21st century literacy
Why You Should Try Twitter in the Classroom
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | 21st century literacy, classroom activity | No Comments
If you’re even slightly interested in how you might use Twitter in the classroom, take a look at William M. Ferriter’s essay “Why Teachers Should Try Twitter” from Educational Leadership.
The article explains, “For educators who use this tool to build a network of people whose Twitter messages connect to their work, Twitter becomes a constant source of new ideas to explore.” It includes some tips and how-to’s as well as a personal story on how the experience affected the author’s understanding of differentiated instruction.
Change Your Metaphor
Monday, January 25th, 2010 | 21st century literacy, Bedford Bits, Education, NCTE Inbox | No Comments
No more plug and play education. It’s time for more blossom and grow! Okay, so the metaphors aren’t really parallel. I guess it should be plant and grow, but that’s not as catchy. The difference between the two metaphors, though, it spot on for what we need to pursue for effective instruction.
I wrote about educational metaphors for NCTE’s Inbox blog this week. I wasn’t really thinking about the different ways of thinking about education until I read the PDF of Chapter One from Rebecca Bowers Sipe’s Adolescent Literacy at Risk? The Impact of Standards.
The agrarian metaphor for the educational system that Sipe outlines suddenly clicked perfectly with the “growth mindset” that I read about last fall in the article“The Truth about Grit,” published in The Boston Globe. (You can read more about that article in one of my Bedford Bits blogs from last October.)
The words we use always matter. In the case of metaphors, they can matter more than we may realize. The industrial metaphor for education has brought us a classroom where the strategies and information can be uniform. There’s no accounting for the differentiation of the students. Every student is the same. Teachers just plug in the units, and students are ready to go.
Course, in the real classroom, every student is different. That’s why plug and play strategies don’t work—and why we need to shift the way we think about education back to a more agrarian model that relies on strategies that help students blossom and grow.
Inbox Blog: How to Move Closer to School 2.0
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | 21st century literacy, NCTE Inbox, Uncategorized | No Comments
William Kist’s article “From Web 2.0 to School 2.0: Tales from the Field” includes vignettes of students using digital technologies to connect to one another and to the texts that they explore. How can you get to School 2.0? I outline three steps to using social networking in the classroom in this week’s NCTE Inbox Blog.
Oh Internet, You Pandora’s Box!
Monday, April 13th, 2009 | 21st century literacy | No Comments
It seems that some jurors are actively twittering about the court cases they are hearing and worse yet, doing their own research on the lawyers, the parties in the case, and the case itself —all as the legal cases are unfolding in front of them. There’s more about "Illegal 21st Century Research Skills" in my Bits blog entry today, but there was one piece that just didn’t fit into that post.
You see, I know the research these jurors are doing is illegal, but I couldn’t help but smile a bit as I read about the cases. The NY Times article stated that in one case, the judge found that jurors had been "conducting Google searches on the lawyers and the defendant, looking up news articles about the case, checking definitions on wikipedia and searching for evidence that had been specifically excluded by the judge."
(If only we could get students to do all this background work before they come to class to discuss a reading!)
The article continued, explaining that when asked why he did all this, one of the jurors explained, "I was curious." Oh Internet! You cruel box of treasures, luring us to peek inside!!
When Students Power Down
Monday, March 30th, 2009 | 21st century literacy, news | No Comments
Last week, Education Week published a story that revealed that students are typically asked to "power down" at school, leaving their 21st century literacy skills behind. It’s an ironic reality for the state of out-of-school literacies—learned "out of school" and condemed to be used only "out of school."
This finding was part of a report released during a Congressional Briefing of the Speak Up National Research Project. The report gives voice to 1.3 million students, all K–12 pupils who speak to educational issues involving technology, science and 21st century skills.
While I’ve only begun thinking through the implications of the data, one thing is very obvious: students do not have the support or access to the tools that they need to prepare them for their future—and students realize that they are at a disadvantage as a result.
To learn more about the findings, check out the Powerpoint presentation from the briefing, which highlights the key points of their report:
Literacy and Education in the News
- Men, not ladies, first: we're still sexist in writing | Sify News http://bit.ly/cKoVK5
- Alice In Wonderland's Secret Ingredient: Math : NPR http://bit.ly/aQzE45
- Ten of the best men writing as women in literature | Books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/aMIr3R
- Tell Congress to Make the Write Decision - National Writing Project http://bit.ly/9XC5T2
- Faculty underreport cheating : The Collegian Online http://bit.ly/cjp5VO
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