Using Technology to teach reading

Digital text, Text readers, Spreadsheet, Maps, Posters, Kurzweil, Raft, Internet, Video, Newspaper and WebQuest are some of the technologies used by the teachers on the video clip. In order to make students interested in reading about Civil War, teachers used selected websites on Civil War, and map work on some of the battles that ended Civil War. Using Kurzweil (a text reader) the students listened to the material pertaining to Civil War, followed along with it, and finally wrote a short paragraph about what they learned about Civil War. So by using Kurzweil, teachers provide complete reading, writing, and study opportunities to help all students to overcome learning challenges.

Raft technique, an online instructional strategy is a system that helps students understand their role as a writer, audience they will address, various formats of writing, and the expected content. Teachers used this tool to provide learning materials that help students’ understand the whole scenario of Civil War (like what happened at the time of civil war, who won the war and the who lost the war etc.,) Students had to choose a role and pick some important points to write, analyze and report the audience with various formats of writing about the lesson on Civil War. Students also analyzed and compared the Civil War casualties’ data with World War II casualties’ data and plotted a graph using spreadsheet. Finally, students submitted their reflection or response paragraph about what they learned. This is how the above instructional technologies helped the students to develop their reading, comprehension and writing ability.

Apart from the above technologies, teachers also used political cartoons portraying Civil War, music of civil War period, videos of Gettysburg War to teach the impact of Civil War to their students. Teachers used political cartoons from the Civil War and asked students to analyze two of them and create their own. Music of that time was considered to be very important in a country’s history and teachers’ thought that music symbolizes that period and thus the students were asked to listen to those songs and do some analysis on them. I think bringing these music and politics into this lesson will help the students to relate and understand the whole scenario of Civil War with that period of time.

As a teacher in that classroom I would see students (using different technologies) getting interested in navigating through the pre-selected websites, excited to using Kurzweil text reader in listening to a variety of natural-sounding voices, actively involving in the learning process by making cartoons, posters and also through reporting and reflecting on the videos. This sort of atmosphere where technology is incorporated into many activities for teaching social studies will evoke interest among students to learn.