Preparing Preservice Teachers to Thread Literacy across the Curriculum with Blogging and Digital Storytelling

Background

As the field of education confronts the changing nature of teaching and learning, the question is no longer of whether to incorporate new technologies in the classroom, but when and how to use them (Fletcher, Schaffhauser, & Levin, 2012). Among the recommendations from many educational and professional organizations (International Reading Association, 2009; National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2012; State Education Technology Directors Association, 2012) is a strong call for teachers who are prepared to effectively incorporate technology and new literacies into their teaching. Rather than a blind exhortation to increase the amount of technology present in classrooms; this call focuses on the alignment of existing technology with traditional learning goals. “So media literacy isn’t about automatically championing new technologies; rather it is a way to help students who live in a technology-dependent world regain the power that traditional literacy once enabled” (Scheibe & Rogow, 2012, p. 2).