English language arts, often conceived of as reading, writing, speaking, listening, performing, and thinking, are shifting in response to emerging technologies and the new literacies they inspire. Emerging technologies and the new literacies they enable provide new modes and media for communication and, likewise, create new opportunities and…

Technology offers a number of opportunities for connecting classrooms with the world. The advent of the Internet has offered unprecedented prospects for classroom connections, but the recent diffusion of digital cameras throughout society offers instructional possibilities as well. This document provides a detailed examination of digital…

A digital story consists of a series of still images combined with a narrated soundtrack to tell a story. This document contains a sequence of seven steps for digital storytelling based on a two-year project in Curry School's Center for Technology and Teacher Education at the University of Virginia. The strategies outlined offer a starting point…

The language arts classroom is largely about leading students to become literate in their own voices and to see writing as a tool for thinking. I come to know my students through their writing and through class discussions about the texts we read and the texts we write. The challenge of good writing instruction is leading students to view their…

In the early 1980s, we were struck by the way the Internet permeated university instruction and research and adopted the goal of extending this capability to K-12 schools. By the end of the decade, we succeeded in linking all 2,000 of Virginia's schools to the Internet, through establishment of Virginia?s Public Education Network.

We first introduced use of Weblogs in the classroom in the September and October 2003 issues of L&L. Weblogs are a relatively new innovation, consisting of Web-based journals facilitated by software that generates chronological entries. Weblogs, commonly shortened to blogs, have become enormously popular. At last count, several million users have…

Recent work in middle and high school classrooms throughout the past year suggests two key roles in which students can use digital images in the language arts classroom: as readers and as writers. These emerging capabilities can allow students and teachers to envision, understand, and communicate meaning. Here we offer three brief illustrations…