A HARD TIME SAYING, "GOODBYE"

Today was my last class in the Reading program. I'm relieved in one way, but am already missing it in another and am sad. I've spent three long years with some of the same people....great people and educators. I've learned almost as much from my peers as I did from my professors....and that's saying a bunch!!! All of my peers were gracious, sharing and always willing to help or offer advice. I want to keep pursuing education.....it spurs me on....makes me think hard on issues and practice. I will miss it and the people. Thank You for three extremely rewarding years!
Sheri Prillaman

What a day!

I'm sorry we didn't get to create our own web page today. I would've liked to have made one today. But,,,,,,, from the class I do take a sense of trying to figure out things on my own and that most things if you just stop and read and be patient, you can do about anything on the computer you set your mind to. I will look at the sites and see if I can do this myself. I would also like to create a sight for my church. Thanks Dave for all of the great ideas to use with our students!!!!

Digital video promotes literacy???

Today's article by Foshay was very interesting. There are numerous ways to use digital video to promote literacy. Using desktop videp production with camras that act as digital videos. This allows students to edit their own movies on the computer. Along with making movies, come reading and rereading with rehearsal. Before you have a scripty, you have to write....so this lends itself well to literacy!! What better way to become better at reading? The author gave many ideas of movies to have the students create. Some examples the article gave were

• kids creating a news show
  
• have a cooking segment
• act out a folktale and video it
• Science lab experiments
• Book club
• Special events at school etc...

One thing the article did mention was storyboards and I'm not familiar with what that is. I like the idea of using digital videos, I think that the teacher should be feel confident with the technology the students will be using and have plenty of time to devote to the task. She must have a plan and be organized or I can see the kids not accomplishing enough for an end product. I could use this with my students to make digital movies about many things we do in the classroom. This year we dissected owl pellets and that would make a good video with the kids writing a script for step by step instructions.

Digital text

I have really enjoyed the e-books and movie maker both. I think that making an e-book with students would be more feasible because most everyone has access to powerpoint. I don't know that I have access to movie maker. I think the most I learned from these two projects is that they really are not that hard. However, they did take me a long time to complete!

I would love to do do digital texts with my kids, let them create and also have a library full of multimedia texts that I could send home with my students. Could I do English and Spanish? There are many books now available in both languages. Could I get some volunteers from my community or some of my ESL parents to come to school and read the Spanish for me? That would be great parent involvement, not to mention good for kids to read with their Spanish speaking parents. Many of my ESL parents do not read, so it would still benefit their reading skills. I have learned in many classes that books on tape are a great boost to help students with fluency, this would be the same.

With e-books the possibilities of what you could do is endless! Kelly and I were talking about writing a Bright Ideas Grant for digital cameras, flashdrives and a few more things so that each student could have one each assigned to them at the beginning of the year. My idea was to do things like capturing their first day of 4th grade or take them on a field trip. Her idea was to create a digital yearbook of their 4th grade year. I think that is so cool!!!! What parent or kid wouldn't be impressed with that!!!! I will definitely use this idea of an e-book with my ESL students. There are many grants I could write and apply for, our local reading association is one. This will be fun!