The Project
For my 2011-2012 Technology Leadership Project I chose to focus on using technology to enhance student discourse and literary analysis in order to promote student interest in assigned and independent reading.
As in any middle school classroom, I teach students with a range of reading abilities as well as interest and enthusiasm for reading. My goal is to establish a reading community in which all of my students self-identify as readers and embrace their lives as readers.
I felt that all students were lacking a forum aside from the traditional classroom setting for sharing their reading interests and insights with others, which is an important aspect of developing and sustaining literacy skills.
Since student interaction and communication is necessary to accomplish this goal, increasing opportunities for this communication both in and outside of the classroom is essential. I also felt that it was very important to go beyond the traditional, and sometimes limiting, forms of classroom discourse to provide venues for communication that meet the needs and skills of all students.
With these goals in mind, I chose to use the Web sites Edmodo.com and Kidblog.org for our online communication experiences. You can read about how we used each of these sites in the corresponding links at the top of this page.
As in any middle school classroom, I teach students with a range of reading abilities as well as interest and enthusiasm for reading. My goal is to establish a reading community in which all of my students self-identify as readers and embrace their lives as readers.
I felt that all students were lacking a forum aside from the traditional classroom setting for sharing their reading interests and insights with others, which is an important aspect of developing and sustaining literacy skills.
Since student interaction and communication is necessary to accomplish this goal, increasing opportunities for this communication both in and outside of the classroom is essential. I also felt that it was very important to go beyond the traditional, and sometimes limiting, forms of classroom discourse to provide venues for communication that meet the needs and skills of all students.
With these goals in mind, I chose to use the Web sites Edmodo.com and Kidblog.org for our online communication experiences. You can read about how we used each of these sites in the corresponding links at the top of this page.