Literacy has been constantly changing since the beginning of time, but now in the age of technology literacy is changing at an even more rapid pace. New literacies are the redefinition of literacy to include how to learn, comprehend and interact with technology. Some examples of technology that have redefined literacy are things such as the Internet, web pages, blogs, instant messaging, software, and wikis. The terms are changing so quickly and literacy is being redefined so often, that it is important to stay on top of the new technology as teachers to give our students current information.
There is a place for teachers to go in order to find the standards that students should be learning for a global and digital world. This is referred to as NETS or National Education Technology Standards for Students. NETS focuses on the importance that students must be given pre-college time to use, analyze and explore technology in the classroom. The standards and profiles are created by instructional technology experts and educators around the world. I found the site to be extremely user friendly and found it useful to see what my fourth grade students should be exploring and using in our classroom. The standards are also broken into six sections. Creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making, digital citizenship, and technology operations concepts.
Of course it is also important for teachers to stay on top of technology themselves. There is also a site with standards for evaluation of the skills and knowledge a teacher needs to teach, work and learn in a digital society. This is referred to as National Education Technology Standards for Teachers. NETS-T is broken into five categories. Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, model digital age work and learning, promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, and engage in professional growth and leadership.
I am already analyzing ways to use new literacies in my classroom and forming ideas around NETS. It is perfect timing because my students are beginning a research project on the changing earth. The students will need to locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media such as stated in standard 3b. The students will also need to present the information with some sort of publishing mode. My students already publish pieces of work in writers workshop by typing, printing and putting the piece in a published folder. I now have the idea to publish the pieces on a blog or website. This way all of the students can read each other's work.
I am very excited to lean new literacy and implement a multitude of technology into the classroom. I hope to create a blog that my students are able to contribute to. I also want to make my webpage more interactive form them. This will give my students a place to go for resources and activities.
Coiro, J., Leu, D.D., & Leu, D.J. (n.d.). Teaching with the internet k-12: new literacies for new times. Retrieved from http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~djleu/fourth/one.html
International Society for Technology in Education. (2012). NETS. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students
No comments:
Post a Comment