Promoting academic literacy with technology: successful laptop programs in K-12 schools

One of the main challenges that US schools face in educating English language learners is developing their academic literacy. This paper presents case studies of two K-12 schools that successfully employ high-technology environments, including laptop computers for each student, toward the development of English language learners’ academic language proficiency and academic literacy. In the first school, Latino fourth-grade students use laptops and other new technologies for a wide variety of pre- and post-reading tasks as part of their effort to transition from learning to read to reading to learn. In the second school, diverse immigrant and refugee students at the middle school level combine technology use with Expeditionary Learning to carry out community projects leading to the development of sophisticated products. In both schools, technology is used to engage students in cognitively demanding activity, motivate independent reading, and provide scaffolding for language development, while the researchers also made use of technology to document learning processes and outcomes. Taken together, the schools offer valuable lessons for utilization of technology to promote academic literacy among culturally and linguistically diverse students.