New Literacy Project Reflection

My new technology was a website. Although I currently have a personal / professional website that I created last semester, I had never used a website to provide information about something other than myself. There were many applications that I was unable to explore when doing my professional website and therefore it was nice to have a bit more creative freedom through this project. I feel that this website gave me the ability to open a discussion about cultural literacy with regards to GLBTQ. I had never thought of using a website as a way of communicating with other teachers and sharing ideas about different literacies. I had also never recognized the purpose of what I was doing until I was forced to consider it for this project. I realized how beneficial I felt it was to have a purpose for myself therefore giving me a desire to have clear purposes for my students in the future. In order to create this webpage successfully and how I envision it I needed to gather information and spend time exploring the various layouts my webpage could appear. Because I was familiar with the technology I was confident that my webpage will succeed in accomplishing open minds about cultural literacy as well as GLBTQ issues, specifically regarding children’s literature. I feel that students K-8 are required to work with technology as a disconnected aspect of their learning. I do not feel that the GLCEs aim to integrate it into their literacy learning but rather as something they must know in order to "get by" in our world today. I would like students to understand the benefits of technology and be able to use it in order to make positive changes in their lives or to engage them in information that otherwise would not have been as engaging to them. In order to do this I feel authentic activities need to be made integrating technology into lesson plans that can enhance learning. For me, technology is a way of enhancing a "regular" lesson or activity and making it extraordinary for students. When students feel that their is a purpose in learning how to create a website or another use of technology, they will be more likely to find the purposes in several other technologies and begin using them for the betterment of their lives and learning.

In the beginning of this semester I never thought of literacy in all of the various ways such as cultural, mathematical, environmental, emotional, etc. Although I think I believed in these types of literacies and their importance for student's learning, I did not know to identify using these terms. I have always felt that it is important for teachers to use literature and forms of literacy (oral, audio, visual, etc) to infuse their student's minds with more than just words on a page. During the completion of this project, I realized my passion to teach students, even from a young age, about their culture and the cultures of others. I think one of my major goals of teaching is to understand my students on personal levels and individually. Therefore I must know about their cultures. In addition, I want my my classroom to be a safe community and in order to accomplish this I need to have my students understand the cultures of the students around them and the cultures of people all across the world. I never realized how easy this all would be to overlook in a classroom with all of the other curriculum requirements. However, I recognize now that integrating this particular type of literacy as well as many others is necessary and will produce more intelligent and accepting human beings. I use to think that cultural literacy would just happen in my classroom and now I understand that it is a concious choice that I need to make to incorporate it. I also think I was scared to truely delve into this type of literacy because it is something that I will never have all the answers to. I realized from this project that it is okay to learn alongside your students and will actually create an environment where students feel that it is okay to not have all the answers either. I find that much of my growth relates to the Cambourne conditions and that cultural literacy has been an avenue for me to see how these conditions might work. For example, Cambourne discusses engagement as a condition and we defined this as having students understand the purpose of what they are doing. I want my students to understand the purpose of their literacy. It is not only to read and write but also to gain meaning about cultures and about issues that might be important to them. Through this project I learned that students can be engaged most effectively when they excited and actively involved in their learning. Cultural literacy is a wonderful way to have students excited and feel that they can be actively involved in their own learning because it has a meaningful purpose. This was the reason for my "tying it together" page on my website. It provides a purpose to cultural literacy (speciafically for the cultural group GLBTQ) for teachers and parents and if they understand the purpose and importance of cultural literacy then students might "catch the bug" too. The other Cambourne condition that I feel I grew in understanding of was employment. I feel that cultural literacy will provide students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge of literacy to daily life. Hopefully by immersing them with literacy that has cultural meanings, they will become openminded individuals who apply their knowledge outside the classroom. The main take away that I have from this project is that if students are learning literacy with a purpose and can apply that knowledge into their daily lives then they will become more active and educated participants of society, continuously growing in their thoughts and literacy skills.

I do not feel that there is only one way that students can obtain effective literacy instruction from their teachers. However, I think one way that diverse learners can gain effective literacy instruction is through learning about culture. In the diverse environment in which we live, students need to have diverse literature and resources that provide purpose and meaning to their literacy skills. Without this type of instruction, that provides opportunities for rich discussions and high level thinking, students are not able to gain the overarching goal of literacy, which in my opinion is to be a literate individual of the world around you. My website is geared for parents and teachers, however, it provides purposes for these adults which will hopefully reflect onto their students and children. In addition, I think it would be extremely beneficial and engaging if students created a classroom webpage that discussed their cultures. This is a way to integrate cultural literacy with my technology. Each student would be able to access the website and keep in mind that where everyone comes from is important in the way our classroom operates. It also provides personal connections amoung students and teachers. Assignments like the "where i'm from" poem would be awesome links to a classroom website and would allow students to understand that they are valued as people by their peers, teacher, and other adults. Students would need a great deal of guidance to create this classroom website and some background knowledge. They would need to know how to use the computer, write about themselves and be creative with their pages, read and comment on other students' pages, listen to each student share if a presentation of each students' page was given, speak in front of their peers if presentations were given, etc. They would gain so many important literacy skills while also building life skills and opening their minds to the differences in people. I think about my own field placement and the Flat Stanley Project that they completed. I think it would be increadably effective if students were able to post their projects onto a classroom website. This technology allows students to see each others work outside the classroom and provides a space for them to share their culture with others. In addition, I think it would have made for an excellent extension and allow students to know that literacy comes in many different forms, not just reading books and writing on writers workshop paper.