Digital Literacies

It is a known fact that we live in a technology driven world. As teachers, our job is to prepare students to best succeed in this world. This means that students are expected to have a whole new set of skills besides just reading and writing. Here are a few ideas to include more technology into your English classroom:

1. Blogging. Using Blogger or Weebly allows students share their thoughts on a text and also comment on other students' ideas.

2. Publish student work! After putting the hard work, s
tudents deserve the opportunity to see a finished piece presented to the class. Students can write stories/essays, add pictures and make a final copy. The presentation can be on Microsoft Word and can be printed to be put on display.

3. Digital Portfolio- allow students to keep track of their work in different classes through Google Drive

4. Look at primary sources! Never have so many authentic documents available to students. There are plenty of websites that have speeches and documents available to students. My personal favorite (plug here) is DocsTeach, the educational website from the National Archives. The site include already made lesson plans and documents to go along with websites: https://www.docsteach.org/documents

5. Do research projects! This provides teachers with a good opportunity to discuss valid sites verses not valid and to review the process of searching the internet for strong evidence and information. 

6. Provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge of a book through a variety of multi-media formats. Students can make videos, create websites, or present slides to present a novel study or connect to a thematic unit.