The Reader and Technology

Hi Colleagues,
It seems that all I do now is impacted by my reading course, the theories, instructional strategies, new technologies meeting old technologies and the relationship among them all. Can you believe this happens so naturally that I catch myself delving into and reflecting on situations whether first , or second hand. I get caught up in making meaning from what I have experienced.

Last night I looked at a movie in which a young woman always requested that her friend read to her. He thought it was because of his beautiful, well modulated voice or the way in which his face changed to show a range of emotion when he was reading. He became totally involved in the act, in fact, it proved to be an act of unconditional for him.

During the film, the woman was convicted of attrocities at a war camp in Germany because she was a guard at the camp and was framed as the person who had written the documents, recommending the deaths of the frail women there. She was imprisoned for twenty years and it was there that she learnt to read and write. The young man began making audio stories for her of books that he knew she would like. These she listened to and followed the text from the booksShe began to that she checked out of the library.

Gradually she began to crack the code and began to make sense of print. She began to recognise words by tracking them and counting from the beginning of a sentence. She began to comprehend. After much practice from the text, she began to write and sent the young man her first sentence. As the years passed, she had a huge collection of audiobooks and writings, thus she was able to bear her confinement. She was in fact an emergent reader (Clay, cited in Tracey and Morrow, 2006).This is of note to me because many times we see children in our schoolyard looking so smart and intelligent only to find out, sometimes by accident of their many challenges with reading and other areas of literacy. In fact, they are smart and intelligent but need help to sort their literacy challenges. They are in fact emergent readers, they read below their grade level.

Colleagues let us all provide assistance for these children. Let us break them out of their 'prison walls.' Let us help them and leave none behind!

God Bless.