Students are increasingly turning to a wealth of online resources to answer their information needs and according to Amazon, ebooks are outselling print books.    Join me as we look at how this change necessitates the way we need to teach literacy.   What does it mean to be a digitally literate person and how can you guide your students to find excellent information?  We will also learn how to evaluate these sources and explore some of the unique features of digital information that enable students to be successful in school.

This webinar will be offered twice, once at 3:15pm, and once at 7:15pm. Please visit the Webcasts Page for pre-registration and additional information about participating in our webinars.

Follow up to Digital Literacy Webinar

According to the Pew Statistics, 85% of teens ages 12-17 engage in some form of electronic personal communication including text messaging, e-mail or posting comments on social networking sites.  MLTI survey results from last year found that students communicate on their homework most often through texting and the second communication vehicle was Facebook!

Much of the research I discovered while researching Digital Literacy pointed to a lack of advancement of Digital Literacy instruction in education.

Scale of information:
Students can download books from Project Gutenberg, they can create videos and share them around the world and join blog conversations to bring real world excitement to their learning.
Advantages of Digital Information:
Digital resources have many advantages to the printed text.   The ability to enlarge the print, use text to speech and add visuals enable digital literacy development and supports diverse student learning.

A lot of discussion on the chat during this webinar focused on the need to teach better searching skills.   If students use Google to search they might do better using Google Advanced to limit their searches.

Many of the traditional literacy skills are transferable to Digital Literacy.   Teachers need to help students find and evaluate information from digital print sources and to become producers in this digital world we are living.    Online encyclopedias are perfect way to begin a search for information often with several reading levels, visuals and timelines.   Magazine and Newspaper databases such as Marvel have information that is preselected and reputable and searchable.    Web pages provide a wealth of information but need to be evaluated as to authority and reliability and point of view.

There were a few participants who did not know of the State Marvel databases.    You can get directly in from any school or public library.  From home you have to register (once) and you can just log in with your user name and password or a library bar code.  I have my bar code on a sticky and cut and paste.  If you have an MLTI MacBook there is a spring icon on the dock.

MLTI has partnered with Common Sense Media and has easy lesson plans for K-12 on Digital Literacy that can be adapted as needed for your school.  Visit Common Sense Media and register as an educator.    Look for the lessons under Research and Evaluation.   They come with a creative commons license so you may adapt them as needed.
Digital Literacy Lessons from Common Sense Media:

www.commonsense.org/educator

Ted Talk video:
The Filter Bubble by Ed Pariser

Online Citation Sources:
Easy Bid
Son of Citation Machine

Online Web Evaluation Sources:
Five W’s of Website Evaluation

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators

Evaluating Webpages: How and Why

“Education Needs a Digital Age Upgrade” Virginia Heffernan NY Times

Learning to Read and Write on the Web Teachervision website

Take a Giant Step: a Blueprint for Teaching Young Children in a Digital Age

Writing, Technology and Teens Pew Research

The Uses of Digital Literacy by John Hartley Google Book

“Books and Literacy in the Digital Age” by Ralph Raab    American Libraries, Aug2010, Vol 41 Issue 8, p34-37

“From Print to Pixel” by Kevin Kelly    Smithsonian Jul/Aug2010, Vol 41, P122-128, 6p

“Teaching Two Literacies” by Joanne Rooney    Educational Leadership, Mar2009, Vol. 66 Issue 6

Deconstructed TPCK Diagram

Now that folks have been introduced to SAMR and TPACK, its time to talk about how practitioners can apply what we know. The question might be, “How can I look at my curriculum and put SAMR and TPCK into practice in my classroom?” And, of course, we will ponder how technology can aid in the improvement of teaching and learning by giving a closer look at the tools that MLTI and the web have to offer. Finally, we will check out one more example of “building a ladder” of classroom practice and discuss how it might be applied to revamping lessons or units you already use.

This webinar will be offered twice, once at 3:15pm, and once at 7:15pm. You may find it useful to read some additional information about participating in our webinars; you can click here right before the start of the webinar for quick access.

When designing teaching projects using technology, it is important to employ frameworks that enable the best selection, planning, and use of the tools available. The SAMR and TPCK models have proven themselves in use in Maine’s classrooms and around the world. In 2010, over two thirds of Maine teachers familiar with the models found that they played a crucial or important role in their work.

In this webinar we will review the basics of the SAMR and TPCK models, using new examples that reflect evolving priorities and projects in Maine schools. We will also see how to use them in practice, introducing the concept of the “SAMR Ladder” — a concept that we will extend and develop further at our October 27 webinar.

This webinar will be offered twice, once at 3:15pm, and once at 7:15pm. You may find it useful to read some additional information about participating in our webinars; you can click here right before the start of the webinar for quick access.

Today’s Agenda
Wednesday July 27

Hannah inspires the audience

Chris wows the audience

More photos from the day…

Del and John discuss the uses of Sketchup Pro

Geogebra helps to stretch your mathematical muscles

Susie discusses digital citizenship

Today’s Agenda

Tuesday July 26
8:30 – 9:45 Check in at Coles Tower
10:00 – 11:30 Meet your cohort
11:30 – 1:00 Lunch at Thorne Hall
1:00 – 4:00 Cohorts meet
2:30 – Soda/Water/Cookie break
4:30 – 5:00 Large Group Gathering – Welcome! at Morrell Lounge in the Smith Union
Student Keynotes

• Hannah Potter – Yarmouth High School – How I Took Advantage of the MLTI to Connect Young People from Around the World
• Chris Jones - Oak Hill High School – How I Took Advantage of the MLTI to Become an Internationally Collaborative Programmer

6:00 – 7:00 Dinner at Thorne Hall

Maine DOE Newsroom

• 1,100-plus celebrate MLTI at UMaine
• Sharing a ‘new view’ through MLTI
• From MLTI student to international programmer
• Using MLTI to learn through video

Mark your calendars! The date has been set for next year, the 9th Annual MLTI Student Conference Thursday May 24, 2012

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by dangerismycat

I hope everyone who attended Thursday’s webinars learned one or two new things about vocabulary instruction and can try out some of those ideas with students. Special thanks to Jill Spencer for adding her expertise to the sessions. Don’t forget to check out Jill’s two books, Everyone’s Invited and Teaming Rocks! Both books are published by the National Middle School Association and each has a chapter about vocabulary.

In the first part of the webinar, we talked about books, articles, and research Jill and I have read on the subject of vocabulary instruction and shared some of the practices we gleaned from that reading. Perhaps the most important idea is that the way we traditionally have taught vocabulary just doesn’t work. Students need more than dictionary definitions and memorization to learn new words. We also learned that wide and varied reading helps students expand their vocabularies but it’s not enough. Explicit instruction is necessary including these elements:

• Making connections
• Constructed definitions
• Word Analysis
• Repeated exposure and use
• Discussions
• Nonlinguistic representations
• Word play

We looked at ways the applications on the MLTI MacBook as well as some online resources and tools can support vocabulary instruction. Please visit the recorded archives (mouse over the Webcasts tab above and click on Archives) to view these demonstrations and to download a copy of the slides with all the linked resources and the Bento template for creating a database for word study. If you use that template with your students, let us know how it goes and share any ideas you have for revising and improving it.

The chat pod was very busy, especially in the evening session, and participants shared a lot of great ideas for vocabulary study. I’ll list some of them here, but be sure to check out the recordings for more details:

• http://wordsmith.org/awad/ will send the word of the day to your email.
• Use wikis to collect words and images related to a unit.
• Have students use text-to-speech when they come upon an unfamiliar word, combined with control-command-D for the pop up dictionary.
• Becca’s “War of the Words” game where students compete to “own” the most words.
• Word Ladder Wednesday with Tim Rasinski’s books
• Have students create symbols, graphics, or pictures for new words.
• Ask questions in book conferences that incorporate new words
• Have students keep a running list of words they encounter that have the root or affix that is being studied.
• Team members support each other and agree on root words to teach in all content areas.
• Math word of the week and “Big Dog Word of the Day”
• Use Frayer model for big concept words (sometimes with interactive white board)
• Vocab words on exit slips
• Two online tools for stickies: http://en.linoit.com/ and http://www.wallwisher.com/
• The “I have… Who has…” activity based on this math activity
• Vocaroo for voice recordings

Some books that Jill and I have read and referred to in this session include:

• Allen, J. (2007). Inside words: Tools for teaching academic vocabulary, grades 4-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
• Allen, J. (1999). Words, words, words: Teaching vocabulary in grades 4-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
• Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2002). Robust vocabulary instruction: Bringing words to life. NY: Guilford Press.
• Benjamin, A., & Crow, J. T. (2009). Vocabulary at the Center. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
• Graves, M. (Ed.) (2009). Essential readings on vocabulary instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
• Marzano, R. J. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement: Research on what works in schools. Alexandra, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

And finally, Tim Hart sent me some additional sites for word play and word games that your students will enjoy. Thanks, Tim!

• There are a bunch at wordgames.com. Some ads but still good stuff.
• Qbox: http://www.wordgames.com/qbox.html.
• Wordsmith: http://www.wordgames.com/wordsmith.html
• Word Ruffle: http://www.wordgames.com/word-ruffle.html (Like Text Twist)
• Semantic Wars: http://www.wordgames.com/semantic-wars.html (Hang man plus tower defense)
• Super Text Twist: http://www.addictinggames.com/texttwist.html (Always fun)
• Words with Friends: http://www.newtoyinc.com/wp/ (Social version of scrabble)
• http://pbskids.org/games/word.html (Lots of stuff here for earlier readers. I just include it as my kids are there a lot)
• PopCap’s Bookworm is always fun too: http://www.popcap.com/games/free/bookworm?mid=bookworm_macweb_en_full

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by chrisjohnbeckett

Every teacher, at any grade level or in any content area, faces the challenge of teaching vocabulary. The traditional practice of having students look up the word, copy the dictionary definition, use the word in a sentence, and then memorize it for a test has been proven ineffective. How can we help our students truly expand both their receptive and productive vocabularies?

In this webinar we will examine some of the research on best practices for vocabulary instruction as we explore how we can use some applications on the MLTI MacBook as well as some online resources to help our students learn new words, make strong connections, and retain the vocabulary they need for academic success.

My special guest for this webinar is Jill Spencer, author of Everyone’s Invited and Teaming Rocks! Jill is a veteran middle level educator, consultant, and presenter with extensive knowledge of literacy instruction and issues. We’ll be discussing some of her experiences and creative ideas for teaching vocabulary.

Please join us Thursday at 3:15 PM or 7:15 PM. To register, click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page.

CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Michael Fawcett

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s webinars. It was great to have some science and math teachers with us and I hope they use some of the ideas we discussed to give students opportunities to do some technical writing.

We began by talking about what technical writing is and what it is not and mentioned some examples. Some good resources for learning more about technical writing and for finding ideas for teaching it are:

• Technical Literacy Project – East Bay Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication
• Technical Writing in Science Class – Handbook for Teacher PD
• Technical Writing 101 by Alan S. Pringle and Sarah S. O’Keefe

We discussed how technical writing is addressed in the Common Core State Standards for writing and how technical writing relates to the 6+1 Traits. We then talked about the usefulness of templates for helping students use a consistent style and organization in their technical writing. I shared a Pages template students can use to write directions for performing tasks on their MacBooks. That template is available for download in the archived recordings of both sessions. The Pages User Guide is not only a good resource for learning how to make templates, but it’s also an excellent example of effective technical writing.

Including diagrams, illustrations, tables, and charts in technical writing pieces makes the text more usable for the reader. I mentioned the many applications on the MLTI MacBook that can be used to create illustrations, including Acorn, OmniGraffle, the SketchPad in NoteShare, and Numbers. Digital cameras are easy to use and readily available in most classrooms, whether it’s a camera you or your school owns, a camera on a cell phone, or the built-in iSight camera in your MacBook. A couple participants mentioned using cameras to take pictures of a science lab in progress and giving those pictures to the students to aid them in their writing as well as to be used as illustrations. Screen shots are also valuable as illustrations when writing about computers and software.

We took some time to talk about scaffolds and support for struggling writers, including word banks for vocabulary and using screen captures to get students started as they write directions for using their MacBooks. We also talked about giving students examples of professional and student technical writing so they can look at it critically and develop criteria for determining the effectiveness of their own writing.

Many of the tips we mentioned for using MacBooks for technical writing are demonstrated in our MLTI Minutes series. We hope you’ll check out all the episodes, but here a few that were mentioned in this webinar:

• Episode 14 An Introduction to Painting with Acorn
• Episode 21 Screen Recording with QuickTime Player
• Episode 24 Making Floating Stickies

Finally, we took a look at some examples of technical writing that were done as comics:

• Make Ice Cream Without a Refrigerator – from Instructables
• Google Chrome Comic by Scott McCloud

Don’t forget that you can access the recordings of both webinars by mousing over the Webcasts tab about and clicking on Archives.

Based on an image by Wrote, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

When you buy a new appliance or gadget, do you read the manual? When you are learning how to use new software, do you use the Help menu? If so, you have encountered technical writing, a genre that requires high levels of clarity and consistency as well as brevity. Good technical writing takes advantage of text features, diagrams, illustrations, photos, and color to describe a product or a process in a straightforward manner that the reader can quickly and easily understand.

Typically we teach students narrative writing, persuasive writing and writing in response to literature, but we often neglect to teach them technical writing, the kind of writing they need for math and science classes where they must write precise instructions, descriptions, and explanations. Giving students opportunities to engage in technical writing can help them gain skills and confidence that will carry over to all the other types of writing they must do.

In Thursday’s webinar, we will discuss how technical writing differs from other types of writing and how we can engage even our most reluctant writers in this kind of activity. We’ll share strategies and scaffolds for helping students write clear, concise directions, descriptions, and explanations using Pages and other applications on the MLTI MacBooks. We’ll also demonstrate how students can use applications like OmniGraffle and Comic Life to make diagrams and illustrations for their technical writing pieces.

Please join us on Thursday, February 10 at 3:15 or 7:15 PM to learn how you can help your students gain writing skills that will serve them well in higher education and in the workplace. To view our calendar and register for one of these sessions, click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page.