Chapter 12, The New Literacies: The World of Online Children's Literature

Our book (p 344) defines new literacies as the skills and strategies that have become a necessity to successfully use and adapt to the constantly changing information and communication technologies of today. As much as technology can intimidate me, I know intertwining the many facets the of 21st  century technological world into our classroom literature experience will only make it a more complete and rich experience for our students. It incorporates skill building for our students in using technology, as this is a rising skill demand our student are facing to be successful in life and work. But how do we do incorporate all these different technical tools into our lessons? Surprisingly enough, our text gave me several easily understood ways to do so; below I have made some suggestions:

We all know that our students love it when we read to them, but how much more exciting would this reading influence be if our children had their favorite celebrity read to them? Well they can with an online read aloud. 

• BookPALS Storyonline 
• StoryOnline

Reading nowadays no longer requires turning a paper page. With technological inventions such as the Nook and Kindle and simply downloading to a computer more and more books are becoming widely available in digital form. Today thousand of online books are available in the digital format.

• International Children's Digital Library

Besides reading a book from some of our students' favorite authors, how about having the children visit the author them-self?  Now they can. It is called a virtual author visit. Some sites host authors throughout the year and provide online discussion board for student and teacher where the author corresponds for two weeks with the class and other even provide opportunities to skype with an author.

• Virtual Author Visit Kit
• Skype with an Author

Lastly another approach that caught my eye from this chapter was literature-based WebQuests. 

• Questgarden Search
• Literature Learnign Ladders

All of these tools, plus many, many more provide such a wide variety of ways for us as educators to bring the joy of children's literature to life in our classrooms.