Technology
& Reading
The
overall goal of reading is to make meaning from text. High-tech
tools can support this process, for all students, and especially
those who have difficulty in comprehension. The key reason is that
electronic text (or e-text) is presented on a computer screen (e.g.,
online books, scanned materials, Web pages, software) it offers
the reader many advantages because of its malleability. For example,
for better accessibility, the reader can modify the size, font,
or background of text. Text in its entirety or in part (e.g., sentences,
words, paragraphs) can be read aloud by the computer, which is a
great boost to fluency. Readers can select and move around text—e.g.,
putting it in an outline, graphic organizer, answering questions.
This supportive capability gives readers a chance to “mess
around” or interact with text in a way that hard copy does
not allow. Additional enrichment information can also provide supports
as readers follow links to definitions, pictures, and additional
information to support students as they elicit prior knowledge and
build background knowledge. These supportive electronic resources
can combine with vocabulary and comprehension research-based instructional
strategies. For example, selective underlining is a good comprehension
skill. Different software programs allow students to highlight text
and drag it over into an outline, into a question and answer format,
or even an note card. This section is chock full of practical information
about how technology can support reading comprehension and provide
technology tools, lesson plans and resources.
Sites
That Matter
If
you want to learn more about strategies for using technology to
teach reading text, choose from the links below.
Background
Information
A Story! A Story! Ten easy steps to integrate the new literacies of the Internet into your reading and language arts classroom
A presentation by Donald J. Leu at the Technology, Reading, and Learning Disabilities Conference (TRLD) in San Francisco, CA on January 27, 2006. The presentation discusses ten easy steps to integrate the Internet into K-12 reading and language arts classrooms.
www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/event_files/
A_story_10_easy_steps_handout_01272006.doc
Leading the Way with New Literacies: Online Reading Comprehension
A presentation by Donald J. Leu at the Technology, Reading, and Learning Disabilities Conference (TRLD) in San Francisco, CA on January 27, 2006. Provides extensive lists of instructional models, examples from schools and classrooms, links to curriculum sites, and new literacy reading lists, practical applications, articles, and web sites for Professional Development.
www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/event_files/
Leading_with_reading_comprehension_01272006.doc
Reading
Comprehension on the Internet: Expanding Our Understanding of Reading
Comprehension to Encompass New Illiteracies
This article by Julie Coiro explores the need to change the way
we think about reading comprehension in today’s technology
rich world. Coiro closely examines the skills and abilities needed
to interact with text on the Internet while exploring literacy questions.
She address such questions as: Is the comprehension process different
on the Internet? What new thought processes are required to read
on the Internet? Are these processes extensions of traditional comprehension
skills or do they require different skills? What implications do
these differences have for comprehension instruction, assessment,
and professional development?
www.readingonline.org/electronic/
elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/rt/2-03_Column/index.html
Reading
on the Internet: The Link between Literacy and Technology
Today's definition of literacy is changing to include literacy skills
necessary for students to gain access to best information in the
shortest time to identify and solve their most important problems,
and then communicate this information. This article addresses the
question, "How can educators help students use their reading
strategies to understand the electronic word?"
www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/
lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/jaal/9-03_column/
Electronic
Books: Reading and Studying with Supportive Resources
This excellent article by Lynne Anderson-Inman presents state-of-the-art
information on electronic texts. It includes a definition, the purpose,
advantages and disadvantages, the types of embedded resources, and
evaluating and selecting electronic texts.
www.readingonline.org/electronic/
elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/ebook/index.html
National
Center for Technology Innovation
This excellent site offer offers a comprehensive research synthesis
titled, “A Review of Technology-Based Approaches for Reading
Instruction: Tools for Researchers and Vendors.” It presents
a paper which details the current data to support use of technology
for students with disabilities. It also provides information about
reading software categorized in matrices with the following headings:
• Building Skills and Comprehension
• Convert Text to Speech
• Providing Text in Alternate Formats
• Providing Electronic Resources
• Organizing Ideas
• Integrating Literacy Supports
www.nationaltechcenter.org/matrix/default.asp#
Reading
on the Web: Making the Most of Digital Text
This article presents the most recent description of the types of
supportive resources that can be embedded in or linked to electronic
text. Lynne Anderson-Inman lists specific sites that offer digital
texts with supports such as a built in dictionary, background information,
video illustrations, and demonstrations.
cate.uoregon.edu/pdf/AndersonInman_WSRA_JOURNAL.pdf
Literacy
Junction
This unique online literature based environment is a cyber community
of students and teachers from around the world. Cyber Heights Middle
School is an ideal place for virtual, actual, and fictional characters
to meet. Students create their own virtual character to become a
member of the CHMS student body. Their virtual character will Go
to Class with fictional characters and with protagonists from the
books featured on Literacy Junction. Students choose from the following:
Design a Project, Create a Dialog, Discuss a Book, or Write a Critique.
It also includes Teacher Tools with tutorials as well as a list
of high-quality educational sites that support the Go to Class activities.
www.ncsu.edu/literacyjunction/
Reading,
Technology, and Inquiry-based Learning through Literature-Rich-WebQuests
This article focuses on how WebQuests can facilitate the reading
experience. Students engage in problem solving, information processing,
and collaboration. In these literature-based WebQuests, books become
the focal point for reading-centered learning activities. The article
describes the origin of WebQuests, and also explores how teachers
can locate, evaluate, adapt, and integrate existing WebQuests.
www.readingonline.org/articles/
art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/teclehaimanot
Lesson
Plans
WebQuests
Matrix of Examples
This site by Bernie Dodge presents a collection of evaluated WebQuests.
Browse WebQuests organized into Top, Middling, and New matrices
categories, as well as by subject area. Check out the English language
arts sites by grades.
webquest.org/
Middle
School.net Language Arts WebQuests
This site contains WebQuests designed especially for middle school
Language Art teachers.
www.middleschool.net/less_tut/WebQuests/lawq.htm
S.C.O.R.E.
CyberGuides—Teacher Guides and Student Activities
This site from the State of California is a DON'T MISS SITE. This
site is a compilation of literature-based "CyberGuides”
or Web based-lesson plans focus on often-taught novels and is organized
by grades. Each CyberGuide contains a student and teacher edition,
standards, a task, a process, teacher-selected Web sites, and a
rubric.
www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/SCORE/cyberguide.html
Online
Book Clubs - LiteracyMatters
This site links to many online book clubs for students. Here students
can discuss books with students outside of their own classroom and
even with authors. These clubs generally use a discussion board
format where students can write brief responses to discussion questions
and see them posted online.
www.literacymatters.org/adlit/response/discussion.htm#book
ClassZone
A web site of McDougal Littell, ClassZone provides companion web sites for students' textbooks. Access math, world languages, science, social studies, and language arts tools, resources, current events, quizzes, and online puzzles to support teachers' lesson plans.
www.classzone.com
Online
Tools
Scholastic Graphic Organizers for Reading Comprehsion
One of the best sites for ready-made graphic organizers, this leading educational publisher provides downloadable PDFs of a variety of graphic organizers to help students construct meaning of text.
content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=2983
Voycabulary
This marvelous site takes the words on any Web page into links,
so you can look them up with just a click--in a dictionary of your
choice. Students also can write their work and save as HTML file
and then use this site to enrich the vocabulary of their writing.
http://www.voycabulary.com/
ReadWriteThink Student Materials Index
This site offers an assortment of online materials and interactive technology tools to support literacy learning in K-12 classrooms. Each of the interactive tools can be used to supplement a variety of lessons. Easily accessible is also a list of ReadWriteThink lessons that use each of the tools.
www.readwritethink.org/student_mat/index.asp
Merriam
Webster
This excellent online dictionary and thesaurus will let you type
in a word and search for matches. You can also add the Merriam-Webster
Lookup Button to the toolbar of your Internet browser. Then, highlight
any word in a Web page, click the button and a dictionary entry
of the word will appear.
http://www.m-w.com/
Readability
Writing Sample Analyzer
This site allows you to take a copy a sample of a Web page or any
digital text and it will give you the readability level of the text.
You can choose from the Flesch Reading Ease, Fog Scale Level, and
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Simply supply a sample of your writing
up to 5,000 characters and then click "Analyze.” This
is a wonderful tool for determining the readability level for Web
sites and other texts.
resources.aellalei.com/writer/sample.php
Read
Please
Read Please is a free downloadable tool. It reads any text file
from the Internet. Four natural-sounding human voices are included
(Mary, Mike, Sam and Marilyn) that speak any text copied into Windows.
It also allows the reader to increase the text size.
readplease.com/
Tex-Edit
Plus
For the Mac Tex-Edit Plus is a scriptable, styled text editor that
fills the gap between Apple's bare-bones SimpleText and a full-featured
word processor. It's fast, efficient, and natural-sounding.
www.tex-edit.com/
Speegle
Speegle is an Internet search engine that reads search results aloud to the user. After entering search terms and receiving results, the program will read through the list of results with descriptions of each page. Using a variety of keyboard shortcuts, students can navigate the results list without the use of a mouse.
www.speegle.co.uk/
Electronic
Text (E-Books)
LiteracyMatters lists of places to look for downloadable e-books.
www.literacymatters.org/adlit/selecting/ebooks.htm
The NYTimess Learning Network (Grades 3-12)
Reading comprehension activities with New York times articles, including an online dictionary and several types of comprehension questions.
www.nytimes.com/learning/
Resources
del.icio.us/Supported_etext
This site provides an extensive list of resources, supports, tools, and links to other web sites that provide a variety of supports for electronic texts. Sort by content area, cost, student population, level, type of resource, and type of support.
del.icio.us/Supported_etext
Twenty Online Resources on Reading with Comprehension and Engagement
Author Bridget Dalton serves as an information broker, culling 20 excellent resources from among the many that are posted on the web about this topic, drawing particular attention to the wealth of resources that Reading Online and other professional journals and organizations are making freely available through the Internet. These articles focus on comprehension and engagement in reading.
www.readingonline.org/editorial/edit_index.asp?
HREF=/editorial/may2001/index.html
Reading
Online
This is the electronic journal of the International Reading Association
It offers hundreds of articles on a range of topics in reading education,
focusing on using technology as a tool.
www.readingonline.org/
The MiddleWeb Reading/Writing Project
MiddleWeb offers an excellent resource page with an online reading/writing
discussion group, resource pages and Julie Cairo’s journal
articles and classroom handouts.
www.middleweb.com/mw/workshop/R_W_Project.html
Edyburn, D. (2003) Learning from text. Special Education Technology Practice. 5(2), 16-27.
This article examines key issues associated with the disconnect between the skills that students with disabilities bring to the general education classroom and the expectations deeply rooted in learning from text instructional models.
www.uwm.edu/~edyburn/LearningfromText.pdf
