The National Council of English Teachers has just announced the adoption of new “literacies” for the 21st Century.  It is obvious from this new list that the committee has really taken into great consideration all of the changes that are happening globally with economics, workforce trends, and the infusion of emerging technologies into all aspects of life and work.

Basic reading and writing skills are no longer “just enough,” and the “literacies” listed below will require a much higher level of critical thought and comprehension.  What are we doing in our classrooms today, to prepare our students for these new literacies?

Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies — from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms — are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

Link: National Council of English Teachers

Google Docs has partnered with Weekly Reader to put together a few resources for teachers to use when helping students learn about revising their writing (individually and with peers).  You can read more about this and access the FREE resources here.

As I was cleaning out some old file folders, I came across this (source is unknown):

Am I a Thinking Teacher?

• Do I frequently ask students open-ended questions, questions with more than one answer?
• Do I ask a variety of questions at all levels of thinking?
• Do I ever ask questions with unknown or indefinite answers?
• Do I frequently encourage studetns to seek alternative answers?
• Do I encourage students to give reasons for their statements, defend their ideas, support their opinions with evidence, or respond to each other’s ideas?
• Do I use subject matter as a source form which students generate their own questions or problems?  Do we then seriously consider those questions?
• Do I allow “wait-time” after I aks a question to encourage careful consideration and thought?
• Do I monitor my responses to students’ answers?
• Do I answer my own questions?
• Do I create an open environment in my classroom that encourages initiative, independence, and originality?
• Do I encourgae student production that requires a higher level of thought, namely analysis, evaluation, and creation?
• Do I utilize a seating arrangement in discussions that encourages student-to-student interaction?
• Do I encourage students to see connections, to relate subject matter to experiences/ideas in other subjects or in their personal lives?
• Do I stress HOW to think rather than WHAT to think?
• Are the students in my classroom actively involved or passively present but mentally absent?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
Phone: 757-450-3784
Fax: 757-301-7436
E-Mail: snbeach@cox.net
Press Release No. 001

K12 Online 2007 – Playing with Boundaries
Worldwide Online Conference for K-12 Educators

Breaking free of traditional conferences, the upcoming K-12 Online Conference: Playing with Boundaries (October 15-19th & October 22-26th) provides educators with an engaging, ongoing learning experience without time constraints. The K12 Online Conference is a unique professional development opportunity for teachers to engage with ideas and technologies that are having a real impact on 21st century classrooms.

The entire conference will be delivered as downloadable digital media via the Internet with over 40 sessions presented in four strands: Classroom 2.0, New Tools, Professional Learning Networks, and Obstacles to Opportunities. The conference launches with a keynote address on October 8th from respected blogger and author David Warlick and concludes with a global 24 hour live event, As Night Falls.

For more information, please visit http://www.k12onlineconference.org

“At their essence, PLCs are places in which everyone is both a teacher and a student.” — Dennis Sparks

How often do we allow our students to be teachers?

How often are we students?

I know — I haven’t been very good at writing any thing so far this month. The start of school has been very busy, but now that things are settling down a bit I should have a few extra minutes here and there to publish a post or two each week.

Today I want to let you all know that Google has released it’s latest (and REALLY COOL) tool — Google Presentations! It’s like Powerpoint, but online and with fewer features. It does have a few limitations, but the ease of use and the current features available make up for its shortcomings.

Here is a presentation about Google Presentations that will give you on overview of what you can do with it and what the limitations are at this time. Enjoy!

In the Lagniappe category (Lagniappe means “a little something extra”) — here are a few recent posts from other educators in the blogosphere who share their classroom activities and lesson plans as well as their thoughts on 21st Century instruction…

Vicki Davis shares her activity for getting kids to talk about how the world of work is changing and what that means for their futures.

Tracy Weeks discusses how a 17 year old recently “unlocked” the iPhone and the implications of this for authentic learning, global problems, and engaging high school students.

Christian Long shares his Robin Hood activity that leads students (and adults) into a discussion on morality and ethics.

Math teacher Dan Meyer shares his “First Day Wiki” and some ideas for activities that he’ll be using during the first few days with his Geometry students.

Mr. Higgins shows examples from a website that is a very good alternative to Google Earth — definitely worth trying out if you want to use satellite images but want to avoid downloading Google Earth onto school computers.

Enjoy!

In our literacy session today you all received a flip-book for the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy.  I did a quick search online this evening and found a very good overview of the revisions to the taxonomy that I think many of you will find helpful.  You can find it here.

Edublogger Chris Lehmann, the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, is currently re-reading “Understanding By Design” (Grant P. Wiggins, Jay McTighe). On a recent blog post, Chris shared his thoughts after reading one of the chapters:

It strikes me that there are so many more skills that must come into play when we challenge our students to uncover rather than worrying about whether or not our teachers cover. Decoding skills, interpretation skills, the ability to form a thesis, the ability to judge the veracity of information, the ability to synthesize information into a well-argued position or thesis. This is what we want our students doing every day, but to do that means that we have to understand that — even with AYP and NCLB — our primary job is not to cover the material, but instead to use the material to uncover the intelligence, the abilities and passions and energies of our students.

He makes a strong point here about our role as teachers — we are not in the classroom to just “cover material”, but rather to help students “uncover” — we are in the classroom to facilitate the work of the students as they engage in the process of learning. There is a distinct difference between “covering” and “uncovering”. In “covering” the teacher does the work while in “uncovering” the student does the work.

What effective instructional strategies do you use in your classroom to help your students “uncover” rather than simply trying, as the teacher, to just “cover” the curriculum material?

In his book “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms” (Will Richardson), Will Richardson proposes that “in the age of the Read/Write Web, the explosion of information and online technologies demands a complex definition of what it means to be literate.”:

For more than a hundred years we have defined being literate as being able to read and to write… although those core abilities are still central to learning, they are no longer enough to ensure understanding…

…due in large measure to the ease with which people can now publish to the Internet, consumers of Web content need to be editors as well as readers. Print resources have always carried with them the assumption that the content included has been reviewed or checked before published. Books, newspapers, and magazines all have editors whose job it is to make sure the information is verifiably accurate. But today, anyone with an Internet connection can now publish without any prior review. Although this is good in terms of creating a wider body of knowledge to draw from, it obviously requires that we teach our students to become more active consumers of that information instead of just passively accepting it as legitimate. Editing, then, means being a critical reader and viewer, not simply accepting what is presented.

…To truly take advantage of the power of the Read/Write Web, we must be literate in the ways of publishing. In many ways, we now truly have a free press that the framers of the Constitution envisioned, where everyone can have a voice. We must then teach and model the ways in which ideas and products can be brought online.

…In the process, we need to have the ability to work closely with others in virtual environments. Within that collaborative model are literacies regarding communication skills and process.

Finally, we need to know how to manage the information that we consume. Our students will be required to collect, store, and retrieve relevant information throughout their lives, and we need to give them the skills to do so effectively and efficiently…

How might you use these new tools in your classroom to increase student engagement and improve student literacy skills for the 21st century?