New+Literacies+Practices

NEW LITERACIES PRACTICES According to Hill (2012, p.361) 'the lives of young children are saturated with multimedia, in the form of DVD's, CD-ROM's, computer games, digital music, email, text messaging and digital photography, to name just a few'. Gone are the days of only putting pen to paper. Technology is forever increasing and improving and it is important to us as teachers to ensure that our children are aware on how to use such technologies as they will be heavily relied on in their futures. Children already know how to use most of the new technologies that schools now have as they have most of these items in their own homes. Using different means of technology to teach literacy keeps the child engaged as teaching literacy with technology is fun and interactive for the students.

On recent observation at a local primary school a variety of different digital technologies were seen being used by both the teacher and the students in the classroom.



**Smartboard **Seeing a smartboard in a primary school classroom is an extremely common practice these days, they are fun, interactive and engaging. Whilst on observation the smartboard was used minimally, with the teacher advising me that she does not use the smartboard to it's full potential. Although i did observe the class making indivual presentations, most of them opted to used the smartbaord and were able to use it with ease.



i**Pad** The school at which i completed my observation had just recently acquired 10 iPads. 10 iPads was a perfect amount as the school was small with only 33 studenets in total. The students in the classroom had half an hour socail activities time each Monday where most of them spent that time using the iPads available to play games. The iPADS also had fun games and activities on them that were based around literacy and maths, the children would play these games without even realising they were learning.



** Television ** The classroom that I was in had its own television that was used a couple of times a week. The 3-6 class had two specific programs in which they watched every week. ‘Behind the News’ was a half an hour news program that they would watch and take notes on every Tuesday, a discussion involving the key points would take place at the end. ‘Cyberchase’, a children’s cartoon that involved maths, was watched every Wednesday. Both of these programs were highly engaging for the students and they liked to get involved in the discussions.



** Computer **The computer was the main technology in which was used whilst on my observation. Each student was able to capably use the computer for any subject they were required to. They all knew how to use the internet for both research on their projects and to enter specific educational websites such as ‘Study Ladder’ (an educational literacy and maths program).



** Laptop ** There was a whole cupboard of laptops which were not used quite as often as the other technology. The laptops were only used when there weren’t enough computers or iPads to go around the class.



** Camera **The school liked to take a lot of photos to keep a record of what was going on around the school and also share their achievements and what was going on with the parents via the school newsletter. The students were easily able to take a photo and then upload it straight to the school computer and transfer it to a word document ready to be added to the school newsletter.

In my observations of teaching practices at Queenscliff primary school students used a variety of technology and digital media to enhance their learning experience. The Students used computer stations to complete reading and phonetic activities, through ways of electronic gaming. These literacy learning games also gave the children experience using computers and was used as a good revision activity.
 * Other observations- **

Molly- • I also observed little cameras being used by students called ‘bloggies’. These Bloggies allowed students to take picture of what they were doing then upload them to the computers and practice writing and describing their experience again on the computer. The students then printed them off and put them in their ‘bloggie journal’. • Students also used normal cameras to take pictures write about the pictures in their handwriting book. In this book they would practice their best hand writing skills underneath the photo, remembering capital letters and punctuation. • The interactive white board was another great alternate type of electronic media used in another class observed. This board was used in an adjacent music class, and allowed students with the help of the teacher to make their own music and dance move, which then could re-played. Every student was loving the interactive white board activity. • Most of the students were familiar with computers and cameras as most had had prior experience at home, unlike the interactive white board, where they don’t have such technologies available at home. Learners can become more critically aware when using and creating text thorough being exposed to a number of different text types in class.

Jamie: -On my placement, the teacher didn't use technology all that often however she did utilise the smart board when she could to model handwriting and show youtube videos whilst the children were eating their lunch or on wet time timetables. -Mandama have 'discovery' as part of their curriculum where they focus on a particular topic but allow all the prep grades to come together and 'discover' different things about the topic. The smart boards were used in this to show children fairy tales (which was their current topic) and play games on it as well. -During their daily five, they would utilise the five mini laptops they had at the back of the classroom for audio books that linked with their current pm book they were reading.

Wendy:
 * I observed a smartboard being used for a shared reading experience where a electronic book was displayed on. The teacher sat on the mat //with// the children so there was a togetherness. All the children could clearly see the print and pictures and the children showed excitment when the teacher announced she was going to be using the electronic book so the children do enjoy the use of technology. Another form of technology I observed was computers, there was six computers located in the classroom and a group of children worked on 'spellodrone' programme. The teacher was taking a guided reading group so couldn't assist these children. Some children become logged out and sat doing nothing with their time. I believe children need to use technology with support, computers can be hard to navigate.

Mary: For my placement, it surprised me how much the use of technology was incorporated into learning. Smartboards were present for most teachers to use and the grade 3/4 and 5/6 students all had their own iPads or an iPad which they had borrowed from the school. The smartboard was mainly used to show youtube clips to the students or to play maths games as a whole class, with each student being able to come up and touch the screen with their answer. IPads were used by the upper primary levels and allowed students to type up their work or to access the schools blog to get work off or to check what their homework was. I think it was a good idea to have so much technology present in the school as it teaches students basic IT skills for their future and is today's new way of learning.

Hannah: When I was on placement I saw that each classroom had a whiteboard similar to the smart boards just not as interactive as them. I was in a grade 6 class, where all the students had their own laptop which stayed at school. The students used their laptops on a daily basis, often for parts of their literacy and numeracy lessons and also when they were doing their own individual research projects on Gold and Ethiopia. The teacher used the interactive whiteboard occasionally when she had a youtube clip she wanted to show the students or other informative websites to help them with their projects. I was surprised at how much they did use their laptops in the classroom, particularly with literacy, but each of the students had well developed computer skills from using the laptops on a regular basis, which seems to be more incorporated in classrooms these days.

It is apparent that all schools are adopting the use of digital technologies to enhance literacy in school as we all observed the same technology on our observation rounds. Hill (2012, p.364) states that ‘it has become evident that digital literacies and print-based literacy are not oppositional concepts; both are required for effective functioning in the 21st century’.