Week 4: Key ideas from readings, applicable to teachers

In her article entitled Happily blogging at Belmore South, Pericles (2008) demonstrated how the use of new literacies can be succesfully incorporated into classroom learning actitivies. Pericles discussed her success in using blogs as a teaching tool, the main benefits of which were notably:
1. Blogs are an engaging digital medium. Teachers can improve their practise by using engaging resources, which consequently helps them to meet standards set out in the NSW Quality Teaching Model.
2. Blogs enable students to work independenty, or in small groups on different tasks. This makes providing a differentiated curriculum easier for teachers.
3. Teachers can involve parents and carers into the teaching and learning process more, because blogs are accessible at home, and can be usef to upload assignments and feedback for students.
4. As a public communication device, blogs can motivate students who appreciate an audience for their hard work - Pericles' class receivee 13,000 hits on their blog.


While Pericles focused on the use of blogs in schools, Barone (2008) discussed issues for teachers who use digital media technologies for literacy instruction. Some notable ideas posited by Barone include:
1. To successfully implement digital technologies into the curriculum, teachers and schools need to allocate sufficient time to understand the resources, and then teach students these skills, once they have mastered them.
2. Digital communication is transient, and therefore - they are not printed texts, which remain static, therefore teachers' digital expertise must be continually updated.
3.Digital technologies are worthwhile in the classroom, because they are increasingly used in the outside world we are responsible for teaching children to cope in.

References
Barone, D., & Wright, T. E.
(2008). Literacy instruction with
digital and media technologies.
The Reading Teacher, 62(4),
292-302

Pericles, K. (2008). Happily
blogging @ Belmore South.
SCAN, 27(2), 4-6 http://
www.curriculumsupport.educati
on.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/