Technology Integration in English Educaton
What follows is a short list of ways to use technology in to create a dynamic and engaging English Educaton experience including examples of actual student work and resources on the subject.
Digital Storytelling Projects
Goal: To have each student take a piece of original text and publish it in a digital mode to share publically with the entire class.
What it can do for your students: Engaging with Common Core Standards (CCS)
Digital Storytelling is not only an excercise in technological integegration, but a model of the possibility for self publishing in the classroom. Publishing student work, especially in a dynamic and accessable electronic medium promotes student ownership of work. In terms of the Common Core Standards, this sort of activty can fulfil the Grade 6-12 writing standards, "6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others," (Common Core Standards 43) in the 6-8 standards and, "Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences, (46). in the 9-12 standards.
Resources
The Center For Digital Storytelling is a good place to start, it's filled with tips and lesson starters for your project.
Examples
A Digital Storytelling Project can take many forms, from a personal story, or a Literacy narrative to a creative writing piece in digital form or engagement with a piece of literature.
Literacy Narratives, Autoethnograpy, and Multigenre Research Projects
Using a variety of media adds a new dimension to the run of the mill research-based assignment. Technology allows for greater examination of concepts and some truely impressive creations. Dr. Allen Webb has this to say on the subject.
Class Blogs and Teaching Websites
Far more than just an alternative a teaching portfolio, the class website and discussion blog can be used as a valuable tool for teachers, learners and the community alike.
Using Free Online Resources in the Classroom:
It's a very big internet out there, and fortunately for any teacher or student, it's full of free information. Online databases, public domain media, literature and analysis, easily searchable reference material and much more are at our fingertips.
For just a few examples:
Youtube: Filled with not only original content, but with fascinating and free artifacts to enhance almost any lesson.
Project Gutenberg: Full texts online from the public domain. Texts can be copy-pasted into documents and manipulated by students themselves, creating some very literal hands-on engagement.
The Open Source Classroom: A blog dedicated to ideas on the use of free and available technology in the K-12 classroom space.