Overview+&+Introduction

Researcher: Betty Teresa Ray
= Introduction = According to  //Webster’s New World College Dictionary// (1997), “literacy is the ability to read and write”. Teaching literacy skills is a challenge for even the most seasoned teachers. Many learning styles are possessed by our students, and each of the styles must be addressed to ensure that the learning potential of each student is tapped.  It is often the case in reading classrooms that instructors see that traditional basal readers do not fulfill the needs of some students; other means must be used. Writing skills are lacking in many classrooms due to boredom and lack of interest. To counter this, instructors are seeking ways to motivate students to read and write. Teachers need to review research in order to make informed judgments about what method is needed to meet the needs of students (Johnson & Christensen, 2008). Technology is a very valuable tool in remediating and accelerating students’ literacy skills. Technology holds many of the students’ interest where direct instruction does not. Since many students have access to various kinds of technology at home, students desire the use of technology in the classroom to meet their needs. For this generation of children, the Internet is the medium of literacy in the way that books and periodicals were in previous generations. Omitting technology such as the Internet, would be like leaving out books in the classrooms of previous generations (Zawilinski, 2009).  The topic of the research study will be technology integration in the literacy classroom. The purpose of this study is to use a specific technology in the literacy classroom and review the results of achievement compared with a class that does not use technology. The researcher will examine the effects that the use of blogging (sharing ideas and information on a website) has on reading comprehension.