What is 21st Century Literacy?

Computer Literacy - Knowledge and understanding of computers and their uses.

Information Literacy - Knowing how to find, analyze, and use information; the ability to gather information from multiple sources, select relevant material, and organize it into a form that will allow the user to make decisions or take specific actions.

Integration Literacy - Ability to use computers and other technologies combined with a variety of teaching and learning strategies to enhance students' learning; matching appropriate technology to learning objectives, goals, and outcomes.

Teaching is no longer about standing in front of the class and lecturing, or having students read from a book. Technology is a part of students' lives and it should be incorporated into our teaching.

The days of just using textbooks, novels, and chalkboards are gone. In are the days of twitter, blogs, and SMARTboards.

I worked with a 5th grade teacher who began blogging with her students toward the end of the year. The students loved it!

Technology makes students interested and engaged.

Like it or not, technology is something that is not leaving, so we might as well get used to it and discover all that it has to offer.

Google Earth...Explore the Possibilities

In order to be a high achiever this week, I designed a newsletter for Google Earth. I love Google Earth.

There is so much you can do with it, especially in the classroom. Teachers can use this tool in any subject and make their lessons more meaningful by adding real world scenarios.

The Google Earth site offers a number of lessons for incorporating their tool into lessons. My favorite was for math.

I always find that when students are able to make real world connections, in math in particular, they tend to try harder and even have more fun!

With Google Earth, people can create 3D images, tag locations, get driving directions, and even make movies!

For those wondering, I made the newsletter using LetterPop. I found it to be somewhat frustrating to use at times, but it may just have been the template I chose. At times when I was writing, the text would no longer be visible.

It offers a number of different templates to create newsletters, however, and if you sign up for the basic package it's free!

Getting Animated with Picasion

I just put together my first Picasion masterpiece. This was really easy! It did take me a minute to figure out how to get the slideshow in my blog, but then I had myself an aha! moment and realized all I had to do was copy and paste the HTML code in with the text. It is pretty neat to see all of the items I have created in the past two weeks. I'm sure many more are to come!


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Literacy Toolkit

This past week, our group has been working on designing a literacy toolkit. Everyone in the group took the time to look up helpful sites for interactive literacy, literacy games, etc. We split the web sites into categories and then each person chose at least two categories to work on. I took interactive literacy, grammar/writing, and videos. Take a look at our toolkit. It is still a work in progress, but let me know what you think!

What's Your LoTi Level?

Photo courtesy of Scientific American

Wondering what these kids are playing with? It's called the Classmate netbook PC.

It is a new piece of technology being used in classrooms to enhance learning. Which brings me to this post's topic: LoTi.

LoTi stands for Levels of Technology Implementation.

There are six levels in which technology may be implemented in a classroom.

Level 0: Nonuse - Essentially technology is not being used in this instance.

Level 1: Awareness - This level consists of only the teacher using the classroom computer.

Level 2: Exploration - This level is teacher-centered, and only uses lower order thinking skills. Technology in this level is used for students to conduct research reports.

Level 3: Infusion - This level is still teacher-centered, however, it requires higher order thinking skills. Students use tools such as concept maps, graphs, databases, etc.

Level 4: Integration - This level is student-centered, and has the student use the technology in relevant ways which they can relate to the real world.

Level 5: Expansion - This is student-centered and connects students to the real world. It also requires students to problem solve by connecting and communicating outside the classroom.

Level 6: Refinement - This level requires everything from level 5, however, in this level there is no distinction between technology and instruction. Technology is constantly available and used in the classroom.

In many of the classrooms I have worked in as a sub, I have to say that many of them range from level 3 to level 5. No classroom, at least that I have seen, is working with technology that is required in level 6.

I think as future educators,our goal should be to begin reaching that top level of technology use. I don't think level 6 is appropriate for all learners and all lessons, but that doesn't mean it should not be used at all.

I have no doubt that today's students would be comfortable working with all of the new technology available.

Now, it's time for schools and teachers to familiarize themselves with the tools necessary to catch up to the skills of their students, and begin incorporating technology more.

WDYDWYD?

Why do you do what you do?

That was one of the questions we needed to ask ourselves this past week.

For me, I do what I do because because of this...



I used this picture of my cousin which was taken after she received her "Terrific Kid Award" in her 1st grade class this past school year.

My cousin was placed on the Autism Spectrum when she was 18 months old. Through early intervention and the work of her general education and special education teacher, she has blossomed into an excellent student.

She has overcome a lot in her short life, and while her parents deserve a lot of credit, I do believe a big reason for her success are her teachers also.

First Time for Everything

This week marked the first time I have participated in an online course. I was a little intimidated going into it, but after we began, I realized I was actually pretty comfortable with it all.

The reason for this...Curricular Planning.

Having experienced Moodle, Elluminate Live, and of course blogging last semester with Dr. S. in Curricular Planning, I discovered this online class wouldn't be nearly as bad as I had thought.

The class met as whole group on Thursday evening. It seemed to go well, except there were a few microphone issues.

Prior to this meeting, however, I had been meeting online with my group, the Tech Quad.

We met three nights this first week through G-Talk and Google Docs. This was the first time I had ever worked with a group collaboratively using either tools.

It is so easy to use and you can edit power points and other documents together. It was also helpful when someone in the group didn't understand how to do something, you could just connect through a web cam and actually tell them how to do it, rather than just type it in and hope they understand.