Learning to Read and Write Using the Internet: Sites You Don't Want to Miss!(Technology in the Classroom‪)‬

Like many of my students, I communicate primarily through E-mail. One evening last week, I needed to check my E-mail account; since my 2-year-old daughters were occupied with play dough, I thought it would be a good time to quickly glance at the computer screen. So, I said, "I'm going to check my E-mail quickly, and then we will eat dinner." Not expecting any resistance, I was surprised when one of my daughters said, "No, I check my E-mail." I was not quite sure I clearly understood her, so I asked "You will do what, Caroline?" "I check my E-mail!" she yelled at me, while running toward the computer. Although she does not have an E-mail account, she understands that when she types on the keyboard, letters appear on the computer screen. She even recognizes a few of the letters she types. If not watched carefully, Caroline will turn on the computer and begin to type--or when she thinks I am spending too much time on the computer, she turns it off. I learned a very important lesson from Caroline that night: When she is a few years older, I must model and scaffold telecommunications, just as I currently model fluent reading from a book. Young children today are exposed to technology at a much younger age than they were five to 10 years ago, and technology is now an important component of literacy. With early technology exposure, children have become telecommunications literate. Telecommunications literacy means that a child can not only operate a computer, but also locate and analyze multiple forms of information (Valmont, 2003). As Valmont explains,