Technology and Teaching Children to Read

1
Technology and Teaching Children to Read

• Summary of the NEIRTEC Report, c2004
• EDU 500 Remedial Reading
• Mary Nash, Education Liaison Librarian
• March 19, 2009

2
This report is intended to

• ... provide background information that will
  help reading specialists, education technology
  specialists, classroom teachers, and special
  education teachers work together to understand,
  evaluate, and implement effective uses of
  technology within K-6 reading programs.

3
Who developed the report?

• Northeast and the Islands Regional Technology in
  Education Consortium (NEIRTEC)
• Education Development Center, Inc.
• TERC
• Education Alliance at Brown University
• Learning Innovations at West Ed
• Built on NRP guidelines
• Funded by U.S. Department of Education

4
Framework for Technology

• Computers can support teaching, but are not a
  substitute for knowledgeable and caring teachers
• General computer capabilities
• Present information and activities to students
• Assess students work
• Respond to students work
• Provide scaffolds, such as access to word
  pronunciation and definitions

5
Key questions to consider

• Is a process established in your school to review
  and recommend uses of technology?
• What technologies are already available?
• Which reading skills can and should be addressed
  with technology?
• How does your school teach special needs, ESL,
  and struggling readers and how can technology
  help?
• Are parents informed and involved?

6
Phonemic AwarenessTechnology can provide

• Tasks that involve segmenting words into sounds
  and blending sounds into words
• Immediate feedback
• Individualized problem sets that focus on
  phonemes the student hasnt mastered
• Repetition and altered speed of speech
• Activities that ask children to match sounds and
  letters
• Activities designed for 2-3 children to work
  together
• Games, attractive visuals, and motivating speech
• Progress reports
• Self-directed work for some, while teacher works
  with other needy children

7
PhonicsTechnology can provide

• Tasks that match sounds with letters, and spoken
  words with written words
• Immediate feedback
• Individualized problem sets and stories that
  focus on letter-sound correspondence
• Repetition and altered speed of speech
• Games, attractive visuals, and motivating speech
• Progress reports
• Texts with scaffolds (e.g. click on any word and
  hear it)
• Self-directed work for some, while teacher works
  with other needy children

8
FluencyE-books can provide

• A model of fluent oral reading
• On-demand help in decoding words
• Visual highlighting of phrases
• Beginning readers the chance to tackle more
  challenging texts
• Speech recognition tools
• Recording and analysis tools for assessment

9
VocabularyTechnology can provide

• Interactive vocabulary lessons that engage
  students, provide feedback, individualize
  instruction, and keep reports
• Online dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias
  with sound capability
• Online texts with hyperlinks to definitions
• Websites, online discussion, online publishing,
  and web logs to increase opportunity to read and
  write

10
Text ComprehensionTechnology can provide

• Hypertext and hypermedia with scaffolding such as
  clarifications, summaries, concept maps, and key
  questions
• Embedded prompts for students to answer
  questions, add to concept maps or other graphic
  organizers, or summarize information, with a word
  processor or concept mapping tool included
• Active reading with scaffolding options to read
  words aloud, provide definitions, explain
  concepts, and provide visual aids

11
Other technology benefits

• Improve student motivation
• Support integrated learning systems (ILS)
• Provide reading management and assessment tools
• Develop writing and word processing skills

12
Conclusions

• Technology such as hypertext, text-to-speech
  conversion, and speech recognition can provide
• appropriate levels of activities
• repetitive practice
• individualized feedback
• supportive scaffolding
• detailed record-keeping
• Available research is still inadequate to make
  informed decisions
• Technology must be a good fit to be worth the
  cost and effort