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The reading process involves two separate but highly interrelated areas - word identification and comprehension. It is well established that difficulties in automatic word recognition significantly affect a reader's ability to effectively comprehend what they are reading (Lyon, 1995; Torgeson, Rashotte, and Alexander, 2001). Even mild difficulties in word identification can pull attention away from the underlying meaning, reduce the speed of reading, and create the need to reread selections to grasp the meaning. Many students who struggle to learn to read are able, with appropriate instruction, to compensate for initial reading problems by becoming accurate decoders but fail to reach a level of sufficient fluency to become fast and efficient readers. Thus, the development of techniques for improving automaticity and fluency is critical. Although the research is clear that a systematic alphabetic approach to teaching beginning readers is more effective than a whole word approach (Adams, 1990; Chall, 1996; Snow, Burns and Griffin, 1009), the most effect ways to develop fluency are less well understood.

This blogpost discusses the aims of the 21st Century Fluency Project This resource is the collaborative effort of a group of experienced educators and entrepreneurs who have united to share their experience and ideas, and create a project geared toward making learning relevant to life in our new digital age. Our purpose is to develop exceptional resources to assist in transforming learning to be relevant to life in the 21st Century. At the core of this project are our Curriculum Integration Kits - engaging, challenge based learning modules designed to cultivate the essential 21st Century Fluencies within the context of the required curriculum.

Nicole Gleason shows one student explaining the benefits of Evernote, how she's using it to improve fluency, language learning, keeping track of her studies, and leveraging all the iPad and Evernote have to offer.

"How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math Sorry, education reformers, it's still memorization and repetition we need."

What if every student (and educator) was a good online researcher?  I know, you don't have the time to teach information fluency skills.  What if you could get a significant advance is skills with just a 2 -3  hour time commitment?  Here's a great Prezi 'fly by" of the new Information Investigator 3.1 online self paced class.  Watch the presentation carefully to find the link to a free code to take the class for evaluation purposes. 

Of course you could always have you school librarian/media specialist teach information skills to your students! That's what they do!

I couldn't agree more. Library Media Specialists, especially when they can collaborate with classroom teachers, are the best resource for teaching these skills. However the problem of access to a Librarian and the issue of scale are real barriers. I've been creating content for Librarians for a decade. They are the best! You'll find years of free resources at: http://21cif.com This resource will help them reach more students. We had 1000 teens take this course at the Center for Talent Development. It really does work. We're hoping to reach teachers and librarians everywhere so we can pass along the skills and the opportunity. If American education was marginally rational there would be professionally staffed library media centers in every school. Since that isn't the case, I hope Internet based resources can keep the lights on for a new generation that really needs information fluency.

"Information Fluency Newsletter! Subscribe to our email newsletter and receive periodic updates about 21CIF including professional development opportunities and new resources."

Grant Lichtman's TEDx talk - worth 15 minutes to watch.

some interesting stats on what happens in 60 seconds on the Internet, with some growth projections

"This article from Edudemic features an extensive list of some of the most awesome technological tools you can find for teaching and learning."

"You want some great ed tech tools to use in your classroom? You got em'-50, to be exact! This article written by the folks from Edudemic features an extensive list of some of the most awesome technological tools you can find for teaching and learning. There's lots to explore here, so have fun!"

Scribble is a great tool for preparing web-based readings for engaging students more attentively in their inquiry. Great tool to support close reading and CCSS. Scrible is a free online tool for saving, organizing, annotating, and sharing websites for online research projects and web quests. It saves a copy of each page you annotate in your personal Scrible library, so that even if the original web pages you've made notes on go down, your saved pages and your notes still exist. You can post your work on Facebook or Twitter, and you can also share your Scrible pages with short links that you generate with the click of a button. Check it out for yourself at www.scrible.com.

The importance of failure in learning.

This report analyzes what works in middle school science classrooms.  It gives elements of assessment that lead to higher performance in science such as fairness/fun, focus, foundations, fluency, and fit.