RIck Stiles-Oldring's List: 21st C Literacy

• Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the  knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers amo
• ng the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of  the Internet.
• Ask a few questions and use available tools to see if you can find answers," is  what I told her when she asked me how to go about investigating.
• When I began teaching my daughter how to evaluate the credibility of web pages,  I started collecting rules of thumb, strategies, tools - especially free and  easy to use ones - for sorting the goodinfo from the badinfo. Fortunately, tools  are far more powerful today than they were a decade ago; the bad news is that  too many people don't know about them

2 more annotations...

• Talking about the pedagogical value of a particular technology is complex. Most  pedagogically interesting technologies (e.g., the combination of paper and ink)  are so flexible and can be put to so many uses that it is impossible to identify  their intrinsic value. Rather, the value of the technology will depend on the  ways in which it is used. For example, Cliff Notes and the one minute paper both  rely on paper and ink as their underlying technology, but have very different  pedagogical values.

• In fields frequently affected by the gatekeeping practices of the traditional  publishing industry, professionals in fields such as the science of  spectroscopy are turning to online community learning spaces or  collaborative document holders such as wikis. The wiki, or any collaboratively  constructed document for that matter, solves a number of issues inherent to the  expert-driven model as it has the capacity to be more current than any  expert-assessed content package or traditional publication can usually be
• Wikis and similar tools offer a participatory medium that can allow for communal negotiation of knowledge.
• Collaborative knowledge construction is also being taken up in fields that are  more traditionally coded as learning environments. In particular, social  learning practices are allowing for a more discursive rhizomatic approach to  knowledge discovery. Social learning is the practice of working in groups, not  only to explore an established canon but also to negotiate what qualifies as  knowledge. According to Brown and Adler (2008), "The most  profound impact of the Internet, an impact that has yet to be fully realized, is  its ability to support and expand the
• However, if knowledge is to be negotiated socially, then the idea of individual intellectual property must be renegotiated to reflect the process of acquisition and the output constructed by that process.
• In the practical example of Couros’s class, students created their own rhizomatically mapped curriculum by combining their blogs with information to which Couros pointed them and linking the combination to the particular knowledge that they discovered through discussions with key people in Couros’s professional community. In accessing Couros’s professional network, students had the opportunity to enter the community themselves and impact the shape of its curriculum as well as their own learning. The role of the instructor in all of this is to provide an introduction to an existing professional community in which students may participate—to offer not just a window, but an entry point into an existing learning community.

3 more annotations...

• Now, I'm willing to admit that in the right hands, this could be a powerful tool  to not only keep students' attention and keep them on task but actually help  them learn. Unfortunately, I get the impression that most proponents seem to  think the former is as important as the latter. This month's Instructor  magazine happens to have a cover story  about smartboards, and both the author and the teachers  interviewed seemed to agree with that as well. Everything they mention doing in  class could be done quite easily with just an LCD projector, or no technology at  all. I know getting students engaged is essential to teach them anything, but  one doesn't automatically result in the  other.
  

• Bloom's digital taxonomy map

  <!-- Drawing 1: Mind map of Bloom's Revised Digital Taxonomy -->

• 21^st Century education should not be viewed as some brand new  abilities that we need to foster in our students. They are, in fact, the skills  that we SHOULD have been fostering in our students all the time, but the medium  has changed. Students now need to be well-versed in using social networking  programs, blogging, web design, etc, and even these skills will not be required  by every worker in the future.
• We need to work diligently to teach our kids how to think critically about  topics and synthesize information from a wide array of ideas into one complex  solution, but we also need to consider HOW we go about teaching those skills.  Imagine if we could have students using these skills on the same assignment for  multiple periods during the day but learning it from a different angle? Imagine  how that would feel to students to be able to take that much time to deliberate  one, complex question using all of the information they have learned during the  day and NOT having to worry about the five other assignments that they have to  complete for their other classes. Imagine how many connecting ideas could be  created and the potential for student discussion between classes and teachers.  Imagine how much the TEACHERS would learn to help them instruct students better.

  • A different way to AISI statement "... through 21st Century Literacies Across the Curriculum."
    This would be a great way to pull thinking into the frontal cortex.
  Add Sticky Note
• We need to start to "hybridize" education. In other words, we need to start  looking at what we do, combining like topics, and making our students realize  that school is about the quality of the work and not the quantity of work that  they do.
• The technology available in schools is providing us with major opportunities to  make this type of learning happen. The next time you start a unit think to  yourself: how many other subjects can you tie this into and what technology can  you use to help you do it? Let's start a movement and start posting ideas.

  • This is exactly what Karen KW does for elem teachers - albeit analog.

2 more annotations...

• Students must learn  to:

   

   

  Expose the Truth  – Reading remains core to literacy.  But we must be willing to expand our notions of reading to include skills to  research and find information, gain meaning from what we find, and evaluate the  information in order to select that which is most valuable.

   

  Employ the Information –  Mathematics remains a core skill, but it is an irrelevant skill unless students  learn to analyze, synthesize, manipulate, and add value to digital information,  and assemble new and valuable information products that accomplish worthwhile  goals.

   

  Express Ideas Compellingly –  We will be writing for a long time to come. But if our ideas are to compete with  the ideas of others, then we must be able to use images, animation, sound,  music, and video along with our words in order to be  heard.

• I have very briefly  described three Es for 21st century literacy. Yet these three sets of skills are  sterile and even dangerous without a fourth E-skill that binds them together.  

   

  Ethics and  information – Information  has a new value in the 21st century. Until now, our information was produced and  distributed by a few very powerful entities. In the 21st century, we will all be  producers and distributors of information, and this changes its value. When we  spend our time producing information, it has worth to us. If it helps people do  their jobs, make their decisions, solve their problems, or pursue enjoyment,  then it has value to them. Information is property in ways that it has never  been before, because more and more of us are information property owners, and if  students are not learning to respect the information property of other people,  then they will not be literate. They will be criminals.

  • I think more converstation is needed around this. I agree that ethics is important in the new literacy - afterall, with great power comes great responsibility. However, the idea of intellectual property is relatively new in the history of humanity and gets its strongest support from the West. The creative commons may challenge the way people create and use information, and those that demand money for the use of their ideas may find themselves awefully poor.
  Add Sticky Note

• The "NETS for Teachers, Second Edition" includes five categories, each with its  own set of performance indicators: (1) Facilitate and inspire student learning  and creativity, (2) Design and develop digital-age learning experiences and  assessments, (3) Model digital-age work and learning, (4) Promote and model  digital citizenship and responsibility, and (5) Engage in professional growth  and leadership.