Week 9 Article Review

The article The Impact of Using Blogs on College Students' Reading Comprehension and Learning Motivation was very informative.  The statistics in relation to using media while reading were astounding.  The article stated that 58% of middle and high school students use other media while reading.  This would explain the short attention spans of many of our students.   I have a difficult time reading at all when there is an excessive amount of background noise.  I can’t imagine multitasking by using media while reading.  I can see how much this affects out students reading levels.  I believe this sort of behavior is happening in lower grades, as well. It spoke of how multimodal texts may help change students reading levels.   I agree with this greatly.  I often use online texts that are animated.  My students love these.  They are engaged and motivated to learn more so than using regular text.  The generation we are teaching is exposed to technology in a variety of ways in their everyday lives.  It only makes sense to present technology in their learning environment, as well. 

The article went on to describe New Literacies.  It discussed how New Literacties are literacy skills that have an interactive multimedia approach.  We have been working in this class to integrate New Literacy practices in our classroom rooms.   The article reflected upon a case study that researched the affects of blogging on college reading levels.  The findings were interesting.  There was no significant correlation between blogging and reading scores increasing.  I found this interesting, because I feel blogging does increase writing abilities.  The writing ability increase would then lead to an increase in reading ability.  I feel that blogging is a much nicer way of publishing our work then posting it in a discussion forum.  The overall appearance of the blog is more pleasing. The communication is a little more personalized, as well.  In a discussion forum all you are is a name attached to a post.  At least with the blog, you can set up a profile and use a picture. I agree with the article in that blogs also offer a nice way to personally reflect on your ideas and thoughts.  They also provide a great means of collecting resources and projects to create a portfolio.  The article gave a nice insight into how blogs can be used as a form of New Literacy instruction.