I believe that traditional reading skills are the building block for web literacy, but as a teacher I also need to teach my students the specific reading skills that are needed to be literate online.

A large part of the knowledge and experience I gained in this course has to do with conducting what I think of as good solid research online. As a long time fan of Google, I had always taken for granted the information that was presented me in a Google search. After this course I feel as though I am a little more savvy in using different search engines and typing in keywords and phrases that will yield me the most useful results. I have also learned about evaluating a web site for reliability of information. This is a new skill to me. In the past I have read some websites that I have questioned the information, but I never really had a clear process for doing it. Learning the Get REAL strategy of evaluating web pages was very eye opening for me and I believe has made me a better consumer of online information (November, 2008). This knowledge has given me fuel to teach my student to be better at navigating the web when conducting a search, and to be better at questioning and evaluating what they are reading. I have already taken what I have learned and shared it with other teachers. A teacher friend of mine would like to use my screen cast where I walk through the steps of evaluating a web site to teach her high school students this skill. I feel so much more empowered when I am online now and I want to share that feeling with as many students as I can.

Throughout this course I have developed a pretty solid research project to conduct with my class. A goal for me will be to actually do the project with my class. Sometimes I get so caught up in my everyday work that I do not do projects like this that take a lot of preparation. I have also designed smaller lessons that use new technologies such as a screen cast or a voice thread. A goal for me is to get permission through my district to use these technologies and then to not only use them with my own class, but to train other teachers at my school site how to use them as well. The steps I have taken to accomplish this goal is to give myself a timeline on when I want to have accomplished them. By January I want to have permission to do screen cast and voice thread and begin to implement them in my classroom. I would like to start working with other teachers in my school and showing them how to use those technologies by February. By giving myself a timeline and sticking to it I will achieve my goal of implementing these strategies.
References
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.