Session 5 Review of Articles/Videos and Questions

     After reading the articles and watching the video due for this week, I was in awe at the different styles of learning available from little fingertips to teachers. I could not help thinking what a powerful age to be a teacher and have all these resources available at the click of your browser. Incorporating 21st Century skills and technology is essential to having a classroom that is ready for the newest technology. Every teacher should incorporate technology into their daily schedules to "promote interaction and a sense of community that enables formal and informal learning." (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 3) As I walked through each of the sites, I was impressed with PBSkids    This site was extremely colorful and a site with a multitude of ways to learn. Any child can use this site with ease and even save their scores!
     Wikijunior has books to read and you could even help to write a book. My students would enjoy this site because they would love the fact that they could be as creative as they wanted. Another site that was fun for younger children was Starfall. This site enables children to sound out any and all parts of words. If I was an early child educator, I would love to put my kids on this site. It would even help the reluctant reader because of it's vibrant colors and fun characters. For my class, Scholastic Interactives was the best site for junior high children. It allows you to print a variety of material for free, and teachers love free printables! If you wanted to join for more resources, there is a nominal fee of $8.99. When you sign up, you automatically receive 500 bonus points towards free books for your classroom, which is an added bonus. I also liked that they offer daily starters and engaging activities by grade level.
     Another site that I would definitely use in my classroom is Stacks for Kids because it offers cool books to check out by genre. It also has games by certain book titles like Holes, and Goosebumps. Besides games, a student can create book review, book talk,and post them online. I love the fact that they include writing prompts that you could send a child to the computer to complete. This site seems the most challenging, but also it would be the most productive for my junior high children.
  
     Questions:
      1. At what age can online/digital literacy activities be integrated into the classroom? After reading this weeks articles, I believe that a child should be able to participate in online media in preschool. There is no reason why a child who can operate video games and other video materials, cannot benefit from early reading, phonics, and math skills with a digital program online. The child can soar so rapidly and have an early thirst for learning the younger they acquire reading skills. The biggest problem in literacy today was taking out phonics from the curriculum. When I was first teaching, many moons ago, phonics was part of the core curriculum across the state. Little by little, districts pulled phonics to try "new and improved" reading programs. There has been so much money spent on programs that are more colorful, or guaranteed to increase reading scores, when the districts should have left phonics alone and kids would have been reading in preschool. With the digital media that is around today that incorporate phonics into the reading process, every child should be reading at or above grade level in the lower grades. Once they master reading skills, their comprehension and math skills will also improve. Hats off to getting digital/online literacy into every preschool, home, and school, so every child could have the advantage of learning how to read and becoming a proficient reader.
      2. What is a 21st Century Learning Environment? Technology is the 21st century, however, most teachers, parents, and administrators still adhere to the paradigm of education that is so extremely outdated and needs some serious training to learn what the 21st century offers so that we can advance as a society. We have 21st Century grant money in our school that allows us to have an afterschool program, and also pays for our summer school. With this money, we have strict guidelines that we have to adhere to while making sure our goals are part of the STEM cells. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I found a diagram that helps understand the cycle of 21st Century.

     3. How can you cultivate at least one of the 21st Century Skills into your current/future classroom? I am currently working on setting up a blog for my classroom to interact with Andrea's classroom across town. We are both reading the same book for or non-fiction genre, and we want our kids to answer open-ended questions and then TAGS each other to interact. Tagging is something that I teach my children from September to June. "T" stand for tell the author of the piece of writing something good that they wrote. "A" stands for ask the author a question. "G" stands for give advice to the author. Finally, "S" stands for something similar that you wrote in your response. Another thing that I do with my children is take them on virtual tours of the Holocaust. They are mesmerized when they go through the concentration camps in our WWII unit. This year, I will have them write blogs about their feelings as they go through the tour. This is indeed an exciting time in education!