I have been researching the use of ebooks, digital media, mobile devices and the development of transliteracy skills in the design of high-quality language and literacy-rich environments for over a decade. One thing I have started to notice recently is that many of digital reading platforms I have looked at in the past are offering free subscriptions for the remainder of the school year. This is an awesome opportunity for teachers to expand their classroom libraries to include digital formats!
Currently, all of these platforms are offering free digital resources for the remainder of the school year.
Lisa A. Lenhart, Kathleen A. Roskos, Jeremy Brueck & Xin Liang
Increasing young children’s vocabulary remains one of the most challenging areas of early literacy instruction. Progress has been made in identifying techniques that, while often complex, work to implement routinely. This study examines the effects of an easy-to-implement technique, say-tell-do-play (STDP), that integrates proven “active ingredients” of direct instruction embedded in shared book reading and structured play on preschoolers’ word awareness and word meaning. Effectiveness of the technique was tested with 18 preschoolers enrolled in a university-based child care setting. Children were pretested on vocabulary selected from two topic studies spanning 8 weeks. In the first period, half were instructed using the technique with play and the other half without play. Midstudy, they were tested, and the play feature was swapped for the second period. Children were then posttested and tested again after 2 months. Results indicate implementing the technique with play made a difference in children’s word awareness (recognition), but not for children’s understandings of word meanings. The study corroborates research that shows the benefits of intentional, direct instruction for helping children learn new words.
Lisa A. Lenhart, Kathleen A. Roskos, Jeremy Brueck & Xin Liang(2019)Does Play Help Children Learn Words?: Analysis of a Book Play Approach Using an Adapted Alternating Treatments Design,Journal of Research in Childhood Education,33:2,290-306,DOI: 10.1080/02568543.2019.1577776
The outcome of this conference was to build a better understanding of the state of the evidence and a develop a new section of the Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development that will be useful for families, professionals and policy makers.
The Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development is produced by the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development (CEECD) and the Strategic Knowledge Cluster on Early Child Development (SKC-ECD). Respectively based at the Université de Montréal and Université Laval (Quebec, Canada), these two organizations have built over the years a solid network of international experts who gather, synthesize and comment, in their respective domain of expertise, the most up-to-date scientific knowledge available on the development of young children, from conception to age five.
Recently, the Technology in early childhood education section of the Encyclopedia was published. Dr. Roskos and I contributed a piece titled Teaching Early Literacy with E-books: Emerging Practices. I hope it helps shed some light around what we know and what we don’t know about teaching with ebooks.
Join Dr. Jeremy Brueck as he discusses a comprehensive approach on how administrators and teachers can integrate the Google ecology in the K-12 environment. The session will provide a wide-ranging look at several frameworks and models that form a roadmap on how to successfully leverage the Google ecology to improve student learning. A vital component of this approach is the interaction and collaboration between the teacher (content knowledge expert), their instructional approaches (pedagogy), and the Google ecology (technology). This interaction is known as the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) Model. Learn how you can use TPACK to frame effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter.
Sprouts and STEM: Growing What We Know About Early Childhood Education and Technology
Digital tools are playing an increasingly important role in classroom learning. In order to design high-quality learning experiences for our youngest students, early childhood educators must be informed and judicious in the manner in which they integrate these technologies. Join Jeremy Brueck as he explores appropriate and innovative ways to integrate technology into classrooms in support of young children’s learning. Drawn on his own research, child development theory, and developmentally appropriate practice as a foundation, Brueck will demonstrate how digital tools can enhance early learning, support teaching goals, and improve teaching practice. Brueck will discuss the role of digital tools in:
Creating engaging and educational experiences for young children that balance with other hands-on learning experiences
Helping educators with management, organization, and professional learning
We know that lots of parent-child book reading, pretend reading, and book browsing with traditional picture and storybooks promotes children’s development of literacy knowledge and skills in ways that support reading success (Mol & Bus, 2011). Reading storybooks exposes children to print and starts the process of learning how speech is written down. But can that very same process be nurtured when reading e-Books as children start to learn basic reading skills? Can parent-child sharing of e-Books help children gain an understanding of concepts such as, knowledge of letter names and how letters relate to sounds, identification of meaningful parts of words, awareness of book language as different from everyday language, and the insight that print has meaning? After all, at their core, e-Books are still books, right?
These very questions are some which I have been exploring with a small group of colleagues for the past 3 years. So, I was extremely excited to review the Cooney Center E-books QuickReport titled “Print Books vs. E-books.” The QuickReport explored parent-child interactions as they were reading print and/or digital books together. The Cooney researchers refer to this type of activity as “co-reading.” Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve been off the blogging path for a while, sidetracked by a number of projects that I have kept me quite busy for the last 3-4 months. One of those projects was an eTech OhioTeacher Planning Grant program I have been leading called the Digital Text Initiative. Over the course of the 2011-2012 school year, I’ve been working with 9 K-2 teachers in 3 local districts to study the ways elementary teachers incorporate eBooks in their classroom.
This has been a great project, and one that was noticed by a writer from the New York Times. He published a piece titled “Bringing up an E-Reader” back in March that featured students, parents and a teacher from the DigiTXT program. I’m currently working on data analysis from a variety of sources and also starting to put together some of the greatest hits from the project for the a final report. This report is slated to be released as a white paper about mid-June. I was asked for 3 DOs and 3 DON’Ts for using eBooks that we could use in the white paper. Here they are.
DO:
Look for eBooks with content that has direct ties to your curriculum and student’s personal experiences.
Allow students opportunities to self-select eBooks for independent and shared reading experiences.
Consider the role space plays in the reading experience and design a quality-learning environment for browsing/reading eBooks in the classroom.
DON’T:
Select eBooks with multimedia or interactivity that is extraneous and/or not relevant to the story.
Use an eBook with students until you have thoroughly previewed and evaluated its potential as an instructional resource.
Underestimate the “WOW” factor that eBooks bring to the table. Use their natural engagement to capture reluctant reader’s interest and motivate them.
