Week 4: Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans

The topic of our discussion this week revolves around reading and writing skills. However, I focused a lot more on reading as reading is what my students lack off. They dislike reading. Well some of them do like reading, but time is their enemy. Or maybe passion. Or perhaps motivation? I don't know. I find myself read less nowadays. I hardly finish one novel in one month like I used to. In fact, I might have taken half a year to finish even one!  However, I read a lot online. Apart from reading updates on social networks, e-mails or online news, I read articles on various topics. I read e-books. I read short stories. I read books and films reviews. To conclude, I'd say, it's not that I don't read as much anymore. It's just that my genre of reading has changed from reading on paper to reading on screen. Well maybe that's what I need to do to my students too, especially because they are Generation Y. I need to use technology in my reading lessons.

In order to complete my assignments, I did some online search and found several interesting websites full of reading materials which I think might interest my students. SearchLit, Children's Library and King Features Comics are some examples. Here, students can explore the readings available based on their own preferences, levels and needs. Hopefully this can boost their motivation to read. I also read an online article on the debate of reading online versus reading on books; whether reading online really counts as reading. Pretty interesting arguments but I'm more to agreeing that reading online is also reading, no matter how little reading is going on. 

"What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text." Source: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

 What say you?