This week’s Denver Post article “Technology Rewrites Rules for Reading” explores how students’ reading habits have been influenced by the various online reading that they do. More and more often, teachers, curriculum developers, and school literacy programs must search for strategies that will best meet students’ needs. The Ideas section from this week’s Inbox offers one way to solve the problem—ask students to explore and share their reading habits and their understanding of text in a digital world.
In the News: Microsoft to offer free parental Web monitoring
Microsoft to offer free parental Web monitoring—would it be cool if what this says were what it really means? I’d so love for Microsoft to monitor my parents for me. One less thing for me to do.
Really it’s just more in the how to ensure that kids avoid baddies. After all, reading and writing that kids want to do on their own is so dangerous.
In the News: Cyber bullies haunt young online
BBC NEWS | Technology | Cyber bullies haunt young online—even in the UK, it seems, there is fear of online woes. The article ends with simple and obvious advice rather than any kind of complete exploration of how to empower and prepare students who use online resources.
I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to write the article I want to read.
In the News: Blogs taking a seat in, out of classrooms
Chicago Tribune | Blogs taking a seat in, out of classrooms—basic info on blogs in the classroom. The piece explores the educational value of the tools, but I wish it would more specifically talk about the many horrors of the fearmongers. Ignoring the obvious arguments about security and safety lessens the impact of the pedagogical issues in the article.
In the News: Online Auteurs Hardly Need to Be Famous
Online Auteurs Hardly Need to Be Famous – New York Times—back in the day (a phrase which really only makes the writer look old), folks talked with wonderment of the great abilities of the Web to democratize publishing, given that even a dog can compose a Web site. This article is in many ways the modern revision of that old observation: anyone, it seems, can make a film nowadays.
As articles like this one make broad claims on anyone’s ability to be a filmmaker, we need to continue to interrogate how “anyone” is defined. What socio-economic groups are included and excluded? How is age represented? Who creates which kinds of resources? While “online auteurs hardly need to be famous,” there are still many other things an auteur needs to compose and share works online.
In the News: Students Remember More Ads Than News
Students Remember More Ads Than News—Didn’t we know that kids paid attention to the ads back in the days of Schoolhouse Rock? The question that the article raises for me is what did the researchers ask them. Did they ask them questions that would tell us whether they were paying any attention to the other information on the channel? And as the Channel One CEO Judy Harris points out, the kids weren’t isolated. Did the researchers ask questions to determine other places that they were exposed to the products or services that were purchased?
Regardless the article raises important issues on how we pay attention to what students engage with and why. We need to think more about the literacy skills that students are choosing to engage and how we can harness that power in the classroom.