literacy

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What Online Tools Work for Teaching Language Arts?

January 3, 2013 | 12:16 PM | By

Erin Scott

When it comes to language arts, the jury’s still out on the quality and effectiveness of the available software. Some schools are investing and experimenting with different products, with mixed results, while others are working with free available web 2.0 tools. Here are two case studies examining each approach.

THE SOFTWARE APPROACH

Firstline Schools, a public charter school company in New Orleans operating five schools, has aggressively pursued blended learning with hopes to help students who have fallen behind — especially after the devastating effects on schooling after Hurricane Katrina.

“We can’t imagine going back to a traditional model,” said Chris Liang-Vergara, director of instructional technology for personalized learning at Firstline. “It seems crazy with the amount of differentiation we need.”

Firstline uses Achieve3000 in some schools, a program that allows students to read a nonfiction

“The biggest issue I still see is that people are still trying to break it down when
it needs to be combined.”

article everyday and answer questions related to it. But the program is dry, according to Liang-Vergara, and it can seem random and disconnected to the rest of what students are doing in class. He says he’s seen it used well, but usually by experienced teachers who are empowered to use it for the best kind of differentiation. If the teacher takes the time to search the Achieve300 database for nonfiction articles that are relevant to other class work, discusses them, and wraps them into the curriculum that works best. And the software does provide differentiation, increasing the difficulty of vocabulary and sentence structure as a reader progresses.

“When you show it to any experienced teacher, they get very excited because they think about how much time they’ll save and how much information can be at their fingertips,” said Liang- Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, blended learning, digital citizenship, language arts, literacy, teaching with tech

Are Online Math Programs Better Than Literacy?

October 26, 2011 | 9:52 AM | By

TB

Students at Rocketship Mateo Elementary working in the Learning Lab.

When it comes to math and literacy software, the choices are vast and varied. But over the past months, I’ve heard a recurring complaint from different school administrators: The quality of literacy software is not as high as that of math.

Why is this the case?

I spoke to Aylan Samouha, chief schools officer at Rocketship Education, a network of charter elementary schools in San Jose that allots 25 percent of students’ time at school in the computer lab, where they use math and literacy software for basic skills mastery. Time in classroom with their teacher is spent on what they call “higher-order thinking” and collaborative projects.

“There are aspects of math, particularly at the elementary school level, that lend themselves to online learning more easily.”

For math, Rocketship uses Dreambox Learning, ST Math, TenMarks and Equatia. For literacy, Compass Learning is used for vocabulary and Rosetta Stone for English language learners. Students also have independent reading time, for which they’re given “comprehension quizzes.” For both math and literacy, students who need more individualized help work in small groups of four or five with math and literacy specialists.

Samouha, who’s in charge of what software the school uses, says that the math software is “much further along than literacy.”

“It’s not like people aren’t trying to crack the code,” he says. “But the truth is that there are aspects of math, particularly at the elementary school level, that lend themselves to online learning more easily.”

In general, he points out, with any form of learning — online or otherwise — basic skills are easier to teach, grasp, and to measure than higher-order thinking and concepts. And although math does Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, adaptive, Compass Learning, Dreambox, literacy, math

Can Tech Help Preschoolers Catch Up to Their Peers?

April 13, 2011 | 4:00 PM | By

Flickr:KidPerez

We hear a lot about the promise of technology closing the achievement gap, but few studies have definitively shown this to be true. In this article in Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning by Sara Jackon, a recent study by the Center for Children and Technology delves into how digital media can make an impact on the preschool set.

By Sara Jackson

“We have some children who can operate a computer, enjoy reading books and have an extensive vocabulary,” said Rosalie Moran, curriculum director for two Head Start centers based in Harlem and the Bronx. “And we have others who have never been around other children before and need a lot of help with the social emotional skills.”

Complicating classroom education further, some of the children speak limited or no English; some have special needs, including language or learning delays.

“Those kids in the bottom fifth who knew the fewest numbers of letters, ended up learning the most letters.”

As a group, preschoolers from low-income families are often behind on fundamental literacy skills. Studies show these children arrive for their first day of kindergarten with less emergent literacy skills than children from higher-income families.

Several years ago, four of Moran’s classrooms participated in an evaluation of how well video and interactive games produced as part of PBS’s Ready to Learn initiative could teach early literacy skills to children from low-income families.

The randomized control study of 398 children from 80 preschool classrooms, found that when coupled with professional development, a media-rich curriculum could improve early literacy skills. The 4- and 5-year-olds from low-income families who had been taught with the media curriculum showed increases in letter recognition, sounds associated with letters, and understanding basic concepts about stories and print.

“The reason it worked is that we had at our disposal high-quality media content,” said Shelley Pasnik, director of the Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center in New York City and an author of the study. “We placed an emphasis on high quality media and professional development for educators.”

The curriculum included intensive professional development and teacher-led activities with video and interactive games from the PBS television shows “Super Why!,” “Between the Lions” and “Sesame Street.”

Through training and coaching visits to the classroom, the teachers were given instruction on how and when to stop the videos and guide children’s learning.

“What was different with this study,” Moran told Spotlight, “was that the teacher was actually viewing the episode with the children and interacting with the children, stopping to ask questions, pausing in certain places.”

Moran said teachers were very enthusiastic about the curriculum and the support they received. Several of the participants have continued to use it in their classrooms after the study’s conclusion.

Pasnik said that the kids who had the most to learn made the greatest gains: “Those kids in the bottom fifth who knew the fewest numbers of letters, ended up learning the most letters.”

She points out that these results are particularly significant because literacy curricula doesn’t have a great success rate. A recent U.S. Department of Education review of experimental studies of literacy curricula found only two that had significant positive effects.

The latest round in PBS’s Ready to Learn Television grant competition awarded funding to support “transmedia storytelling” for children age 2 to 8, with the goal of producing stories that children can watch and interact with across multiple forms of media – including TV, websites, online games and mobile apps. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, achievement gap, digital media, literacy, preschool