What literacy practitioners say about the use of technology in literacy education

“I can see more computers in our classrooms, I have no trouble with this. I just hope more software for adults gets written. You can wade through an awful lot of cutesy stuff searching for basic skills. The thing I see has the greatest potential is electronic networks in opening the sense of the whole world for students who never leave their hometown.”

“An interactive software program for curriculum development - where we could provide the content and the software gives us the format - would be wonderful. We are always looking for resources with content that truly captures the interest of our students.”

“Software evaluations are essential but time-consuming. It often feels like I am looking for a needle in a haystack to find appropriate software that is affordable.”

“How do we balance (or integrate) the computer literacy objectives that we all agree are useful in today’s society with language literacy objectives? Which one takes precedence? Do you choose a computer objective and then select a literacy objective that goes along with it or do you start with a literacy objective?”

“We need fast computers to support programs - students get really frustrated waiting for things to load - they start punching buttons and of course get nowhere. These students should have the best of all computers, not end of the line stuff.”

“Using the Internet is great with students who experience keyboarding problems because they can point and click and it is often filled with pictures and even sound and movies. However it does require state of the art equipment and connections to take full advantage of all these features. How do we fund this?”

“We won’t be able to find innovative ways to use technology until we are using it ourselves. A substantial investment in teacher training is required. I suspect that the number of literacy instructors with this skill set is small. As well, technology is constantly changing and staying abreast of trends and changes may be more difficult. Do literacy programs have enough funding to hire people to oversee this aspect or enough time to coordinate and recruit volunteers from the technology field? How many instructors are pulling double duty by providing this level of technical support while providing instruction to students along with a myriad of other responsibilities?”

"If you start anywhere, it should be with a good word processing program, followed by other adult-oriented software, such as a database program, etc. Our students are adults, and learning to use the computer as a tool encourages them to acquire more technology-related skills, and the necessary language skills which follow. With sufficient money and equipment, of course, there are lots of good literacy packages out there, such as the SUCCESSMAKER program, and a multitude of Web resources. But adults can get very tired of the repetition in canned programs and games fairly quickly. Obviously, the computer should serve as a tool for learning, just as you teach reading, writing and life skills in the classroom. It should stimulate learning and ideas, and have real life applications, but some of the real learning should also take place in the real world."