A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: The Use of Digital Photography to Enhance Literacy Development in Young Children
Lauren Cummins, Regina Rees, and Kelly Bacroft, Youngstown State University
- What do we know about literacy development?
- Young children are natural storytellers, and they “write” stories through pictures
- Children use pictures to help them remember about their story and be able to tell their story in more vivid language
- Students write more when they are motivated
- What do we know about digital imagery?
- Images provide a motivating “hook” for students to get into writing
- Photography lets children speak with pictures
- Visual “think alouds” can helps students support the writing process
- Learn content
- Will the use of digital imagery to write a story increase a child’s amount of words produced and effective use of story elements?
- Five day workshop, 1.5 hours per day
- Urban elementary school
- Thirteen third graders
- Workshop outline
- Day 1: Elements of an effective story
- Day 2: Learning to use the cameras
- Day 3: Choose images and storyboard
- Day 4: Creating final story
- Day 5: Story celebration
- Results
- Pre-writing sample from same prompt as compared to post showed increase in many students’ scores
- For instance, 42 words in original story up to 107 in sample story shared here
- Lowest increase was at least 67% and an average of 233%
- Reflections:
- Children tended to focus on telling about the pictures and needed more experience in storytelling with the pictures
- Storyboards helped with the story elements
- Most of the children took pictures of their families and this changed the story prompt for some
- Pre-writing sample from same prompt as compared to post showed increase in many students’ scores
- Implications
- Children can improve their literacy skills through the use of digital imagery
- This is especially true for urban children
- Writing prompts need to be related to children’s read world experiences
- Students are interested and motivated
Social Networking in PreK-6: What Are Webkinz, Club Penguin, and Other Online Communities All About?
Nancy Yost, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
- Social networks
- Profiles
- Network
- Photos
- Videos
- Personal Journals
- Connecting with families and friends
- 8.2 million 3-17 year olds were expected to visit virtual worlds in a month (eMarketer research group)
- Where are young children going?
- Why should we be interested? For instance, 10 million Peguin Club members.
- They give kids a context for using social networking and instant messaging
- Maybe we need to look at how these sites are used and figure out what’s there and how, perhaps, they can support ISTE standards and classroom connections
- Content Analysis for Social Networking
- Access
- Parental Controal
- Safety information
- Ages for which the site is designed
- Types of interactions allowed
- ISTE standards addressed
- Content standards adressed
- User friendly?
- Webkinz
- Purchase a stuffed animal and get access code (then you get a one-year subscription to the website) and get to look at all the merchandise you can get virtually and for your stuffed figure
- Parental controls to keep informed, page on safety information
- Club house that has structured chat and they tried to have an open chat, but they closed it
- Academic/content games in the Webkinz world
- ISTE Standards
- 1: Creativity and Innovation
- 4: Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Decision Making
- 5: Digital Citizenship
- What’s next
- Overview of all sites, with recommendations for educational uses
- What opportunities might we be missing by not using social networking sites in our classrooms?