In this article, I share the ways in which New Literacies theory served as an interpretive lens to understand how the Internet as a cultural tool mediates the literacy actions of adolescents in English Language Arts classrooms. Data were drawn from a larger study in which students who were considered “at-risk” because of previous academic failure were given the opportunity to engage in digital writing events by classroom teachers who used digital writing frequently and in a variety of different ways in their instruction, ranging from collaborative writing using Google Docs to the use of Web 2.0 applications and multimodal projects. Findings revealed that writing with technology tools both enabled and constrained the literacy actions of the adolescent participants. Analyzing the learning context of these fourth and ninth grade classrooms through the lens of New Literacies theory informed my understanding of the ways in which technology infused the literacy curriculum and daily literacy practices that occurred in the literacy classrooms.
This article describes the Mentored Multigenre Project, a virtual writing collaboration experience between high school writers and teacher candidates. Our goal was to create an authentic opportunity for our high school students to receive writing feedback from virtual writing mentors, while also creating an opportunity for our teacher candidates to practice the craft of teaching writing. In this article, the authors outline the ways in which they prepared and supported the high school students during the project. Then, the authors highlight an emergent case from the project to demonstrate the virtual writing collaboration experience in action and evaluate the extent to which it created an authentic writing experience for one high school writer. Finally, the authors share their reflections on the experience and suggestions for others interested in using a learning management system to connect high school writers with teacher candidates.
The Ohio Network of Education Transformation (ONET) funded schools to implement different models of school reform including Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), the Asia Society's International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), New Tech, and Early College. This article introduces these four reform models and considers their implementation and impacts for two sites each. Findings from a two-year evaluation focus on overarching themes and lessons learned across reform models. Four subsequent articles present findings from each model in greater detail. Taken together, this set of articles provides an in-depth understanding of educational reform implementation for often understudied reform models.
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