Classroom Webpages: Creating "Wall-less" Classrooms

For this week's posting, I felt like just 'plain old' blogging. As much as I have enjoyed using our other Web 2.0 tools over the past couple of months (wikis, Prezi, Glogster, etc), I feel blogging is still my most effective way to communicate my thoughts regarding the readings and their implications for our own practice.  That being said, let's discuss the readings. Starting with Baker (2007) from the NERA Journal, I thought she brought up a lot of points regarding Internet use and literacy instruction that we have already discussed pretty extensively in class. For example, she writes about the ever increasing rate of childrens' uses of digital literacies in their 'peer cultures' and how our current educational system is hypocritical as it calls for an increase in teaching Web 2.0 literacies, but does not allow time to incorporate, nor do we have high-stakes assessment which attempts to gauge students' academic abilities with Web 2.0 tools. Districts across the state, and the country for that matter are sinking money into their schools for wireless Internet, laptops, and other multimedia so that students can be prepared to join the college and workplace networks that require proficiency in online literacy skills. Further, Baker discusses in this article the importance of teacher web pages and how they can be a valuable tool in helping students through the stages of the writing process, which are magnified when their work is to be published online. I really like Baker's ideas on "Unit-Based Approaches" to class web pages, and how they connect content knowledge, reading and writing skills, online literacy skills, and potential parental involvement. "Teachers can explain to parents how literacy skills are learned while students are reading and writing about units; include information about unit topics and inquires for the week, month, or year; provide suggestions for how parents can support and even participate in these units," (Baker, 2007, p 61). My last comment about this reading is how Baker includes resource after resource in her article. She clearly wrote this with a teacher audience in mind, and it impressed me with how many websites and applications there are that can help develop our students' digital literacies.

I believe that the article written by Barone and Wright (2008) is highly correlated to Baker's above mentioned article. Both articles stated within their first pages that teachers are reluctant to bring technology into the classroom for a number of reasons, and that many teachers feel that using Web 2.0 materials in class are too time consuming, especially when first integrating them into your classroom. As Wright laid out for us in his sections of the article, it is obvious that he is not dedicating all of his time to using computers. In fact, I like how he had his students Instant Messaging one another while reading a basal story. That is the integration of Web 2.0 literacy that will be key to teachers successfully using them in my opinion, especially for the reluctant teachers who are unsure of themselves with some of the newer programs. Instant Messenger is self explanatory and has been around for approximately a decade, making it a more simple way to integrate "class discussion" between partners, especially for the kids who do not like to talk. Further, Wright can give writing and typing instruction simultaneously, similar to Baker's ideas of writing instruction integrated into classroom web pages. A last important point that this article brings up that ties to Baker is the fact that assessments tied to digital literacies are still lacking. It is mentioned that there are still state standards to meet, which only deal with reading, writing, and content knowledge that are all difficult to directly connect to any assessments we could give for digital literacy skills.

Baker's research article (2007) on class web pages in elementary schools provides an even further look into how these Web 2.0 literacies, mainly Internet opportunities support children's literacy. I like how she makes distinctions between classroom and beyond the classroom Internet opportunities, because I believe that students use and interact with the Internet differently in those different settings. Her term "invisible classroom," one that she used in her above article as well, makes reference to the concept that the Internet is available 24/7/365, and she makes it clear that this "Wall-less" classroom arena "offer the opportunity to engage students in literacy during the school day, after the school day, and throughout holidays and summer vacations," (Baker, p 8). While I read her findings, I was not surprised by the uses (or lack thereof) of the class pages, but still found her results to be important indicators of how elementary teachers are preparing students to use the Internet.

This is my plea to elementary school teachers, as I plan to integrate multiple Web 2.0 materials into my discourse that is High School Social Studies: please find as many opportunities with your students as you can to use Web 2.0 materials with your students. It is a life skill now, not just a potentially beneficial tool for the future, to be able to be literate with digital technologies. As Baker, Barone, and Wright have all shown us, new literacies are changing rapidly and sometimes drastically, and it is our job as educators to facilitate these changes into our classrooms to continually allow our students to grow and keep up with the demands of an increasingly competitive world that now requires all people to be able to communicate through and possess Web 2.0 literacy.