Sara Kajder, (then University of Louisville) describes how she uses her Tablet PC daily. She offers a framework for considering the qualities of the technology-using English teacher.

Within the first few hours of that day, I had

Read and commented on the blog postings that students in my graduate literacy course had made the night before.

Dipped into my email to scan for student inquiries and anything flagged as urgent.
Read several articles that were linked within this week’s NCTE update.

Sent students an attachment of a PowerPoint presentation that I had “inked” using MS Journal on my tablet PC in response to their inquiries and comments during class the night before.

Pulled up WikiYa.org in order to read entries, post comments, and use the materials to guide selections for a young adult literature course I am building for a later semester.

Evaluated student digital literacy narratives by creating screencasts of my reactions and thoughts when reading their multimodal compositions.

Listened to podcasts of literature circle discussions generated by a seventh-grade class I am researching here in the city.

Conferenced via iTalk with a student teacher about possible lesson ideas for teaching reluctant middle school readers.

Synched my PDA to make sure that I had the latest schedule for meetings and the accompanying documents for each.

And designed an evaluation rubric for student electronic portfolio projects.

Technology infuses my work in dynamic and dramatic ways, most of which would not have been possible even a year ago. I require as much from my students as I do myself; multiple assignments across my methods courses are multimodal and collaborative and involve literacies with definitions that are still in flux. And I do not teach in a technology-laden facility. (bold added)

Her overarching point appears to be that teaching literacy today means using the most powerful tools to convey meaning.

Her research has focused on ways preservice English teachers exercise technological pedagogical content knowledge and the ways in which k-12 readers and writers use digital technologies to construct multimodal compositions.

She's author of The Tech-Saavy English Classroom.


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