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I've truly embraced digital dialogue because it provides me with the opportunity to be challenged and to grow all at once---and on my own time. The traditional barriers of time and space that prevent teachers from learning from one another are eliminated by technology---and the terms "relationships" and "professional development" are being redefined by new opportunities to connect and create together.

Last year, I tried to pass that digital enthusiasm on to the sixth graders of my classroom. Together with peers, my students collaborated on a wiki, recording nearly everything that we learned in my science and social studies class. The collective efforts of 90 motivated kids resulted in nearly 80 pages of content that had been revised and refined almost 400 times.  They also joined an effort to create a classroom podcast program that earned over 20,000 page views from visitors in 125 countries ranging from Bolivia to Burkina Faso. With over 110 posts, our "little adventure" drew recognition from technology experts like Will Richardson and was spotlighted on national resource websites like MiddleWeb. 

The children of my classroom grew as digital citizens throughout the year. They learned to see the Internet as a tool for collaboration and communication---rather than simply as a vast online research encyclopedia. They practiced posting on our own digital discussion board, polishing the unique skills that it takes to engage others electronically. They judged the reliability of online resources together, became experts at questioning, grew willing to open their work to review and revision, learned Internet safety practices important for protecting themselves and saw the potential of becoming citizens of an electronic world where content is being created at a blinding pace.

Supposing learning is social and comes largely from of our experience of participating in daily life? It was this thought that formed the basis of a significant rethinking of learning theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s by two researchers from very different disciplines - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Their model of situated learning proposed that learning involved a process of engagement in a 'community of practice'. 

When looking closely at everyday activity, she has argued, it is clear that 'learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such' (Lave 1993: 5).

Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger circa 2007)

This 10-year-old probably still needs to learn many of these things, and she needs the guidance of teachers and adults who know them in their own practice.

We must help them learn how to identify their passions; build connections to others who share those passions; and communicate, collaborate, and work collectively with these networks. And we must do this not simply as a unit built around "Information and Web Literacy." Instead, we must make these new ways of collaborating and connecting a transparent part of the way we deliver curriculum from kindergarten to graduation.

Younger students need to see their teachers engaging experts in synchronous or asynchronous online conversations about content, and they need to begin to practice intelligently and appropriately sharing work with global audiences. Middle school students should be engaged in the process of cooperating and collaborating with others outside the classroom around their shared passions, just as they have seen their teachers do. And older students should be engaging in the hard work of what Shirky (2008) calls "collective action," sharing responsibility and outcomes in doing real work for real purposes for real audiences online.

In many ways, digital technologies can be used as humanizing and socializing influences in a community. One of the virtual attendees (Ernie Cox) tonight commented, “as a father of 2 small children I could be even more involved in civic life if more meetings where covered like this…..” Ernie is exactly right. Webcasting and recording events like this can open up many more doors for civic engagement and involvement. School

veryone who wanted to get into the room tonight could not fit. How many more Edmond residents and school district constituents could “attend” the meeting if it was both webcast live and archived? Many, many more.

If we want to help motivate and direct our students to become meaningfully engaged in the civic activities of their community, state, and nation (and I think this is an important goal) we should advance this purpose by encouraging them to become citizen journalists.

I would argue that postliteracy is a return to more natural forms of multisensory communication—speaking, storytelling, dialogue, debate, and dramatization. It is just now that these modes can be captured and stored digitally as easily as writing. Information, emotion, and persuasion may be even more powerfully conveyed in multimedia formats.

Libraries, especially those that serve children and young adults, need to acknowledge that society is becoming postliterate.

PL libraries budget, select, acquire, catalog, and circulate as many or more materials in nonprint formats as they do traditional print materials. The circulation policy for all materials, print and nonprint, is similar.2. PL libraries stock, without prejudice, age-appropriate graphic novels and audio books, both fiction and nonfiction, for informational and recreational use.3. PL libraries support gaming for instruction and recreation.4. PL libraries purchase high-value online information resources.5. PL libraries provide resources for patrons to create visual and auditory materials and promote the demonstration of learning and research through original video, audio, and graphics production. They also provide physical spaces for the presentation of these creations.6. PL libraries allow the use of personal communication devices (MP3 players, handhelds, laptops, etc.) and provide wireless network access for these devices.7. PL library programs teach the critical evaluation of nonprint information.8. PL library programs teach the skills necessary to produce effective communication in all formats.9. PL library programs accept and promote the use of nonprint resources as sources for research and problem-based assignments.10. PL librarians recognize the legitimacy of nonprint resources and promote their use without bias.