Importance of Teachers
Today’s Students: Powered Up for Success
Teaching is one of the few professions that is not just a job or even an adventure—it's a calling. Great teachers strive to help every student unlock their potential and develop the habits of mind that will serve them for a lifetime. They believe that every student has a gift—even when students doubt themselves.
Henry Adams said that "a teacher affects eternity—he can never tell where his influence stops." That is a weighty responsibility and a unique privilege. I thank you for all that you have done and will do to train the next generation of great teachers. The challenges facing our nation's schools of education are great. But so is the opportunity to better serve our children and the common good.
Global Communications From Home and School
Early Literacy Telecommunication Exchange Pilot Project is the first integrated multimedia, multilingual web based system for young children. It is open and evolutionary; young children 4 and over discover and use the written language by creating stories and drawings and share them with other young children across the world;
This exciting global project involves classrooms in four countries; France, USA, Spain, Andorra with potential for many more.
Research over the past fifteen years working with children and computers has brought us new insights into how children learn to write and read in both their first and second language.
We have discovered strategies to help teachers make the maximum use of the new technologies and empower all the children in their classroom.
The collaboration now going on among early literacy classrooms worldwide has expanded our professional community and increased our level of literacy knowledge.
Key goals:
1. Early Literacy telecommunications will allow young children to discover and use the written language in its communication function from the start;
2. Prevent illiteracy and school failure;
3. Encourage the use of technology from the start for writing and reading;
4. Develop international understanding from a young age by introducing a foreign language and enabling cross- cultural exchanges,
5. Enhance interactive collaborative projects between classes located in different parts of the world,
6. Create an E-Learning community of children, their teachers as well as other faculty members and parents.
U.S. Progress
Computers are in the classroom.
Laptops and Smart Boards making an appearance, also wireless laptop mobile carts.
Language Processing happens when students think and write directly into the computer daily.
With these new innovations teachers can do a group language processing story on the Smart Board, students also can type there stories to be shown to the entire class, printed out and then used as a choral reading.
For more information on project, workshops or consulting or to find out about how your school or classroom can participate contact:
Dr. Jean Casey, U.S. coordinator
E-mail: jeancasey@aol.com
blog: www.casey.com/jean
Dr. Rachel Cohen, Director
French Schools
For more information: http://www.csulb.edu/~jmcasey
Success for your students
Creating the Early Literacy Classroom:
The computer when used as a writing tool empowers all students to become authors.
1) Exploration- Initially students explore the keyboard and type random letters. (this exploration is an essential learning stage.) As they type a key, they see it, hear it and are actively involved in the process of teaching the letters to themselves. (Alphabet recognition has been shown to be an indicator: http:// of reading success.)
2) Encoding, copying known words- Next the students type their name and words familiar to them like Mom...Dad...Ruff....etc.; they also look around their environment for print and type that print into the computer and hear it spoken and see its form and continually search for meaning and patterns in the letters and words they create on the screen.
3) Writing explosion-Finally students begin to put their own thought together with all these words and the explosion of literacy from one sentence on the screen to long stories occurs very rapidly. At this stage the learner needs to hear the teacher read many and varied examples of good literature.
Casey, Jean M. coming out in 2011: Power Up: Effective Classroom for the Technology Native Student. Libraries Unlimited.
Casey, Jean M. (2000) Creating the Early Literacy Classroom, Casey, Jean M. (2000) Early Literacy: The Empowerment of Technology, Rev. Edition (2000), Libraries Unlimited, Englewood, CO. to order books: e-mail jeancasey@aol.com or www.lu.com
Your goal will be to empower your students through Language Processing, taking their own language experiences and writing them on the computer.
Recommended Software:
Kidworks Deluxe and BookBy You from Knowledge Adventure
http://www.knowledgeadventure.com/booksbyyou/
Write Outloud from Don Johnston Company
Also these web sites:
http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/ATBasics/Curriculum/Reading/talkingWord.php#
http://www.cricksoft.com/us/products/clicker/
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/wiggleworks/classic/index.htm
http://www.waterford.org/index.jsp
http://www.seussville.com/games/storymaker/story_maker.html try this one out!
Or Google: Talking Word processors
