What Does Technology Have to Do with It?
Integrating Electronic Tools into a Children’s Literature Course

Judi Moreillon

Each day, technology becomes ever more pervasive in Western culture. The transition from the information age to the digital communication age is reflected in classrooms around the world. In the United States, federal government initiatives, such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that provides for discounted Internet access for schools, promise that the information explosion made possible by the Internet will soon affect every classroom in the country.

Teacher education programs can prepare future teachers to use technology effectively in their classrooms. Thirty-two U.S. states currently include technology requirements for teacher licensure, but only 15 percent of teachers across the country have received 9 hours or more of technology training (Kent & McNergney, 1999, p. 10). The discrepancy between preparation and expectation will continue to widen if teacher education courses do not do their part to address preservice teachers’ needs for technology integration in their coursework. Such integration is critical if preservice teachers are to become familiar with technology, learn how to design instruction that includes technology, and develop the ability to solve technology challenges before they enter the complex reality of full-time classroom practice.

In order to integrate technology into students’ coursework, colleges and universities not only must find the financial resources to acquire computer hardware and software, but must also convince faculty of the importance of such integration. Action research studies such as the one described here can help show teacher educators the benefits for learning -- on the part of both preservice teachers and their future students -- of technology integration. The article also intends to articulate the challenge to faculty of integrating technology in pedagogically meaningful ways and to demonstrate the complexity involved in aligning higher education with the reality of a technology-rich society.

In this study, my overarching research questions were to determine which technology tools best facilitated students’ engagement with text and their learning from a constructivist and sociocultural perspective. In addition, I wanted to learn if, at the end of the semester, my students understood why I had integrated technology tools into the learning experiences, and if this understanding affected their beliefs about using technology in their future classrooms.

Theoretical Framework

In the summer of 1999, as I began to plan for teaching Children’s Literature in the Classroom, a required course for elementary and middle school teacher candidates at the University of Arizona, I considered ways that I could effectively integrate technology tools and assess the impact of these tools on student learning and my teaching. The course is designed to encourage teacher candidates to read widely, to explore children’s literature as an invitation to personal growth, and to broaden preconceived notions of the use of literature in the classroom. It is built on reader-response theory (Galda, Ash, & Cullinan, 2000, online summary; Rosenblatt, 1990) and is experiential, relying on the students’ participation in literature circles and whole-class discussions of the children’s books they choose to read. Students maintain reading records and literature response journals in which they record their responses to books and the class discussions.

A constructivist learning environment is established in the classroom, with the students taking responsibility for their own learning and the teacher acting as facilitator (Dewey, 1902; Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1978). The processes and products of learning are equally valued. Together we build a sociocultural context for learning in which every learners’ perspective contributes to our individual and collective understandings (Bruner, 1990; Cole, 1996).

As the course facilitator, I had two additional goals:

• First, I hoped to build a learning community in which each student’s unique perspective and life experiences would be expressed and valued. In short, I wanted to create a multicultural educational environment as described in the Statement of Principles on Multicultural Education developed in the University of Arizona’s Department of Language, Reading and Culture (the department that sponsors the children’s literature course).
• Second, I hoped to create a technology-enriched course to serve as a model for integrating the Internet into a content area. The tools I selected would be based on their potential to contribute to meeting pedagogical goals and supporting student-centered learning (Halpin, 1999, online abstract; Kent & McNergney, 1999; Levin, 1999, online abstract; Pailliotet, 1998).

While designing this course to reach these goals, I kept in mind two questions Harris (1998, p. 9) suggests in her book Virtual Architecture: Designing and Directing Curriculum-Based Telecomputing (visit the Web site designed to support this book):

1. Will this use of the Internet enable students to do something they couldn’t do before?
2. Will this use of the Internet enable students to do something they could do before, but better?

Technology tools were integrated based on instructional goals; technology was not utilized in this course for its own sake. I clearly stated the learning goals for each of the ten projects in the course and, if technology was integrated, I shared with students how I thought use of the tool created new possibilities for learning.

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Literature Review

In school districts around the United States, the classroom use of computer technology tools is a hot topic, but many preservice teachers receive little or no technology instruction in their teacher education programs. Those future teachers who do engage in computer learning often do so in technology application courses that are not integrated into the content areas in which they will soon be teaching. Even with technology experience, new teachers may enter the teaching profession believing that computers are tools best housed in labs and used to teach a content area known as “technology” (Kent & McNergney, 1999).

In discussing her research, Halpin (1999, p. 128) states that the “integration of technology with integrated methods courses increased the probability that teachers transferred the computer skills into their classroom as compared to preservice teachers who learned computer skills in an isolated manner.” So, not only is technology instruction important, but the way in which it is delivered has an impact on whether preservice teachers will actually use their knowledge in their classroom teaching.

Literacy in modern society is increasingly complex. It is an ongoing, recursive, interactive process involving varied audiences and texts (Flower, 1989). Researchers have found that engaging in literacy activities with different media texts (traditional print, images, sound, video, etc.) can promote instructional goals and practices, including the literacy learning of diverse populations and fostering multicultural appreciation (Pailliotet, 1998). Reading and writing across media also provide an opportunity to use technology to promote the practices of cooperative learning, use of multicultural texts, and critical thinking (Considine & Haley, 1992). For example, one study found that online threaded discussions (as in Internet bulletin boards) provided teacher candidates with the best tool for reflection on their own beliefs and on the beliefs and methods of the practicing teachers they observed (Levin, 1999).

Most educators would agree that computer literacy involves more than software skills and understanding the value of technology. For classroom teachers, computer literacy also includes a positive attitude about their ability to apply technology in real classroom instruction. For most preservice teachers today, a technology-rich school learning environment (particularly in the elementary grades) is a new experience. These students, most of whom are in their early twenties and completed high school prior to the widespread introduction of technology in classrooms, were not educated with electronic tools and therefore have few or no models for teaching using computers. But when technology is infused in their university coursework, teacher candidates become more positive about their plans to use technology in teaching than do students who participate in programs in which technology is not infused (Thurston, Secaras, & Levin, 1997, online document). Providing a context for technology use as a tool to reach pedagogical goals is critical.

Preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching are generally well formed before they enter university (Pajares, 1992). They have, after all, been apprenticing for their profession since kindergarten. Regardless of any prior experiences and understandings, however, literacy and learning are currently undergoing a transformation. Digital communication and multimedia technologies are redefining long-held beliefs about what it means to be literate and to learn (Lemke, 1998; Negroponte, 1995; Reinking, 1995).To use new tools wisely and appropriately for the task at hand may be the “greatest challenge we all face as we seek to understand both the many new electronic tools becoming available for literacy and the ways in which these tools redefine literacy tasks” (Kinzer & Leu, 1997, p. 135). It is, then, ever more critical that teaching strategies be aligned to the needs of the era in which one is teaching. Preservice teachers, practicing teachers, and teacher educators must work together to change education in fundamental ways to meet the challenges and changes of the new digital age.

As I began teaching Children’s Literature in the Classroom in September 1999, one student asked me, “What does technology have to do with children’s literature studies?” If communication through reading, writing, and discussion were to be central to the course, I responded, then selectively integrating electronic tools seemed like an ideal way to support communication, build a student-centered learning community, and provide a model for effective technology integration. There are, quite simply, some things computers can do better than pens and pencils can. There are some literacy learning experiences that computers offer that were unavailable to students and teachers prior to the advent of the Internet.

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Researcher Beliefs

My beliefs about the centrality of technology come from reading the works of digital culture observers including Jay Bolter (Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing, 1991), Nicolas Negroponte (Being Digital, 1995), and Don Tapscott (Growing up Digital, 1998). My beliefs developed over the 10 years I have worked in elementary school libraries that have been transformed by electronic tools; they come from observing the changing nature of the youngest children, who now come to school with a hunger to use computers to learn, a hunger that far exceeds the ability of most school menus to satisfy.

In my role as a teacher-librarian, I collaborate with classroom teachers to plan, coteach, and evaluate lessons and units of study to integrate literature and information into the curriculum. Over the years, the tools available to teachers and librarians to support students’ literacy development have changed, and the use of the Internet for conducting curriculum-based telecomputing projects has dramatically affected literacy learning experiences (Moreillon, 1999, online document). In 1991, in my first school library, there were no computers. Books and other materials were circulated with cards and pockets; overdue notices were handwritten. Students and teachers used a cumbersome card catalog to locate books and other materials for personal and curriculum-related reading and study. Media consisted of long-playing record albums, filmstrips, video- and audiotapes, and even a few 16-millimeter movies.

Each year since then, the environments in which I have worked have become increasingly infused with technology tools. Today, the library is completely automated: circulation and collection management are accomplished quickly and efficiently with computers. Media include CD-ROMs, video discs, and portable plastic laptop computers; the filmstrips, records, and movies have been discarded. Multimedia authoring software, such as HyperStudio, Power Point, and Claris Home Page, are available for student and teacher use. A local area network within the school gives students and teachers access from any desktop computer terminal to their individual project files and to every software application licensed to the school. The Internet is available in every classroom and on five computer workstations in the library. The resources of the school now extend far beyond its walls out into the world.

As a teacher-librarian currently practicing in the field, I have firsthand knowledge of the demands to use technology tools that will be placed on preservice teachers. These demands will come from students themselves, as well as from principals, parents, school district administrators, the business community, and the public at large. But will future teachers get the preservice education they need to meet these demands? How will they learn to use technology to address instructional goals and not simply for its own sake? I undertook the research study described below as a contribution to answering these questions.

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Research Method

Data collection. Data for this study were collected from several sources. In both sections of the course, Fall 1999 and Spring 2000, I administered midterm and final surveys that addressed classroom learning experiences, including technology use. Some students made comments about technology tools in their responses to the open-ended questions on the midterm and final course reflections. Some also sent me unsolicited e-mail messages regarding many topics, including technology. Student artifacts also served as data sources for this study. These artifacts included students’ online discussion postings and their Web pages. In addition, I kept notations on my weekly lesson plans with regard to my experiences with integrating technology into the course.

My stance was that the data were emergent. I had no preconceived notions about students’ responses. My qualitative research goal, therefore, was “to reach a deeper understanding of the participants’ lived experiences” (Rossman & Rallis, 1998, p. 85). I compared the Fall 1999 and Spring 2000 results only as a means to assess my development as a facilitator of learning. In January 2001, an initial version of this article was posted on the Web and the URL was sent to all students from the Fall 1999 and Spring 2000 course sections, who were given the opportunity to read and comment on the data and the analysis.

Technology components. I prepared an online syllabus to facilitate teaching the course. Its purpose was to enable students to access the course schedule and requirements of the ten learning experiences. With the help of Polis, an online course support tool developed at the University of Arizona by Sally Jackson, a professor of communication and faculty associate for distributed learning, I integrated online discussions and a global classroom exchange into the course learning experiences. In order to facilitate communication among students as well as between myself and the students, the spring class created a listserv. Students in both sections were required to maintain an e-mail address during the course, and use of online tools for discussion made up a significant part of the grade students received for participation.

Individually or with a partner, students conducted an author/illustrator/poet study in which they used Web resources to search for information about their study subject. A list of Web sites was provided for students as a jumping off point to begin their research. Working in small inquiry groups, students in the Spring 2000 class collaboratively prepared an annotated bibliography of children’s books based on their thematic content; they subsequently shared their work with other educators at a children’s literature conference. E-mail and the online group workbench component of Polis facilitated each group’s collaboration. Spring 2000 students also participated in a global classroom experience with peers in Michigan through online dialogues centered on Lois Lowry’s The Giver.

Our final collaborative project gave students an opportunity to experience Web publishing, the preferred publishing format for many of today’s students. One requirement of the course was to share children’s literature in classrooms and to elicit elementary or middle school students’ responses to books. For some preservice teachers, this was their first experience reading a book with students and facilitating a follow-up learning experience. In order to acknowledge the preservice teachers’ learning and their contributions to local schools, I launched the Southwest Children’s Literature Web Site. At the site, my students published their own book reviews, lesson plans, and interviews, as well as the work of the children and classroom teachers with whom they shared the books. This Web site grew each semester as preservice teachers published their work. This effort to encourage future teachers to contribute to the body of knowledge on children’s literature and to create a resource for the worldwide community of children and educators was intended to serve as a model for collegiality and professional development.

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Results and Discussion

Online syllabus. I decided to build the course online syllabus using Web-authoring software. The ability to incorporate hypertext, or links from one part of the Web document to another, facilitated my planning and organization. In addition, I could make links that would allow my students to go directly from the syllabus to outside Internet resources for their author studies as well as for readers’ advisory. I realized, however, that many teacher education students would not be accustomed to this format, so for the Fall 1999 class, I offered students the online syllabus as a complement to a complete paper copy. For the Spring 2000 class, the complete syllabus was available online with only an outline offered in paper format. Table 1 shows the frequency of reference to the online syllabus reported by students in each class.

If the use of the online syllabus at midterm was an indication of computer use and comfort level with online tools, the fall class would seem to have been significantly more inclined to use the digital option. However, only 9 percent of Fall 1999 students reported having experienced Web-facilitated learning in previous coursework, while 30 percent of Spring 2000 students reported prior use of online tools. Most surprising to me was that even though the entire syllabus, with complete descriptions of each learning experience, was located exclusively on the Web for the Spring 2000 section, only 62 percent of the spring students accessed it at all. Students reported that they had asked one another about assignments, e-mailed me, or gathered sufficient information from in-class explanations. For 82 percent of the students in both sections, this course was the only one they had taken at that point in their college careers that required Web-facilitated learning.

Table 2 shows students’ answers to the question “Could you participate in this course without a paper syllabus?” posed on the midterm survey.

Overall, 55 percent of the students said they needed a paper syllabus. These students were definitely not in the habit of using the Web to access information regarding their coursework. I believe that if the use of online syllabi were commonplace in their courses, students would develop the skills and confidence they need to use this format successfully. Giving the students specific reasons to visit the syllabus -- such as posting announcements there (instead of to the listserv) -- might have increased their use of this resource. Making it more attractive and interactive might also have helped. I believe it would have been easier for some students to keep track of their own progress in the course had they regularly accessed the online schedule of learning experiences. Unfortunately, the survey results indicate that the online syllabus may have facilitated my course preparation more than it facilitated student learning.

E-mail and listservs. In many workplaces, e-mail is fast becoming a commonplace method of communication. The University of Arizona, like many universities across the United States, offers students free e-mail accounts upon enrollment. In the Fall 1999 course section, all but two students had active e-mail accounts when they entered the classroom; in the Spring 2000 section, only one student had to open an e-mail account in order to participate effectively in the course. Both the fall and spring sections met in a classroom only once a week, for 2.5 hours. Due to the fact that the course had many learning experiences, students had many project due dates. Communication between class meetings was critical to the students’ success in the course.

“Click Mail,” a component of the Polis program, provides a simple Web page where students can add their e-mail addresses to create a class list. In the Fall 1999 class, I invited students to post their e-mail addresses; only 70 percent of the students did so. In the Spring 2000 class, I required that students post their e-mail addresses within the first week of the semester; 92 percent of the students complied that first week, and 100 percent compliance was reach in two weeks.

The goal of creating a learning community requires that everyone -- not just the course facilitator -- have access to information and be able to support and share expertise with every other member of the class. Click Mail gave students a way to contact individual classmates and two ways (via listservs) to contact the entire class at once. The spring students and I used these tools to establish partnerships for the author/illustrator/poet studies, work collaboratively on class projects, contact and update students who had been absent, clarify assignments, adjust the course schedule, and collectively solve class problems (some of which of course centered on the use of technology tools). (This was not possible in the fall section, since not all students had signed on to the Click Mail feature.) The effective use of these tools was critical for a class the met just once a week.

Web-based discussions. Like Click Mail, the course Web-based discussions were intended as a way for students to share the responsibility for creating and contributing to the learning community. The online discussions invited students to post their perspectives on issues related to children’s literature and to respond to one another’s experiences and points of view. “To this day some students are surprised that their experiences count as knowledge in the classroom.... If students learn best when they can relate information to their own experience, then we need ways to make room for that experience in the learning process. Internet communication can be useful in providing that room” (Mack & Delicio, 2000, online document).

Unlike a response journal that facilitates communication between the student and the instructor or among a small group of students, online discussion ensures that every student has access to the diverse experiences and points of view of all class members. Online discussions result in a balance of status and power in the classroom (Garner & Gillingham, 1998, p. 229). In an effort to reinforce my stance as a facilitator of learning rather than a transmitter of knowledge, I elected not to post my own responses to the online discussions used in the course. In both semesters, students earned learning project points for participating in these discussions in a timely manner.

In the fall class, 91 percent of the students had no previous experiences with online discussions, while for the spring class, the figure was 70 percent. Overall, this was a new experience for 82 percent of students. The first fall posting was totally voluntary; 65 percent of the class posted, and I observed that the students were content to comment on their responses to topics but didn’t respond to one another’s comments. The second posting was required, but still students did not engage in conversation by responding to one another’s postings. For the third posting, I required students both to post and to respond to others’ posts. They were given two weeks to complete this assignment. Table 3 shows the percentage of students posting to each discussion through the fourth.

Online dialogue topics came from our class discussions and readings. The first discussion was about what families can do to support good reading habits and was related to students’ literacy memoirs (which later became a class book). The second topic came from our class reference book: Students discussed violence in traditional stories and the reservations some teachers have to share religious stories in the classroom. The third discussion was the result of a student presentation about a bilingual (Spanish-English) children’s book author; the topic was bilingual education. The final topic, multicultural education, was intended to support students in writing their final reflections for the course.

In the final surveys for the fall class, 43 percent of students said that they had participated in the online discussions “only because they were required”; 53 percent did so because the discussions “were a positive learning experience” (one student did not answer this question). Many students who participated only because it was required cited lack of time, campus-only computer access, and lack of interest in the topics of discussion as reasons for their grudging response to the activity.

Having learned from the fall experience, in the spring I required students both to post a comment and to respond to another student from the outset. I explained that our goal was to create a conversation online so it was important to respond as well as to offer one’s own ideas. The spring class began with a discussion of violence in traditional tales and of religious stories. The second discussion focused on the Conference on Literature and Literacy for Children and Adolescents, which all students attended. (The keynote speaker was author-educator Mem Fox, who shared her thought-provoking views on literacy education.) The final two discussions were based on Lois Lowry’s Newbery award-winning The Giver. Students worked in small groups to post their comments and to respond to colleagues in a children’s literature course at Northwestern Michigan College, Grand Traverse, Michigan (see the next section for more discussion of this long-distance collaboration). Observing students at work together in the lab, I realized that the small group approach might have been the best way to introduce online discussions at the beginning of the course.

Table 4 shows the numbers of spring students who posted and responded to each discussion.

Throughout both semesters, students’ online dialogues show evidence of critical thinking and sensitivity to one another despite differing points of view. I believe that the sense of community in the classroom was built, in part, by the online discussions. A high level of comfort and trust accounted for the depth of sharing. Like Levin (1999), I found that students appreciated the opportunity to learn from one another. I noticed that they often validated others’ beliefs and experiences and that when they disagreed, they focused on sharing from a different perspective and were careful not to offend. Students who were often quiet in the classroom shared online because they had time to compose their thoughts and did not have to compete with their more verbal classmates. The Web allowed us to conduct whole-class discussions more democratically. On her midterm reflection, one student from the spring 2000 class wrote, “I feel that this class is respectful of, and encourages, individual expression. The Polis listings offer freedom of voice.” I believe these preservice teachers will recall the impact of these discussions when they facilitate response sharing in their own classrooms.

The global classroom. Creating a global classroom is one of the activity structures suggested in Harris’s (1998) Virtual Architecture. Thanks to my niece, I was introduced via e-mail to Barbara Tatarchuk, who teaches children’s literature at Northwestern Michigan College in Grand Traverse, Michigan, USA. Barb and I corresponded electronically and had the good fortune to meet in person on one occasion to plan our global classroom. We found that The Giver was not only included in both our syllabi, but that we planned for students to read it at about the same time. Polis was a perfect tool for allowing the long-distance collaboration with the Michigan students. In addition to posting questions about Lowry’s book to the online discussion and comments for response, we were able to add links to digital photographs of each small group of students. This sort of activity is more structured than most keypal exchanges in that students have a specific topic to discuss (in this case a children’s book) over a specified period, which for our classes was just three weeks.

Although our online exchange occurred too late in the semester to foster ongoing collaborations among our students, Barb and I felt that even this brief experience helped students imagine the possibilities of using similar activities in their future classrooms. I learned that posting in small groups provides support for introducing online discussion participation, practicing collaboration, and building relationships. Comparing the participation rate of the initial spring class discussions, when students communicated only with their own classmates, and the final discussions that involved exchange with the Michigan students in our global classroom, one could conclude that students were more motivated when online discussion was supported by collaborative group work and extended beyond the regular class. In a brief questionnaire about this learning experience, all the spring students agreed that they could “see how communicating with others online could motivate students to get involved in learning and improve communication skills.”

I believe the global classroom exchanges were especially powerful for students in terms of reader response. There were clearly differences of opinion about responses to the text, and the responses these preservice teachers imagined elementary or middle school students might have. The diversity of experience and response to the reading was broadened by the discussion with our Michigan classmates (and by a penpal exchange with a local fifth-grade class that had just experienced The Giver as a read-aloud).

Southwest Children’s Literature Web site. In order to prepare students to publish on the Web, we spent one entire class session in the university’s multimedia learning lab. Students rotated through centers in which they read electronic books on CD-ROM, reviewed printed books that have been influenced by electronic publishing (such as Karen Hesse’s The Music of Dolphins and Virginia Walter’s Making Up Mega-Boy), learned to scan images, and copied the site template onto their own disks in preparation for publishing material on the Southwest Children’s Literature Web site.

The first step for each student was to choose a children’s book somehow related to the theme of the southwestern United States, and to share it with a class of elementary or middle school children. Then, students were to contribute a book review, children’s work, and a brief autobiography of the author to the Web site. Some students elected to post an optional lesson plan or to interview the author or illustrator of their chosen book (an interview with authors Ken and Deborah Buchanan was conducted online). In the process, the preservice teachers had the opportunity to experience the excitement of being published on the Web and share this excitement with the children.

The site was used as a teaching tool when we shared each student’s pages to demonstrate the effective and diverse strategies used to elicit children’s responses to the books. Kate had used drama to help students make connections to the reading of How the Sun Was Born/Como el sol nacío. Karen invited a musical, kinesthetic response to It Rained on the Desert Today. Gary asked students to write and illustrate desert-themed poetry after sharing Cactus Poems. Cynthia gave students the opportunity to respond in either Spanish or English to a reading of Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet in English and in Spanish, using the letters in their own names in their responses. Once again, the electronic tools allowed us to do something we could not have easily accomplished another way. The technology allowed us to share in the K-8 classroom read-aloud experience of every member of our class.

We know the site has been used by Tucson-area classroom teachers and that several schools and an area public library have chosen to link their Web sites to ours. This effort to encourage future teachers to contribute to the body of knowledge on children’s literature and to create a resource for the worldwide community of children and educators also served as a model for collegiality and professional development. The goal of publishing for an authentic audience was achieved.

Affecting preservice teacher beliefs and knowledge. Tables 5, 6, and 7 summarize the students’ responses to the following open-ended questions on their final surveys:

• Describe your experience of publishing on the Southwest Children’s Literature Web Site (Table 5)
• Technology was integrated into this class because... (Table 6)
• If you have the necessary hardware and software tools in your future school or classroom, describe one way you would integrate technology into your literature or language arts curriculum (Table 7)

Seventy-six percent of the students reported that publishing on the Web was a positive experience. Twenty-two students identified Web publishing as a way to integrate technology into the literature and language arts curriculum. Following are some of the students’ descriptions of their experience of publishing on the Southwest Children’s Literature Web Site:

I enjoyed publishing on the Southwest Children’s Literature Web site. It offered me insight into how technology can be incorporated into the classroom. I found the whole process to be an adventure because this is the first time I had published on a Web site. I shared my contribution with my grandparents, mother, and friends. They thought it was a great resource to explore our Sonoran Desert. (Anthony, Fall 1999)

The experience really served as a wake-up call for me as to how much I don’t know and how much good teachers are using technology. I definitely finished the assignment wanting “more of the same” and excited about the creative process and resources that can be tapped using computers. I’ll be taking LRC 320 [Computer Applications for Teachers] next semester as a direct result of the experience. I have also written the college telling them of my strong belief that LRC 320 [the children’s literature course] should be a requirement for teachers. Also, Debby Buchanan’s reaction to the site and her desire to use our reviews did make me proud. (Karen, Fall 1999)

(Note: Karen volunteered to help the spring class during one of our small group trips to the lab to create our Southwest Children’s Literature Web Site pages.)

Publishing the Southwest Web Site was so much fun. I have been so proud to show off our class Web site and the work we have published. Technology is so important in our society today. After doing this Web site, this gives me confidence that I could build a Web site for my classroom.... Many people are afraid of using technology, and this experience has shown me not to be [frightened] and I have the capabilities. (Stacey, Spring 2000)

I was apprehensive at first. I had never used DreamWeaver, and I only had my own homepage published. I was also excited that I would be able to share my work with other people. I knew it was a good idea because the students (from the elementary school where she shared her Southwest book) were happy to have their quotes on the Internet. (Michelle, Spring 2000)

In response to the survey question about why technology was integrated into this course, Donna (Fall 1999) wrote, “Technology is the wave of our future. It was nice to learn how to incorporate this into our curriculum. I feel more knowledgeable and confident that I will be able to successfully incorporate technology into my classroom, providing I have the resources.” Gary (Spring 2000) wrote, “Technology should be used as a tool to expand communication and available knowledge of people from all walks of life and from different cultural backgrounds. Integration of technology and curriculum can increase communication.” Amber (Spring 2000) wrote, “Technology was integrated because that is something we need to be familiar with, to show us that it is not a subject of its own, but rather a tool to be used with other subjects.”

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Reflections on Integrating Technology Tools

As an active and enthusiastic technology user, I acknowledge the conflicting forces at work when I reflect on my goals for students with regard to their use of these tools. First and foremost, I wanted preservice teachers to leave my course loving these tools and confident in their ability to use and integrate them into the classroom curriculum. Unfortunately, the need to require students to comply with technology use often seemed to dull the shine on their affection for these tools. It seemed to me that leading them to technology was not enough; rewarding them for using it was necessary, and penalizing them for not doing so was the unfortunate consequence. The strict use of rewards and punishments was not consistent with my own beliefs about learning and teaching. This conflict was for me a constant source of internal struggle throughout the Fall 1999 and Spring 2000 semesters of this course.

As evidenced by the fact that many students posted to the online discussions only “because it was required,” it is clear that not all the technology tools offered were embraced. A vocal minority in the Fall 1999 class resisted or resented several of the learning experiences, including the Polis postings and the Web site. Many students became aware of their own fears about technology tools. For example, in her midterm reflection, Yetive (Spring 2000) wrote, “This class has forced me to take risks and change my habits more than many of the other classes I have taken. I am very wary of change and your philosophy about change has forced me to make some changes. I have become more interested in completing the online assignments and using the computer as a tool rather than a hindrance. I am very happy that your beliefs of what this class should be have not been tainted by our reluctance to follow them.” It was difficult for me to continue to challenge students for whom these technology learning tools were alien or frightening, even though I thought it would be “good” for them.

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Conclusions and Recommendations

The widespread use of electronic tools has called into question traditional definitions of literacy (Bolter, 1991; Negroponte, 1995; Tapscott, 1998). The changing nature of literacy instruction is a critical topic for study if we as educators are to assume our rightful role in suggesting, and even directing, the educational uses of electronic tools. At present, there is very little research that looks at literacy instruction in relation to the introduction of new technologies (Kamil & Lane, 1998). In many classrooms, instead of helping to transform instruction, electronic tools are being used to conduct school as usual. Adding new tools to a well-entrenched educational system does not necessarily result in changed teaching and learning practice.

Preservice teachers’ beliefs endure unaltered unless they are deliberately challenged (Lasley, 1990). My hope is that the preservice teachers who participated in Children’s Literature in the Classroom will not ask what technology has to do with teaching in any content area. They will have had at least one course in which technology was used to help create a constructivist learning environment and stimulate discussion with the goal of deepening responses. They will have conducted online research to support an inquiry study, and they will have published their work for review and use by an authentic audience. They will have experienced a student-centered learning community in which collaboration using technology was critical to both their individual and group success. Perhaps most important, they will understand that technology is not a separate subject taught by technicians in a computer lab. Rather, it is a tool like a pencil or pen, and it can be integrated meaningfully into every area of the curriculum in order to reach instructional goals.

I believe that students’ understanding of the diversity of readers’ responses to literature and of the multiple strategies for eliciting those responses was enhanced both by online threaded discussions and through sharing our work via the Web. The Internet allowed us to conduct the global classroom exchange with preservice teachers in Michigan much more easily and expediently than a penpal exchange would have allowed. Students experienced increased motivation to participate in the discussion because the Web was the only way to communicate with our distant classmates. Discussing a book with regional implications may have made this experience even more powerful. Of course, as one student’s exchange with his classmates clearly shows, it is the literature itself that extends to the reader an invitation to the heart.

Studies are needed to follow preservice teachers into their postgraduation teaching positions to determine the long-term impact of technology integration in teacher education coursework. Studies that address the factors that tend to promote or inhibit teachers’ technology integration are also needed. It will also be important to learn what specific kinds of experiences and support new teachers require in order to use instructional goals to guide their use of technology tools. Continued and expanded communication between colleges of education and school districts is essential.

Technology tools and the Internet, in particular, have already begun to transform teaching and learning in some classrooms. Researchers who have studied these classrooms believe that new technologies will help many teachers discard the teacher-centered transmission model of teaching and replace it with a student-centered constructivist model of learning (Garner & Gillingham, 1998). Preservice teachers must experience this teaching model during their preservice education. The use of technology tools is one way to create a 21st-century teacher education classroom that is student-centered, collaborative, and multicultural, a classroom in which the teacher acts as facilitator of students’ learning explorations, a classroom that is enriched with technology tools used to achieve instructional goals. As teacher educators we must take up the challenge to re-examine and to improve our own teaching practices in order to prepare our students adequately for teaching in today and tomorrow’s classrooms.

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About the Author

Judi Moreillon is a graduate teaching assistant and doctoral student in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. Her research focus is media and literacy. She began her teaching career as a fifth-grade classroom teacher and has worked for the past 10 years as an elementary school teacher-librarian. Judi facilitates the student-designed, -created, and -maintained Gale Elementary School Web site, which recently earned the Arizona Technology in Education Alliance Best Elementary School Web Site 2001. She is also a professional storyteller and the author of the children’s picture book Sing Down the Rain (Kiva, 1997). You can contact Judi Moreillon by e-mail at storypower@theriver.com.

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Citation: Moreillon, J. (2001, September). What does technology have to do with it? Integrating electronic tools into a children’s literature course. Reading Online, 5(2). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=moreillon/index.html

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted September 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232