Annotated Bibliography Journal Article 1

Andes, L., & Claggett, E. (2011). Wiki Writers: Students and Teachers Making Connections Across Communities. The Reading Teacher. 64 (5), 345-350 

Description:

Improving the writing skills of sixteen special education and at-risk literacy students in second grade through meaningful and integrated technological applications was the focus of a year-long program that included students, parents, teachers, and university graduate course members. Parent, student and teacher surveys as well as assessment data and work samples were collected. Reading benchmark exams were administered. At the beginning of the year 0% of the group were at, or above expectation. By the end of the year 50% of the group were at, or above expectation. By comparison the other students in Grade 2 had a 30% increase of students working at, or above. Another assessment showed similar improvements.  The opinion of parents, teachers and students was that students had an increased enthusiasm for reading and writing.

The technology applications were chosen by educators and a technology coach for best fit with their writing goals.  With the number of technology applications out there, it is possible to maintain the rate of introduction of new tools however this study urges educators to purposefully integrate technology in literacy instruction.
Evaluation:
This article comes from a peer-reviewed journal published by JStor. This article is one of many which discuss and investigate the integration of Web 2.0 tools into writing programmes to engage students and raise achievement. This research supports the context for my research for this course. Knowing that the end result of the changes will bring about positive impacts on achievement levels or motivation of students will be more likely to ensure persistence throughout the process. There is a mixture of opinion and fact with qualitative and quantitative data included in the article.