Chapter 6 Using E-Tools to scaffold comprehension of E-Literature

“ As the world told becomes the world shown, the texts of the 21^st century will require new skills, strategies, and new pedagogies to support students’ transactions with these multimodal, multimedia texts.”

            - Frank Serafini(2012, p. 27)

I thought it was important to incorporate this quote in my blog this week because it exemplifies the basic ideas, concepts, and purpose of this chapter. Throughout this chapter we read about the importance to know not only the effectiveness of the E-tool being used, but the comprehension levels being reached, and other skills learned and gained throughout using E-Tools in the class room setting compared to using traditional tools or texts.

“ As much as the digital environment supports comprehension, it also increases the importance of other factors such as self-regulation and multimodal abilities.” (Johnson, 81)

It is very important to remember though, when speaking of the success of an E-Tool being used, the instruction is also a factor in the E-Tool’s success in a class room. I think this is a factor many forget, the give the credit solely to the website or E-Tool instead of acknowledging the instruction, the model being given but the teacher. The activity and lesson’s success cannot solely be based off of the E-tool, but the teacher or professional modeling or using the E-tool in his or her classroom.

Comprehension Strategies in which are effective when reading online information include; awareness of purpose, skimming, scanning, and reading selectively, activating prior knowledge, evaluating text structure and quality, reviewing information, etc.

A strategy in which I learned more about in detail during my reading fell in Step 3: Model the Process when teaching an IRT lesson for younger students. The strategy is called the Think Out Loud strategy.

In our textbook in this chapter, Johnson, uses the IRT lesson review when talking closely about digital texts. The strategy is pretty straightforward. Model the purpose/uses of the digital text. But also include what you are thinking while doing so, your teaching the students what is expected for each activity, what to look for in a beneficial digital book, and what to stray away from because it may distract from their comprehension of the purpose of main idea of the digital book. By doing this children will learn and gain these skills and become more independent when participating in activities like these.

This chapter also discussed improving a student’s comprehension by improving their vocabulary and background knowledge. The use of online dictionaries, and online annotations can be very helpful.

Other E-Tools or websites we learned about were Google Lit Trips, Book Reviews and Book Talks, and Book Trailers.

My favorite of them all would have to be the Book Trailers. I think it is a fun and creative way in which gets children wanting to read. Its advertising the book, and showing them reading a book can be just as exciting as going to see a movie you the saw the trailer to.