New Literacies Reflection

In the beginning of the semester, I made a graphic organizer showing what I thought literacy was. I wrote down things relating to reading, writing, and comprehension. I never thought that technology would be a type of literacy. While working on this new literacies project, I realized that technology should definitely be considered a literacy. I used Prezi to present information on Numeracy (which I also learned is a type of literacy), and it was hard for me to figure out how to use it at first. As I navigated my way through the website, I began to learn how to create something using the technology. After the project was completed, I realized that my opinions changed about literacy. Initially, I thought literacy just referred to reading and writing, but I learned that there are many other different kinds of literacy that we should be responsible for teaching. This idea made me think of language arts in a whole new perspective. Not only does literacy involve reading and writing, but it includes numeracy, emotional literacy, cultural literacy, environmental literacy, and much more. It is very important to teach literacy in regards to reading, but it is also important to teach kids about these other types of literacies as well.

In my opinion, effective literacy instruction is done by incorporating different ways to learn literacy. In a video we watched in class about diverse learners, students expressed that there should be multiple ways to teach literacy so that every student is engaged. This could be done by using different methods and technologies to explore a new topic. After creating my Prezi on numeracy, I realized that technology has a purpose and that we should utilize these technologies to teach our students new concepts. I really liked creating a Prezi because I felt like I accomplished more than one thing: I learned how to use the new technology and I learned about numeracy. In my first and second grade classroom, I think it would be beneficial to teach about different types of literacies. While they are young, their brain absorbs more information; therefore, if you teach them about technology and literacies at a young age, they will be able to make more connections to it as they get older.

If my students were to do a similar assignment using Prezi and Numeracy, they would need a lot of scaffolding. They would need to know how to read and write to follow the directions on Prezi, and they would have to write down the information they wanted to portray to their peers. They would also need to be familiar with how a computer works (which they do because they have a computer class and they do different literacy and math tasks on the computer daily). It might be beneficial to give the student some kind of tutorial on Prezi before they use it because I know I had trouble just jumping right into the new technology. Numeracy could be considered the language of math, so it might be a good idea to have a math lesson before they explore about numeracy.

Lesson Plan:

Target area & rationale: Numeracy -- because students should learn the importance of math in everyday life and be able to relate it back to concepts learned in the classroom

Objectives: Student will figure out at least 10 different ways to make a dollar, and then they will put that information into a Prezi to make a collage to show the different ways as well as provide an explanation as to why this task would be useful for everyday life.

Materials: plastic coins to practice with, computers, projector screen

Key Events:

• In groups, students will come up with different ways to make a dollar using half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.
• Short, basic tutorial on Prezi
• In groups, students will make their presentations by entering how they thought to make a dollar and then a slide to explain why this task is relevant to everyday life.
• Students will present their projects to the other classmates

Closing Summary: Teacher will make sure the students know the importance of using technology as well as why numeracy is important for everyday life.

Ongoing Assessment: Teacher could use the same format to use Prezi for other subjects (reading, writing, etc), and have them practice different forms of numeracy throughout the year (fractions, ratios, etc.)

New Literacies Project

For my new literacies project, I am learning about Numeracy. The technology that I decided to use is called Prezi, which is available for anyone at prezi.com. I had never ever heard of Prezi before I started my project; I got the idea to use it from someone in class who had used it before. The easiest way to describe what a Prezi is: PowerPoint on Steroids. It presents your information in boxes or slides like PowerPoint, but it makes the presentation more interactive by zooming in on important facts and moving in all directions, not just left and right.
I have done quite a bit of work on my Prezi about Numeracy. I used the Wiki from class to obtain useful information about Numeracy. The real challenge was putting the information into the Prezi. I chose a template to make my experience easier, but it still took at least 15 minutes to figure out how to delete the sample text and put in my own text. It was also really difficult figuring out how to rotate the text to line up with the other text on the page. My presentation has boxes that are kind of crooked, so I had to use the tool that lines up the text with everything else in that particular box. It is extremely hard to get it perfect if you do not use that tool!
Once I figured out the basics to Prezi, it started to get easier. The hardest part was figuring out what all the tools did. I am so used to pinching the corners of the text box to make the text smaller or bigger, like in Word or PowerPoint, but in Prezi they use a little tool with a + to make the text bigger and a - to make the text smaller. It took a while to get the hang of it because I was so used to being able to make the text whatever size I want, but in Prezi they only have preset sizes you can use.
Overall, this has been a great learning experience. I would definitely use Prezi again in order to engage my students in something, but I think I need more practice first. For me, it is just so easy to present projects in PowerPoint because I know how to use it so well, but I know it gets boring seeing the same thing over and over. I think if I practiced enough, I would be able to use Prezi just as fast as PowerPoint. I plan to do a lot more work with my Numeracy project, so hopefully I will become an expert on Prezi presentations!