Literacy Online: New Tools for Struggling Readers and Writers » (1st Edition)

Now an education consultant, Julie M. Wood, Ed.D., was a faculty member and former Director of the Jeanne Chall Reading Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her studies of technology in the classroom have helped many educators integrate digital tools into instruction in ways that maximize literacy learning.

In recent years, while the computer has gone from a schoolhouse novelty to an invaluable teaching tool, Julie Wood has researched how twenty-first century technologies can help all students achieve full literacy. In Literacy Online, she demonstrates how strategically employing your classroom's computer can help you find new solutions to a perennial challenge faced by every elementary teacher: engaging and encouraging struggling students while developing their reading and writing skills.

All you need to do is get students to the keyboard, then Literacy Online's practical suggestions for using computers will develop underachieving students' literacy skills in a project-based environment rich with meaning. Wood demonstrates how digital-based lessons encourage growth in seven key literacy characteristics:

Literacy Online shares concrete ideas for teaching and planning in support struggling students as well as guidelines for evaluating the helpfulness of websites and software. In addition, a companion website (http://www.heinemann.com/literacyonline) features reproducible brainstorming sheets and links to successful model programs across the country where the literacy abilities of students have improved dramatically thanks to the integration of technology.

Best of all, Literacy Online is written for any teacher. Technophobes will begin helping emerging readers overcome their difficulties on Monday morning with easy-to-use tips that capitalize on basic skills like word processing, browsing the Internet, and communicating by email, while technophiles will find innovative options to improve students' reading and writing sooner by extending into web design, the use of a variety of computer gadgetry, and even speech recognition software.