Showcase | kristiehowart

Kristie Howart's Literacy and Technology Showcase

I have always been a firm believer in the importance of being able to effectively read and write, so choosing literacy as my first concentration area when I enrolled in the Master of Arts in Education program at Michigan State University made perfect sense to me. As the field of education continues to evolve, technology is becoming a more significant factor. It is crucial for educators to become familiar with technological resources that can be used to support student learning. In an effort to improve my instruction and stay current in the field of education, I chose technology as my second concentration area.

This Literacy and Technology Showcase portrays eight examples of my best work associated with literacy and/or technology. It is arranged in a manner that features solely literacy related content in the beginning and progresses to highlight literacy and technology related content.

Creativity with Literacy

Through the exploration of multiple genres and literary art, educators can develop lesson plans that include enrichment activities that appeal to multiple learning styles while remaining under the umbrella of literacy instruction. As a middle school teacher, I strive to incorporate tasks into each of my units that can be viewed as fun to different kinds of middle school learners. One of the neatest aspects of literacy is how activities associated with the subject can be easily designed to encourage creativity and individuality. Many genres and forms of literary art, such as poetry, offer endless possibilities for educators to help their students successfully convey in writing their thoughts, feelings, or knowledge on any given topic in a unique way. My acorn and shooting star shaped poems serve as examples of expressing ideas in writing via an unusual format referred to as concrete poetry. It is my hope and goal as a teacher to continue to add material to my repertoire that inspires each student to think outside of the box and leads them to a place of feeling personal success.

Share Personal Writing Samples

I am a firm believer in the importance of educators spending time being actively involved with their instruction and teaching materials, whether that be through completing activities before or while introducing them to students. Not only does it help educators sort out issues that could potentially hinder a child’s ability to gain the desired knowledge from a lesson, it promotes the idea that the educator’s lessons are worth spending time on! Incorporating a Writer’s Memo into an assignment’s requirements can be useful because it helps students remember to spend time reflecting on the purpose of a piece of work. The short story An Unlikely Friendship is an example of my own writing that I have shared with middle school students in my literature extension class. I have used it in two different ways. Once I had them illustrate the story according to its descriptions as a way for them to focus on following directions and paying close attention to details. Another time I only showed them the first half of the story and they were required to finish it in order to practice staying on topic and tying ideas together.

Reflecting Leads to Growth

In order to grow as a person both personally and professionally, one needs to take time to reflect. Time spent reflecting provides individuals the opportunity to re-energize and view things from a different perspective. As an educator, time spent reflecting may lead to a better understanding of why students react in certain ways to some instruction. Writing my literature autobiography helped me reflect on my personal reading habits. Reflecting on how I evolved as a reader has helped me see reading through the eyes of some of my students. As you can see in the picture, I still own many of the books that I enjoyed reading in the past. I chose to include my laptop and mouse in the picture to show that I have continued to reflect on the everchanging world of literacy since I finished writing the final copy of this paper several years ago. Technology has certainly changed how I approach literacy instruction and my own reading for personal enjoyment. It would be a topic that I would incorporate into an updated version of my literature autobiography. I never want to stop taking time to reflect because I have learned that it helps me be a better version of myself. It is my hope to instill this understanding of the importance of reflecting in my students, so they can continue to better themselves, too.

Advances in Technology

Incorporating technology into my language arts lesson plans has been an interesting journey. I spent several years having students write their formal pieces of writing via Microsoft Word. Although this word processing application has many positive attributes, it also has some truly negative characteristics that led to a variety of issues. For example, students would forget to save their work, forget their flash drives, have to print each draft in order to edit with a peer, and often not be able to easily continue making progress on their work at home. Now, thanks to Google Documents, I can have my kids quickly share, edit, and revise their essays with a classmate, work from home without worrying about which programs they can access, and avoid the headache of hearing about unsaved work! Combine Google Documents with some of the other free technological resources that are available and kids are able to compose pieces of writing that have been thoroughly reviewed and developed. The Descriptive Essay assignment is an example of a language arts lesson plan enhanced with technological resources that I designed.

Gaming in the Classroom

It is safe to say that no one would refer to me as a gamer. The extent of my video gaming skills is being able to beat people at Mario Kart on Nintendo 64. The thought of using video games in the classroom always seemed ridiculous to me before I spent some time firsthand exploring ways to incorporate Minecraft into potential lesson plans. My Minecraft screencast portrays a sample language arts assignment that I designed with my sixth grade students in mind. I will admit that I still have a lot to learn about this topic before I forge ahead and consistently incorporate gaming into my instruction, but I am excited about continuing to advance my skills and understanding of how to transform my instruction in this manner.

Content Management System (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) allows educators to design, manage, and deliver as much of a course’s content that is desired online. Throughout my time in grad school, I became familiar with various Content Management Systems, such as CourseSites by Blackboard Learn, Edmodo, Schoology, and Moodle. CourseSites by Blackboard Learn was my personal favorite and the provided screencast portrays a language arts quiz on the novel The Cay by Theodore Taylor that I designed via this CMS. The school district in which I work is in the process of getting a personal learning device for each student to use in the 2015-2016 school year. It is extremely important for me to develop lessons on a CMS like CourseSites by Blackboard Learn in order to ensure that I am able to incorporate the use of the personal learning devices into my instruction as much as possible.

Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) Model

The Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) Model focuses on an educator’s content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). In short, the framework first highlights each form of knowledge separately and then offers in-depth insight on how each area continuously overlaps and intertwines to form a single framework of knowledge. The TPACK Model prezi that I created provides a more thorough overview of the model. Like many educational models, TPACK continues to evolve and can be interpreted differently by different kinds of educators and scholars. As individuals associated with the field of education are aware, there is not a single combination of knowledge or skills that can lead to successful teaching for every educator. Personally, I find the TPACK framework useful because it reminds me to reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses in regards to content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge rather than just one area. As I mentioned earlier, in order to grow, one needs to take time to reflect. I am interested in continuing to learn about TPACK from the eyes of other educators and scholars in the future.

Digital Tools + Assessment

Assessment is a significant aspect of teaching. Quality assessment is designed in a way that helps educators provide feedback to their students in a timely manner. Creating quality assessments and providing efficient feedback is often easier said than done. Thanks to advances in technology, educators have access to a variety of digital tools that can make assessing students and providing feedback less daunting. My infographic highlights three quality digital tools, Kubbu, QuizEgg, and eQuizzer, that can be helpful for social studies educators as they design new ways to incorporate quizzes into their instruction. I have explored each of the three digital tools more since I finished the final version of the infographic and can honestly say that each of the tools can be useful for any kind of educator. I plan on incorporating them into my own social studies, language arts, and literature extension classes in the 2015-2016 school year when my students have access to personal learning devices.

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