Literacy Now

When students work in groups oriented toward a particular task, their teachers often encourage them to pay attention to their group collaboration skills. A checklist can be helpful as students reflect on how well they worked together and whether they were able to get the job done well. This Goal 18 checklist is an example. Students discuss each of the elements on the chart, award themselves up to 3 points for each area of the chart, and then add the points as a means of reflecting on their collective skills working with each other.

It is important that students think about the capacity of their group, and their own individual dispositions, to perform a job well while maintaining a cohesive group. Post-action checklists such as the one linked above can be a helpful means of guiding students to think about their collaboration skills.

However, planning a project is also an essential collaboration skill. Expectations in the Common Core State Standards (see CCSS.ELA Literacy.CCRA.SL.1 and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.6) highlight the importance of collaboration. In school, in the world of work, and at the university, being able to plan a multifaceted project while working with others collegially is increasingly important. 

Students work together in problem-based learning groups, on service learning projects, while doing research, and while creating products that guide their learning and show what they know. As posts throughout the TILE-SIG feature point out, digital technologies bring people together. Nowhere is that more important than when projects are part of the curriculum.

In this post, we will explore two tools that students can use to plan projects that carry over right into the world of work. Two keys to successful planning with technology include the visual nature of the tool and the ability others have to see and edit the tool. An interactive chart that shows what the plan for getting the work done will be and what the status of that work is as it proceeds is just what’s needed.

The first tool is one that is familiar to most teachers. Good old spreadsheet software, such as Excel, can provide a clear way to show who is going to do the work, when they will do it, and what the status of the work is as students complete the task. The Excel spreadsheet can be stored in a file sharing site for all to access (e.g., Box.com, Dropbox, or Google Drive), the file sharing area of a course management system (e.g., Canvas, eCollege), or on the class website. If the teacher chooses, parents can be allowed to view the chart as they assist their children with different aspects of the task.

In figure 1, you will see a Project Management Organizer that I adapted from a generic template Microsoft offers for download. This adapted version also includes a quick status check area where students can indicate whether they are making good progress (green), may have encountered some snags (yellow), or are really stuck (red). If you would like a copy of this template, visit LiteracyBeat.

For those who have worked on large projects, the format of the organizer may seem familiar. This is a Gantt chart used in industry, the military, and even sports for organizing large, multi-faceted projects. It visually displays what the plan is, who is responsible, and what progress has been made. The literacy value is in the discussions that are required to plan the project, collaborate on status updates, and troubleshoot any challenges that arise.

An important part of using any technology for project planning is making it transparent—all team members need to be able to see and update the tool. Though there are others, one online app that really makes transparency easy is Smartsheet.

Screenshot via smartsheet

There are several things to like about Smartsheet. First, it is intuitive, so time spent training students to use the technology is minimal. Second, it is easily shareable among team members, parents, and anyone else who is participating in the project simply by sharing the link. Third, Smartsheet allows pictures, Word documents, or links to be easily attached to any phase of the project. Fourth, just a toggle away is a calendar view. Finally, and most importantly, Smartsheet has a free student version available. If your students don’t have email accounts, the teacher can create a Smartsheet and share it with the students as a link.

The visual components of Project Management Organizers combine well with written and spoken collaboration tasks. Imagine students with a tablet computer discussing how to break down a large research project so that everyone can learn and participate as they create and update their organizers. Consider the digital skills students will learn that they can carry over right into college or career. And, most importantly, picture students who have learned to work together, learn well, and create high-quality results.
Read more on LiteracyBeat and on Jodi Sorensen’s blog.

Dr. Thomas DeVere Wolsey is a professor of literacy and author of books and articles on literacy intersections with technology, TDWolsey@msn.com.

This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning. 

One to two days a week, I am free from lunch duty. At the beginning of the school year, I had several students who asked if they could stay in the classroom with me so that they could read. That very quickly led to all of them being engaged in a discussion of the books that they were reading, and sharing additional book recommendations. Within a matter of weeks the students formed a book club that they named The Literary Association of Bibliophiles. That’s LAB, for short (I promise that title really did come from 6^th graders).

The students meet once a week, depending on my lunch duty schedule to discuss a book that they selected to read and discuss together. Yes, I’m involved in the conversations, but they each take turns leading the discussion. Needless to say, the popularity has grown to include more students anxious to participate in the conversations.

This month, I have read much about book clubs. It has caused me to reflect on the popularity of book clubs. What is it about book clubs that draw people to them? Why did my students begin this club that draws in students who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves “readers”?

It is because reading is a solitary endeavor that envelops a reader into another world; it spurs thinking, questioning, and connecting with the text. As humans, we want to share these thoughts. We want to take this solitary pursuit and make it social. We want to share our perspectives, ask our questions, and push our thinking.

p: mrsdkrebs via photopin

So in a world of pacing guides and prescriptive programs with pressure to push students to perform on standardized testing, how can we include book clubs as an integral part of our learning environment?  With such a demand on our time, where can we find opportunities to connect our readers not only with one another, but also with their global peers? I thought I would share a few opportunities that you could bring to your students to get the book sharing started.

1. International Dot Day is a day centered on Peter H. Reynolds’ book, “The Dot.” The official day is September 15th. Based on the book, the entire day is spent focusing on the importance of creativity, imagination, and individual talents and how each individual can harness their own uniqueness to make a mark on the world.
   
   Students can connect through Twitter (and Instagram) using the hashtag #DotDay and #MakeYourMark. This is an opportunity for your students to not only discuss the overarching theme of “The Dot,” but also internalize the text by making applications to their own lives. Classes can also connect through Skype in the Classroom to have a “face-to-face” book chat about “The Dot” and share all of their conclusions about the meaning and its application to their lives in the world.
   
   This is a one-day event that could very easily become an overarching theme for a week or month-long study. As a teacher, you can connect with other teachers through Twitter (#DotDay), Facebook, and Pinterest to share ideas for implementing it into your schedule. This network of very creative and imaginative teachers is more than willing to give you all the ideas you need to bring this international book discussion to your students.
   
   
2. The Global Read Aloud is a phenomenal project founded by Pernille Ripp, a 5th grade teacher in Wisconsin. It is elegant in its simplicity. One book is selected (per grade range) and students from all over the world connect to discuss the book with one another. Teachers sign up through the Global Read Aloud website and then connect through Twitter (#GRA14), Facebook, and Edmodo to plan ways of implementing it with their students.
   
   One of the great aspects of this project is that you can do as much or as little connecting as you feel comfortable with. If you want your students to connect with many classes to discuss and analyze a book, then you can do that. If you want to form one connection that lasts the entire six-week long project, then you can do that too. If you want to have your students connect only with other students in your class or school that is also perfectly acceptable. You can customize it to your students’ needs.
   
   The wonderful part of this project is that you have a network that can support you as you try out new practices with your students. The point is for this to be simple for students to read, enjoy, and share a book together.
   
   My students have participated for three years and it is always a major highlight for them. We connect through Skype, Twitter, blogging, TodaysMeet real-time book chats, and collaborative publishing. No two years are alike because the book is always different, as are the students and the connections. By connecting globally, students have an authentic audience and gain a perspective of their place in their world. Everyone shares his/her voice.  It is exhilarating to see students accurately analyze, draw conclusions, synthesize ideas, and create new content all focused on a great piece of literature.
   
   Want to see what’s possible in a classroom with the Global Read Aloud? Check out my session on The Global Read Aloud at IRA’s 59^th Annual Conference in New Orleans. I’ll be sharing my students’ work, their stories, as well as management and connection strategies on Saturday, May 10^th from 1:00-2:00 pm.
   
   
3. I have written before about the power of having my students blog on KidBlog. This is also one of the easiest ways to give students a portal to openly discussing and analyzing a text with an authentic audience. My learners set the expectations for their blogging each year. Typically, one of those expectations is that they will write a blog post about something that they have been reading each week.
   
   A couple of years ago, one of my students wrote a post about a book you may have heard about called “The Hunger Games.” As I always try to write comments on students’ blogs and model the expectations that they have set, I realized I couldn’t accurately comment without reading some of this book. I went by the bookstore and bought a copy of “The Hunger Games,” initially thinking I would read through the first few chapters so that I could comment on the post (Fast forward a week later…I had finished all three books.).
   
   After I commented on her blog, and we began talking about it together in class, other students joined in the conversation. Within three school days, two-thirds of my class, plus students in other classes, were commenting on her blog and sharing their thoughts on the book. What came next? We began having book chats at the lunch table where other teachers joined us. How did all of this come about? One blog post brought together a community of readers, which broke down boundaries to unite many voices all in pursuit of reading and sharing an exciting piece of literature.
   
   With KidBlog, it is simple to connect to other classes who are also on KidBlog. We have found other classes through the connection we have made with Dot Day and the Global Read Aloud. We also have found other classes through our class connection (@RamsaysClass) on Twitter. Another option is to connect with three other classes through Quadblogging where four classes connect and comment upon one another’s blogs. Each week, you rotate to comment on a different class’ blogs from a different location around the world. This helps students to gain a global perspective while finding commonality among one another in sharing and discussing great books.

So whether you choose to start small within your class or go global, there is no doubt about the impact that book clubs have upon our learners. It empowers them to truly internalize, analyze and share their perspectives in a real and meaningful way. They are no longer reading because they have to fulfill some requirement, but because they want to dive into other worlds, learn about themselves, and share their ideas with others. So jump into the digital book club pool. The water is great and your students will thank you!

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com. 

On the surface, the Maker Movement  with its focus on 3-D printing, hands-on craftsmanship, and industrial design may not seem an especially good “fit” for the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. The ELA teachers I meet generally acknowledge Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) as important, but wonder how they can integrate STEM principles into writers’ workshop or literature circles.

As our colleagues in science and the technical subjects learn to teach literacies to meet Common Core State Standards expectations, I see the integration of electric circuits in ELA, inspired by the Maker Movement, as interdisciplinary reciprocity. In my view, this activity can support the integration of ideas across content areas and build problem solving skills. I also learned that it can be a lot of fun. In what follows, I explain.

Last week, I co-hosted a Mini Maker Faire at the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference with my MSU Colleagues. The response from teachers was so positive that I wanted to share what we learned with the TILE-SIG Community.

We invited conference attendees to make a wearable electrical circuit using inexpensive and easily available materials. Inspired by the work of Jie Qi, the high-low tech team at the MIT Media Lab, and the work of Exploratorium, we wanted to push teachers’ notions of “technology integration” and highlight the potential of maker activities for interdisciplinary learning.

Activity #1 invited people to add an LED light to their conference name badge using copper tape, a coin battery, and scotch tape. Activity #2 invited people to sew an LED light into a felt badge using conductive thread, and a coin battery. Step-by-step instructions and lists of materials with links can be found at our program blog. I think TILE-SIG members can leverage two important insights from our Maker Faire experiment.

Firstly, light can be used to communicate meaning. To me, this opens infinite possibilities for connections to the ELA classroom. Teachers could ask students to draw a picture that integrates an electric circuit with light, strategically placed, to emphasize an especially poignant action, character trait, or feature of the landscape in a novel. Students could write (digitally?) about the meaning they have conveyed in their art, why they made this choice, and how it was inspired by their reading. Alternatively, students could create a video of themselves describing the meaning in their electric art and share it via YouTube. They could also explore or respond to meaning in their classmates’ circuits during a multimodal writers’ workshop. Younger children could practice writing how-to texts to explain how they made the LED light shine. In this way, this multimodal ELA project becomes the week’s science project too.

Secondly, these activities generated a lot of smiles. Two hundred colleagues made a wearable electric circuit with us last week and every one of them smiled when their LED lit up. Every participant said “that was cool,” or “I’m going to do this with my students.” The first principle of any project-based learning is authentic engagement. If electricity can put smiles on our students’ faces, they will be more likely to persist in the face of challenge, more likely to care about the learning, and more likely to take risks in any discipline, ELA included.

In sum, I see the integration of simple electric circuits into ELA classrooms as an engaging way to bring science and language arts curricula together for students of any age and I encourage TILE-SIG members to give it a try! If you do, please let me know how it goes!

For more information on the Maker Movement and DIY project ideas: http://makezine.com/

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.

Michelle Schira Hagerman directs the Graduate Certificate Programs in Educational Technology and Online Teaching and Learning at Michigan State University.

Outside of the classroom, young adults are writing stories, creating art, producing songs, and engaging in role playing games to express their affinity for popular media franchises, such as The Hunger Games. Within and across diverse online spaces, they are connecting with others around this common interest and finding global audiences for their creative work.

p: somegeekintn via photopin

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 80% of adolescents use online social network sites, 38% share original creative work online, and 21% remix their own transformative works, inspired by others’ words and images (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell, & Purcell, 2010; Lenhart, Madden, Smith, Purcell, Zickuhr, & Rainie, 2011).

Recent research indicates that out-of-school writing has a tangible and positive influence on in-school writing. In fact, a survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers found that 96% believe that technology offers students a wider audience and 78% agree that digital tools foster student creativity and personal expression (Purcell, Buchanan, & Friedrich, 2013).

As literacy researchers, teacher educators, and former classroom teachers, we are interested in understanding how writing in the wild shapes young adults’ writing processes and products (Curwood, 2013; Curwood, Magnifico, & Lammers, 2013). From FanFiction.net to Figment.com to Wattpad.com, fanfiction has emerged as a powerful way for adolescents to share their creative writing, connect with eager readers, receive formative feedback, and participate in fan culture.

As Henry Jenkins (1992) argues, fanfiction practices blur “any clear-cut distinction between media producer and media spectator, since any spectator may potentially participate in the creation of new artworks” (p. 247). More recent research by Angela Thomas (2007) shows how fanfiction can promote collaborative writing and role-playing across a range of online and offline spaces, while Rebecca Black’s (2008) research highlights how FanFiction.net can help adolescent English language learners develop identities as English writers.

In our own work, we explore how adolescent writers leverage the technology in spaces such as FanFiction.net (FFN) to interact with their readers in ways that shape their fanfiction writing, as well as the ways in which their reading and writing practices reinforce each other (Lammers, Magnifico, & Curwood, 2014; Magnifico, Lammers, & Curwood, 2013).

We have found that spaces like FanFiction.net, Figment.com, and Wattpad.com are designed to facilitate interaction between authors and readers across time and space. Writing is highly collaborative, and authors’ writing processes are significantly shaped by the private feedback they receive from beta readers and the public feedback they receive from a global audience.

Fanfiction writers directly engage with their readers through Author Notes and Postscripts, which often appear at the beginning and end of new chapters. Consequently, technology positions adolescent authors “among the audience” (Lunsford & Ede, 2009), and fanfiction sites promote both small-scale collaborations and large-scale collective collaborations (Kafai & Peppler, 2011).

Since its founding in 1998, FFN has become the most popular fanfiction website, with over two million users and stories in more than 30 languages. Alexa, one of our primary study participants, is a fanfiction writer (all names are pseudonyms), and she actively shares her creative work on FFN, Tumblr, and Deviant Art. She has been working on her main FFN story for two years, and it is currently over 170,000 words and has garnered 1,500 reviews from readers all over the world.

For Alexa, the FFN practice of having beta readers allowed her to see writing not as a solitary activity, but as a collaborative way of engaging in the writing process. In particular, Alexa was able to take on the identity of a writer in The Hunger Games fandom because FFN gave her the freedom to pursue the plots and characters in which she was most interested whenever she wanted to write (Lammers et al., 2014).

While classrooms are typically “vertical” writing spaces, in which teachers ultimately evaluate student writing, online peer review allows students to comment on each others’ work and can be instrumental in creating “horizontal” writing spaces in both out-of-school and in-class contexts (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012). Today’s fanfiction writers can readily access an authentic audience, directly engage with reviewers, and remix characters, settings, and plots from novels and films. Fanfiction is one example of how technology can empower young adults to attend to the craft of writing in new and powerful ways.

We propose teachers draw on the principles and practices inherent in fanfiction sites to promote writing that connects students to a wider audience while fostering creativity and personal expression. At the same time, we suggest that teachers are mindful of the dangers of co-opting fanfiction and popular culture into school spaces. Ideas for exploring more about fanfiction in K-12 public schools can be found in an online article series in School Library Journal: 

• What Educators Really Need to Know About Fanfiction (Drew Emanuel Berkowitz, 2013)
• Ways to Welcome Fanfiction in Schools (Drew Emanuel Berkowitz, 2013)
• You Don’t Need to Go to Comic.con to Have Fan Literacies (Drew Emanuel Berkowitz, 2013)

References

Black, R. W. (2008). Adolescents and online fan fiction. New York: Peter Lang.

Curwood, J.S. (2013). Fan fiction, remix culture, and The Potter Games. In V.E.

Frankel (Ed.), Teaching with Harry Potter (pp. 81-92). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Curwood, J.S., Magnifico, A.M., & Lammers, J.C. (2013). Writing in the wild: Writers’ motivation in fan-based affinity spaces. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(8), 677-685.

Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. New York: Routledge.

Kafai, Y.B. & Peppler, K.A. (2011). Beyond small groups: New opportunities for research in computer-supported collective learning. In H. Spada, G. Stahl, N.

Miyake, & N. Law (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th Conference of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning - Volume I (pp. 17-24). Hong Kong, China: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, W. (2012). Literacies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lammers, J.C., Magnifico, A.M., & Curwood, J.S. (2014). Exploring tools, places, and ways of being: Audience matters for developing writers. In K.E. Pytash & R.E. Ferdig (Eds.), Exploring technology for writing and writing instruction (pp. 186-201). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Lenhart, A., Ling, R., Campbell, S., & Purcell, K. (2010). Teens and mobile phones. Pew Internet and the American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org.

Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Smith, A., Purcell, K., Zickuhr, K. & Rainie, L. (2011). Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites. Pew Internet and the American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/.

Lunsford, A.A. & Ede, L. (2009). Among the audience: On audience in an age of new literacies. In M.E. Weiser, B.M. Fehler, & A.M. Gonzales (Eds.) Engaging audience: Writing in an age of new literacies. (pp. 42-69). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Magnifico, A.M., Lammers, J.C., & Curwood, J.S. (2013). Collaborative learning across time and space: Ethnographic research in online affinity spaces. In N. Rummel,

M. Kapur, M. Nathan, & S. Puntembekar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning – Volume 2 (pp. 81-84). Madison, WI: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Purcell, K., Buchanan, J. & Friedrich, L. (2013). The impact of digital tools on student writing and how writing is taught in schools. Pew Internet and the American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org.

Thomas, A. (2007). Youth online: Identity and literacy in the digital age. New York: Peter Lang.

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.

Jen Scott Curwood is a senior lecturer in English education and media studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. Her research focuses on adolescent literacy, technology, and teacher professional development. She is online at jensc.org and on Twitter at @jensc3.

Jayne C. Lammers is an assistant professor and director of the secondary English teacher preparation program at the University of Rochester. She studies adolescents’ literacy learning and can be reached at jlammers@warner.rochester.edu or on Twitter at @URocProf.

Alecia Marie Magnifico is an assistant professor of English teaching at the University of New Hampshire. Her research interests focus on adolescents’ writing, audiences, and new literacies, and her work can be found at aleciamagnifico.org and on Twitter at @aleciamarie.

As nearly every teacher knows, students with disabilities have been increasingly included in general education classrooms. Nearly 6.4 million students, 13% of the total student population, are identified with disabilities and receive special education services in schools across the nation (US Department of Education, 2010). General education teachers are therefore often seeking ways to support students struggling with decoding and comprehension, especially as they access content area curricular materials. The good news is that there are now many cost-effective technologies to help students access these texts.

Just because a technology is available doesn’t mean that it enhances learning or is appropriate for every learner. Before jumping into specific technological solutions, I encourage educators to think about integrating technology within a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which promotes a technology-enhanced curriculum that is accessible and appropriate for all learners, including those with disabilities. See the thoughtful TILE-SIG posts already exploring UDL for further information.

Students with disabilities who struggle with grade-level, content area texts can improve their reading comprehension by using technology to have texts read aloud (e.g., Anderson-Inman & Horney, 2007; Higgins & Raskind, 2004). Over the past ten years, rapid innovations in text-to-speech (TTS) technologies have created new and affordable ways to help students read print-based or digital texts that have no audio equivalent. TTS technologies provide students with the ability to hear virtually any text read aloud with a synthesized voice.

Students can access PDFs, word processing docs, EPUB files, webpages, emails, and more from virtually any computer, phone, or tablet. There are many TTS readers available and the following list provides recommendations for teachers and students that are either already integrated into common classroom devices or are offered as low-cost add-ons that still provide comparatively high voice quality.

Speak Selection (free) available on all iOS X devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Mac computers). There are options for multiple voices, pace control, and simultaneous text highlighting.

Screen Reader (free) available on the Kindle Touch, all second generation Kindle Fire devices, and available as a software upgrade for the first generation Kindle Fire. The Screen Reader provides multiple options related to the voices, pace, quantity of text to read at a time (word, line, paragraph, etc.), and more.

Ivona MiniReader (free) & Text Reader ($59 for one natural voice, additional voices for a fee) are available for Windows only. Ivona TTS products read a range of text files. The MiniReader is designed with an easy-to-use floating text bar that allows students to read text from any open program. The Text Reader integrates seamlessly with multiple applications and provides options to convert text into mp3 files.

NaturalReader - (free, $69.90) compatible with MAC OS or Windows. NaturalReader reads a range of texts including word processing applications, emails, websites, and even printed-text scanned into PDF format. The NaturalReader upgrade provides students additional options to convert files into audio files, an add-on specific to Microsoft Word, and extra voices. The upgrade is recommended for students that frequently rely on TTS software.

Voice Dream Reader - ($9.99, additional voices for a fee) available on iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touch. This app reads PDFs, EPUB, Microsoft Word & PPT, Apple Pages & Keynote, and more. It is known for its high quality voices, multiple language options, and intuitive and functional design and use.

Each of these tools has their own strengths and limitations but they all have the potential to help students learn content that might otherwise be unavailable to them because of their reading ability. These tools also serve as a reminder that teachers should actively seek solutions for overcoming students’ individual learning barriers because the rapid changes in technology are constantly creating new opportunities for all learners.

References

Anderson-Inman, L., & Horney, M. A. (2007). Supported eText: Assistive technology through text transformations. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(1), 153-160. doi:10.1598/RRQ.42.1.8

Higgins, E. L., & Raskind, M. H. (2004). Speech recognition-based and automaticity programs to help students with severe reading and spelling problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 54(2), 365-388.

US Department of Education. IDEA Part B Child Count, 2010, Students ages 6-21. Available at www.IDEAdata.org

Kara Sevensma is an Assistant Professor of Education at Calvin College. She can be contacted at sevensma@calvin.edu.

TILE-SIG will host a special session on Sunday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the International Reading Association 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans. The session includes the presentation of the 2014 Technology in Reading Research Award, "Changing the Landscape of Literacy Teacher Education: Innovations with Generative Technology" with keynote Dana Grisham (National University, TILE-SIG 2013 Reading Research Award Winner), and 18 roundtable discussions about research findings and practical classroom ideas. Visit http://www.iraconference.org to learn more about IRA 2014 or to register.