Technology Enhancement

In terms of the literacy instruction and classroom design, literature circles are a way for students to share reading experiences.

Integrating the internet into the classroom can extend the literature circle by providing a worldwide audience for sharing, along with resources for better understanding the literature and using the technology tools to assist students in accessing, organizing, analyzing, and communicating their approaches to essential questions (Lamb & Smith 1999).

technology integration continuum

Teachers can integrate technology into the literature circle along any of three facets: communication between students; the text material; and the student activities. The range for communication goes from members participating in person in class, to a student who participates though telecommunications perhaps as a hospital/homebound student, to interactions through telecommunications between the in person class and different classes or grade levels, to a distance learning situation, where all the students communicate through telecommunications. The text material used for the literature circle can range from paper based text, to paper text with digital enhancements or versions, to fully digital text, such as eBooks. For the activities students can participate with just the paper and pencils that they have to integrating activities that use technology such as search engines, paint programs, concept mapping software or web sites, digital recording, and chat software. These technology activities can range from having no technology activities, to using just a few activities, such as for a one computer classroom where students would need to take turns, to having all activities integrate technology where students have one-to-one computer access.

College Course Integration

In the introductory educational technology courses at the author’s institution, a number of selected literacy activities have been chosen and infused with technology for use in the course. These activities include:

reviewing electronic books,
planning and developing classroom activities with eBooks,
and using a technology enhanced literature circle .

In this literature circle, teacher candidates are exposed to standard literature circle concepts with technology integrations that require the students to use technology tools. The literature circle assignments that were developed are: Discussion Coordinator; Vocabulary Elaborator; Literary Expository; Graphic Illustrator; Graphic Organizer; Background Researcher; Web Researcher; Media Hunter; and Connector. Each assignment has integrated technology applications. The job assignment descriptions are added to this paper as an appendix.

Using this technology enhanced literature circle approach students working in groups have experiences in all six Technology Foundation Standards for Students from the ISTE NETS:

Basic operations and concepts
Social, ethical, and human issues
Technology productivity tools
Technology communications tools
Technology research tools
Technology problem-solving and decision-making tools (ISTE 2000)