Chapter 3

TPACK Chapter 3

K-6 Literacy

            I found this chapter on literacy to be rather interesting. The first thing that caught my attention was that “95% of all children can be taught to read” (pg.61). I thought that this percentage was rather high, but as I continued to read this section I remembered that it was for K-6 students. Being at the high school level, I initially disagreed with the percentage, until I realized who the targeted audience was. Even though the statistic is 95% for elementary level students, I do not think they take into account the ELL or Special Ed. population. As the influx of these students increase, I think that statistic will begin to decrease. As mentioned on page 71, “Good teaching with technology will look very different for individual teachers who teach students with diverse instructional needs”.

 I also really got thinking about what technology does for literacy. At the bottom of page 61, it mentions the idea as to whether technology is used to teach literacy more effectively, or if it actually changes how students learn to read and write. The chapter gives a lot of background knowledge and ideas to support both reasons. I personally feel that technology should be used to assist the learning process and provide instructional support of the content. Perhaps I am old fashion at the age of 27, but learning the initial content should come from the teacher. If we focus so heavily on technology doing all the work, then why are their even teachers? If we cannot teach the students to read and write and rely on technology to do that, what would we do if the technology crashes?