Using Technology to Motivate Readers  

As the library media specialist at J.V. Martin Junior High in Dillon, S.C., Paula Yohe developed a reading program that uses technology to motivate students. Their reading scores improved, and last year Yohe became district technology director. Now she's working with other media specialists to implement the program district wide.

“I use a variety of technologies to get kids to read,” Yohe said during a presentation at the National Educational Computer Conference in Atlanta. The activities she has devised integrate other skills, too, such as writing and technology literacy.

J.V. Martin, which has about 700 students in grades 7-9, is in one of South Carolina’s poorest districts. Much of the hardware Yohe needed was donated, and she used old equipment when possible. For example, most of the schools 5 video cameras and all its video editing equipment were donated, and when students read their scripts in front of a camera, ancient Apple IIe computers serve as teleprompters.

Yohe’s approach consists of:

• Reading software. Scholastic’s Reading Counts is the core reading software program http://src.scholastic.com/ecatalog/readingcounts/index.htm. It has 2 parts: software to track students’ progress and age- and level-appropriate books for them to read. When students complete a Reading Counts book, they take a comprehension test on the computer.

Motivation comes from providing students with books that suit their interests. Plus, the software gives lots of positive feedback, and progress reports let students track their achievement. For each book they read, students can earn points, which can be used to establish concrete goals. And if a school wants, students can earn prizes according to the number of points they accumulate.

Giving such rewards raises issues about the wisdom of using extrinsic gratification, and Reading Counts allows you to turn off the points feature. In Yohe’s program, rewards play an important part.

• Technology-based motivational activities. These include:
  • Video production. Students create short videos aimed at interesting other students in a book they’ve just read. The videos are broadcast with the student-produced morning news on the school’s internal TV system.
  • Creating presentations for an electronic bulletin board. Students create PowerPoint or HyperStudio presentations about their books for the internal TV network.
  • E-mail. Students discuss books via e-mail with pupils in other schools.
  • Internet publishing. Students post book reviews to the schools’ website.

 Since Yohe began the program in 1990, reading scores have risen.

  SAT

National Percentile

7th grade     9th grade

Same Students

1990  39         1992  44

1991  35          1993  46

1992  37          1994  43

MAT 7 Reading Comprehension

1995  36         1997  41

1996  25         1998  32

The 1996 cohort was the last for which comparative data are available. Now that the district is implementing the program, J.V. Martin students are no longer tracked separately.