This link has been bookmarked by 53 people . It was first bookmarked on 08 Apr 2008, by susan carter morgan.
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Some writers assume that the definition of literacy will continue to be
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Some writers assume that the definition of literacy will continue to be
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what it always has been: "The ability
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to carefully read and write a contemporary spoken language."
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I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images.
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Already, today, a former programmer in Seattle, one of these very nerds, is one of the richest people in the world.
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As programming becomes more important, it will leave the back room and become a key skill and attribute of our top intellectual and social classes, just as reading and writing did in the past.
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That is, what are the key skills humans must possess in order to be considered literate?
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panoply
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Credit: Laura Morris Designs
Already, various thinkers about the future have proposed a number of candidates for the designation "twenty-first-century literac
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I am one of these last, in that I believe fluency with multiple spoken languages will continue to be important, and that multimedia, interactivity, and other game-derived devices will be increasingly significant tools for communicating twenty-first-century thought.
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The two options may be mutually exclusive, and the right choice may determine our children's place in the world's intellectual hierarchy.
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PAOLO MADRIDSample use of education in classroom
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Here's a key question: Will the need for a separate scribe tribe of programmers continue through the twenty-first century, or will the skill set of an educated person soon include programming fluency?
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And though today's highly literate person may enjoy a sophisticated novel or nonfiction book on a plane or train ride, tomorrow's highly literate person may prefer to change, by programming, whatever story or other media he or she is interacting with to suit individual preferences, and might then, with a little more programming, distribute those changes to the world.
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All of which brings us to an important question: If programming (the ability to control machines) is indeed the key literacy of this century, how do we, as educators, make our students literate?
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The answer is not yet clear, but we can either come up with creative solutions to this real problem, or, in their absence, the kids will, as they are doing with so many things, figure out ways to teach themselves. Imagine: Literacy without (official) teachers.
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Thirty years from now, will the United States be more competitive with a population that can read English at a tenth-grade level or with a population excellent at making the complex machines of that era do their bidding?
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13 Aug 11
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26 May 11
Brian MacNevinProgramming Is the New Literacy http://t.co/2KM4xiI #edchat #edtech #fb
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09 Nov 10
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I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images.
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I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images.
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single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images.
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I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images.
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12 Aug 09
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13 Feb 09
Joe WoodI believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purpose
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Joe WoodI believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purpose
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07 Jan 09
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03 Nov 08
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22 Sep 08
Sean DSo, in a sense, we are going to see as we progress through the twenty-first century a real revenge of the nerds, except that the new nerds will be our programmatically literate children. As programming becomes more important, it will leave the back room a
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Laura Lee DooleyI believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purpose
imported-from-delicious 21stcenturyskills programming technology education
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02 Sep 08
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30 Aug 08
Katie DayPower will soon belong to those who can master a variety of expressive human-machine interactions.
literacies future programming learning computers literacy imported_from_delicious 21stcenturylearning
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29 Aug 08
Kim CofinoDo robots have a place in the classroom?
21stcentury literacy education programming edutopia edtech technology prensky article
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Jim ForbesSome great comments on the role of programming in the classroom
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Programming: The New Literacy
Power will soon belong to those who can master a variety of expressive human-machine interactions.
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ill others expand the notion of twenty-first-century literacy beyond spoken and written language to include the panoply of skills often collected under the umbrella term multimedia (being able to both understand and create messages, communications, and works that include, or are constructed with, visual, aural, and haptic -- that is, physical -- elements as well as words). Some go on to find important emerging literacy in interactivity and games. And there are those who say it includes all of the above, and might include other factors as well.
I am one of these last, in that I believe fluency with multiple spoken languages will continue to be important, and that multimedia, interactivity, and other game-derived devices will be increasingly significant tools for communicating twenty-first-century thought. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that the true key literacy of the new century lies outside all these domains.
I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images. Some call this skill human-machine interaction; some call it procedural literacy. Others just call it programming.
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Sue SummerfordAnnotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edutopia.org%2Fprogramming-the-new-literacy
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But as today's kids grow up and become tomorrow's educated adults, most will go much further. At an early age, many young people learn the HTML language of Web pages and often branch out into its more powerful sister languages, such as XML and PHP. Other kids are learning programming languages like Game Maker, Flash, and Scratch, plus scripting language, graphics tools, and even C++, in order to build games. They learn them occasionally in school, but mostly on their own, after school, or in specialized summer camps. Why? First, because they realize it gives them the power to express themselves in the language of their own tim es, and second -- and perhaps even more importantly -- because they find it fun.
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language of their own tim
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And so emerges the new scribe tribe of programmers, reaching into (and eventually becoming) the intellectual elite of the twenty-first century. Programming has already become a tool today's young people use to communicate with one another via such components as machinima (see the definition below), ringtones, emoticons, searches, photo manipulation, and games. Young people email or IM their creations to one another as we do our Word and Excel attachments, often posting them on the Internet for all to see. I bet few among us have not been the recent recipient of an emailed URL pointing us to an interesting program, a greeting card, a YouTube video, a machinima, or a game. (And, of course, Word and Excel are programming languages in themselves, with enormously sophisticated programming capabilities built in via macros and scripting.)
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As the century goes on, those who don't program -- who can't bend their increasingly sophisticated computers, machines, cars, and homes to their wills and needs -- will, I predict, be increasingly left behind. Parents and teachers often disrespect today's young people for being less than literate in the old reading-and-writing sense. But in turn, these young citizens of the future have no respect for adults who can't program a DVD player, a mobile phone, a computer, or anything else. Today's kids already see their parents and teachers as the illiterate ones. No wonder some teachers are scared to bring new technologies into the classroom -- the kids just laugh at their illiteracy.
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So, as the highly literate person of 2008 might start off the day reading the New York Times and firing off a cleverly worded letter to the editor in response to a column, the highly literate person of 2028 may start the day ingesting the news in multiple ways with various types of stories they have programmed to be delivered in a preferred order, each at a preferred speed. And if that person feels a need to express an opinion, a simple bit of programming will allow him or her to determine all the people in the world to whom a response should go, and have it customized for each of them. Or one might program and fire off a video, an animation, or a simulation.
As the highly literate adult of today might pen a witty birthday card note for a young niece or nephew, the highly literate adult of tomorrow might program the child a game. And though today's highly literate person may enjoy a sophisticated novel or nonfiction book on a plane or train ride, tomorrow's highly literate person may prefer to change, by programming, whatever story or other media he or she is interacting with to suit individual preferences, and might then, with a little more programming, distribute those changes to the world.
And, of course, all this extends into the physical world as well thorough robotics and machine programming.
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Successful companies train new programmers, who then generate their own ideas and tools, in addition to the tools their companies build. Smart businesses are already searching for young people who can create these new tools -- employees who are twenty-first-century literate.
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If programming (the ability to control machines) is indeed the key literacy of this century, how do we, as educators, make our students literate? This problem is a particularly thorny one, because most teachers, even many of our best math and science instructors, do not possess the necessary skills, even rudimentary ones. Most of the tools (and even the concept of programming) were developed long after these teachers were born or schooled.
Can we do it by bringing working programmers into the schools? Not likely. Most of the good ones are busy programming and have no desire to teach.
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the kids will, as they are doing with so many things, figure out ways to teach themselves. Imagine: Literacy without (official) teachers.
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Literacy will belong to those who can master not words, or even multimedia, but a variety of powerful, expressive human-machine interactions. If you are from the old school, you may not enjoy hearing this, but I doubt there is anything anyone can do to stop it.
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will the United States be more competitive with a population that can read English at a tenth-grade level or with a population excellent at making the complex machines of that era do their bidding? The two options may be mutually exclusive, and the right choice may determine our children's place in the world's intellectual hierarchy.
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All of the digital knowhow is not going to turn a horrible concept or idea into a brilliant one. Likewise, the best ideas will endure and spread regardless of the media upon which they are presented. Shakespeare's plays are still read today even though they do not contain embedded media and an RSS feed. A fundamental understanding of how to communicate is needed before we expect students of tomorrow to communicate using advanced technology. If we fail to do so all we will have is a Technicolor spray of garbage out.
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* low threshold: visual language simple enough to make a working Frogger game in about 3 hours from scratch.
* high ceiling: powerful enough to enable even middle school students to implement sophisticated AI algorithms such as graph search to find shortest path in maze. Even for a simple game like Pacman: need to have grid structure with spreadsheet-like operations to implement collaborative diffusion or A* types of approaches.
* works for games and computational science applications
* ability to transition to traditional programming
here's a paper on how we are using AgentSheets to teach game design in middle schools and other places:
Repenning, A. and Ioannidou, Broadening Participation through Scalable Game Design, ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference, (SIGCSE 2008), (Portland, Oregon USA), ACM Press.
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/PDF/ScalabeDesign_SIGCSE2008.pdf
Prof. Alexander Repenning
University of Colorado
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18 Jun 08
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15 May 08
Kyle KauffmanWould love to have programming as at least an option in our District.
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07 May 08
Jennifer McDanielby Marc Prensky: Power will soon belong to those who can master a variey of expressive human-machine interactions.
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20 Apr 08
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