Getting Kids to Read, Read, Read Using Books with iPad Apps, Websites and Other Outstanding Technology Resources

During my flying visit to Chicago (which was a grand total of three days), I got to participate in a seminar run by the BER (Bureau of Education and Research). The seminar was a great day of learning as well as providing me with the opportunity to meet some international teachers. I was seated next to a lady who was a reading specialist teacher and compared our teaching roles and schools. I showed photographs of my town and could barely hold in the laughter at the responses I got from the city teachers... "What do you mean you can't fly to your town?!" but I was equally as shocked when I heard stories of the individual grades of their school being the same size as my entire K-12 school!

The seminar/course was all about moving into 21st century learning, and how learning how to read needs to evolve with this - because now we not only need to teach children to read print texts, but a variety of digital medias and multimodal text types. Children need to by able to apply different skills to be successful at reading each type of text, and we also have to make sure that our classroom practice has balance between digital and print mediums.

One of the things that made me very happy about attending this course, was learning about Apps that I have seen a lot of in my Australian school visits. You might say "boring and repetitious" but I think it's great to see that educators around the world are agreeing on what quality Apps are.

One of my favourite new Apps for the day is called 'Spot' by David Wiesner. No games, no bells and whistles, this is purely a visual literacy text. You open the App and use two fingers to 'pinch and expand' the screen. As you keep doing this, you enter numerous new microworlds with the most amazing illustrations and animations. I suggest watching the YouTube clip about the App, it's unreal!!!

We looked at some books that involve Augmented Reality (AR) such as the Guiness World Records 2015 and The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, whereby you combine the print text and an iPad App to literally bring the book to 'life'.

I have downloaded some of the Book Apps suggested from 'We Are Wheelbarrow Pty Ltd' and 'Nosy Crow' which have App versions for books like 'The Wrong Book' (it is even read in an Aussie accent) and think these Apps are of a good quality for children to be able to engage in independent reading activities. I like how children can have the books read to them but can also record themselves and practise being 'expressive readers' like the App. Some of the Nosy Crow books even have the added options of children being able to choose different 'paths' for the story and how it ends.

Although we looked at many amazing Apps and I would find it so easy to get carried away downloading them all, I need to remind myself that the curriculum comes first and foremost. It is always important that the teaching intention is clear THEN we find an App that may be suitable to support that, not the other way around.

A New Certificate for my Fridge