New SIGMS Article in Mar/April 11 "Learning & Leading" Magazine
"Not Your Grandmother's Library" featuring Joyce Valenza, Keisa Williams, Wendy Stephens, and Chad Lehman
"New SIGMS Article in Mar/April 11 "Learning & Leading" Magazine
"Not Your Grandmother's Library" featuring Joyce Valenza, Keisa Williams, Wendy Stephens, and Chad Lehman"
Michael Stephens sums up the switch to digital resources beautifully. "I may have a bit of a bias, but I would much rather my students make the short trip to their desks and computers instead of commuting across town or farther. Time saved on travel could roll over into time spent on coursework or finding balance among school, work, and life. " Check out his post for the full article.
A student researches a topic using new web technologies.
The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes...
An eye-opening presentation by Stephen Abrams on the impact of Web 2.0 on libraries and how libraries need to change to serve the new generation of users. A great listen for both librarians and educators.
“I think the definition of writing is shifting,” Boardman said. “I don’t think writing happens with just words anymore.”
In his classes, Boardman teaches students how to express their ideas and how to tell stories —and he encourages them to use video, music, recorded voices and whatever other media will best allow them to communicate effectively. He is part of a vanguard of educators, technologists, intellectuals and writers who are reimagining the very meaning of writing and reading.
The keys to understanding this new perspective on writing and reading lie in notions of collaboration and being social. More specifically, it’s believing that collaboration and increased socialization around activities like reading and writing is a good idea.
“We find when writing moves online, the connections between ideas and people are much more apparent than they are in the context of a printed book,”
transmedia work
The MIT Media Lab tagged collaboration as one of the key literacies of the 21st century, and it’s now so much a part of the digital learning conversation as to be nearly rote. In his new book, “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Stephen Johnson argues that ideas get better the more they’re exposed to outside influences.
Laura Flemming is an elementary school library media specialist in River Edge, N.J. About three years ago, she came across a hybrid book—half digital, half traditional—called “Skeleton Creek” by Patrick Carmen.
“The 6th graders were running down to library class, banging down the door to get in, which you don’t often see,” Flemming said.
It is not only the act of writing that is changing. It’s reading, too. Stein points to a 10-year-old he met in London recently. The boy reads for a bit, goes to Google when he wants to learn more about a particular topic, chats online with his friend who are reading the same book, and then goes back to reading.
“We tell our kids we want them to know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of the main character,” Flemming said. “I’ve had more than one child tell me that before they read ‘Inanimate Alice,’ they didn’t know what that felt like.”
Stein says it’s better to take advantage of new technologies to push the culture in the direction you want it to go. Stein is fully aware of the political and cultural implications of his vision of the future of reading and writing, which shifts the emphasis away from the individual and onto the community. It’s asking people to understand that authored works are part of a larger flow of ideas and information.