Chapter One
The first chapter of this textbook holds a lot of promise for me because it informed me that it was going to show how to become a “networked classroom” in different classroom situations. As a teacher in a low-technology school, I have found it nearly impossible to integrate technology into my daily classroom life. We have a class website, and get to go to the computer lab once a week, but we don’t interact with technology any more than this. This is greatly disappointing to me. However, I am very excited to see what this textbook has to offer me in the first chapter, “Short”, which promises to show effective and engaging ways to implement new literacies in low technology classrooms. I am hoping that this book is just what I needed to inspire me to broaden my classroom horizons. Wish me luck, I am off and away into chapter two of this adventure!
Chapter Two
At the beginning of this chapter, I’m immediately immersed into a new literacies autobiography project. I absolutely adore this idea for my own fifth grade classroom. This is something I feel that I could assign as a project on the first week of school. We could brainstorm together on the first day, and then allow the students to go home and further brainstorm in a familiar setting with their family or friends. I would offer classroom technology time to allow the students to complete this project because technology resources are often limited for my students. However, I think this is a very manageable project. It is definitely something I would like to consider next year. The chapter continues on to offer suggestions to teach the difference between linear and non-linear reading styles, and reading response ideas. All of the suggestions seem very doable for my own fifth grade class. I really appreciate that the author included questions to consider as well, because it acts as guiding questions for me, as I am a first year teacher with limited experiences, and often struggle to facilitate meaningful classroom discussion. I really connected with this chapter because it showed me that there are multiple ways to respond when learning. I want to incorporate these different ways of responding to texts in my own classroom because no two students learn in the same way. I’m a very linguistic person. I enjoy responding in written forms, however, another learn may want to respond in the form of a PowerPoint. Is one better than the other? Should a teacher cater to one student’s strengths while ignoring another’s? I also really enjoyed the thought that networking can be wireless. If technology in severely limited in your classroom, you can still set up cooperative learning experiences, and allow the students to connect in collaborative working environments. After reading this chapter, I feel as though I need to be the teacher who “walks the walk”. I very much so identify with Cassie Neumann’s blog post that ends the chapter because I am also a first year teacher, without lesson plans that can be revamped, but I do think I can incorporate many of these “wireless” activities into my plans without much strain. However, I’m VERY excited about how I can continue to improve my lessons year after year.
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