The IRA Award for Technology and Reading honors educators in grades K–12 who are making an outstanding and innovative contribution to the use of technology in reading education.

There will be one grand-prize winner, seven U.S. regional winners, one Canadian, and one international winner. All entrants must be educators who work directly with students ages 5–18 for all or part of the working day.

Submission deadline: November 15, 2011

IRA Award for Technology and Reading Application
For additional information, contact the committees@reading.org.

2011

Eric Claravall

Claravall is a teacher at Regnart Elementary School in Cupertino, CA. He teaches Special Education (mild to moderate) 3-5 grades. Prior to teaching he was a school psychologist, when he realized that he wanted to be more involved with his student’s academic involvement, he decided to go back to graduate school and obtained his special education: mild to moderate credentials.

The IRA award specifically recognizes Claravall’s project “Podcasting: Promoting Literacy and Poetry Appreciation in Special Education,” which provides him a window of information as to how his student’s self-correct errors when reading poems. The podcasts allowed him to reflect on his students’ performance and qualitative progress in their literacy development, particularly in reading fluency, speech intonation, and decoding errors. Podcasting serendipitously has become an informal assessment in his literacy curriculum.