James Damico visited the Friday Institute and the New Literacies Collaborative today and presented his work with the Critical Web Reader -http://cwr.indiana.edu/ (CRW). The CRW tool has been designed to support inquiry using Internet-based resources given unique challenges that emerge from the various contexts of such activities. These challenges relate to issues such as credibility, careful or close reading, limitations on instructional time, and the strong need to engage students with technology. The CRW responds by focusing on reading that meets teachers where they are while being sensitive to time. Tasks supported by CRW focus reading online and include, traveling to a website, examining a website, and journeying beyond the site. The CRW focuses on the middle process of examining the site. The CRW recognizes approaches that have…

For this blog posting, I want to share some information about how collaborative video data analysis can be a tool for expanding research possibilities. As technology advances, our way of documenting, analyzing, and conceptualizing learning is expanding in so many ways.   There are many new computer programs, technology tools, and web applications that have the potential to increase the way that educators engage in classroom research.

Video-based data analysis, which is currently undergoing a period of rapid development, has the potential to offer new ways of researching classrooms because it encourages collaboration between researchers and classroom teachers.  Computer assisted video data analysis software can further the use of video as a research tool; it has the potential to encourage attention to and analysis of both verbal and non-verbal behaviors of research participants (Coiro, 2009) and encourage collaborative participation between teachers and researchers…

I recently wrapped up two rounds of a research study and a series of articles in collaboration with John Lee that focused on the integration of an educational blog as the primary instructional tool in a high school U.S. history classroom.  It was apparent to me that the teachers I worked with in professional development workshops or met at professional conferences often reserved creative and engaging uses of technology for their brightest students.  Lower level students would have few opportunities to use technology for anything more than skill acquisition or basic Internet research.  This digital divide seemed wrong-headed from both a social justice and pedagogical perspective.

Educational research has demonstrated that the status quo in the classroom generally does not work for low achieving/at risk kids. Rather, they need opportunities to engage with the material in active and meaningful ways.  Many at risk students are tactile rather than visual or auditory learners –…

The effectiveness of a technologically-facilitated classroom-based early reading intervention: The Targeted Reading Intervention

Amendum, S. J., Vernon-Feagans, L., & Ginsberg, M. C. (2011). The effectiveness of a technologically-facilitated classroom-based early reading intervention: The Targeted Reading Intervention. Elementary School Journal, 112, 107-131.

This research brief summarizes a study which evaluated the efficacy of a classroom-teacher-delivered reading intervention for struggling readers called the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), designed principally for kindergarten and first-grade teachers and their struggling students in rural, low-wealth communities. The TRI was delivered to schools and teachers via an innovative Web-conferencing system using laptop computers…