Technology & Online Book Clubs

It's All About the Book: Motivating Teens to Read by Diane Lapp and Douglas Fisher
             Wiki Literature Circles: Creating Digital Learning Communities by Elizabeth Edmondson
            Digital Literacies: Online Book Clubs: Bridges Between Old and New Literacies Practices by Cassandra                              Scharber
            Mini-Lessons For Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke

Online Book Club

Looking back at my own experiences in high school, I do Not remember any of my classes having book clubs. After competing multiple courses, I do understand the importance of having the book club. One of the challenges that I had for myself was wondering how I would be able to create a book club that is outside of the traditional realm of the classroom environment.  I believe that the readings for this week are very important as they show house teachers can move beyond thinking that book clubs have to be done any certain way.  Creating an environment of which students can have book clubs online and give them the freedom to have multiple discussions in an environment in which they already thrive.  Students are using technology at a much faster rate than we can keep up with. It makes sense for us to take a very archaic teaching approach and make it far more assessable and creative for our students.

            I really appreciate it how Elizabeth Edmonson gives a wonderful example of how digital book clubs have worked for her. As a teacher who somewhat believes of the traditional approach, I sometimes find it very difficult to be able to incorporate technology in the majority of my classes—I still believe in holding books! Once I read the article, I had a hard feeling that this would work in any class. I begin to think about the difficulties of why digital book clubs may not actually work—then it dawned on me that I was beginning to grasp a hold of the teaching models that we DON’T need in the classroom.  After stopping to really consider my issues with technology, it forced me to stop and really consider my own teaching philosophy. Upon doing this blog, I actually stop to do another assignment in which I was asked to write out my teaching philosophy—to my amazement, I truly do believe that teachers should be on the brink of innovation and creativity in their classroom. Many of the new concepts around technology are things that I am embrace as a person, so it would make sense to embrace them as a teacher.

             Moving on from Edmundson’s piece, I thought it was a great place to move to discussing Daniels and Steineke’s piece on mini-lessons! I was thoroughly surprised at how practical and fascinating their article was on providing lessons for teachers to use. Many of the articles that we have read so far in this class have taken us on a journey to understanding a lot of theory, and it was good to be able to see how those theories can actually translate into best practices. I could almost see a lot of what we are doing in Vic’s class in this article as well! Journaling and keeping students writing seems to be a common concept across the board. Even with Scharber’s piece on technology, I believe that these educators thrive on not only making book-club and technology in general a part of their class, but they do so without isolating it into its own part of the class. Scharber wants students to be writing! She wants teachers to allow students to use technology the way they have been doing it (because we can’t stop it), but I took away the idea that we could be using it to work in our advantage! I have a Twitter account, and it takes skills to summarize what I want to say in 140 characters or less including spacing! The issue is that most teachers don’t value this sort of writing—it doesn’t follow what a traditional English class should look like!

            Book clubs don’t have to be boring, and they certainly don’t have to be done the way we are used to them being done. If we follow set key insights on them, I am sure that we will be able to create an environment in which students will LOVE it. Time, monitoring, planning, and accountability are all steps that the authors of the articles make note of as we are planning any sort of book club. Having students write and reflect is also equally important, as well as having fun with it.

            I am glad I was able to look at these articles, not only did they force me to really tackle the issues I was having with technology, but it helped me see that I have been making things harder for myself when it comes to using it in the classroom. Who’s to say that my students won’t like what I like? I’m sure if they are able to use their devices in class and still learn at the same time, it will be just fine.

DO

Book Club on Facebook through Twitter’s Lenses!

This Do is a creative activity that I would include in a classroom book club as it allows students to have a creative twist to book clubs. See the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eOX0RXctuHqVSonzsg_LuvxtVtgtoMAyJm6Ght8lbRY/edit?usp=sharing