Group items tagged

"Do our students know that "literacy" moves beyond reading and writing? Most importantly, how do we begin to break our traditional understanding of literacy to include wider meaning and contexts? It has to start in the classroom. For many of our traditional classrooms, reading and writing are the core values that are focused on when it comes to literacy. We need to show students that "Literacy" moves beyond reading and writing and can encompass: cultural literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, digital literacy and much more."

"..."Literacy" is more than just reading text on a page.Communicating in today's world includes multisensory, multimodal, and interactive experiences to engage audiences. What does this mean for teachers and students?"

Rep. Bob Morris said he was disturbed by what he learned when he did a "small amount of web-based research" on the Girl Scouts. I'm not going to debate Morris's conservative positions, but I am going to call into question his digital literacy skills. The new media literacies we often discuss involve applying skepticism to information, learning how to review sources and look for bias, and the importance of fact-checking.

My argument is that new media and new opportunities for learning through digital technologies require new literacies.

"This emergence of video as a high-stakes media form requires a rethinking of what we mean by digital citizenship. We need to move from a conflation of digital citizenship with internet safety and protectionism to a view of digital citizenship that's pro-active and prioritizes media literacy and savvy. A good digital citizen doesn't just dodge safety and privacy pitfalls, but works to remake the world, aided by digital technology like video, so it's more thoughtful, inclusive and just."

This post is part of a community effort to discuss literacy issues this week through "Share a Story - Shape a Future" . It's sponsored by a group of "blogging librarians, teachers, parents, illustrators, authors, and literacy passionistas," and represents "a collaborative venue to share ideas and celebrate everything reading has to offer our kids."

Canad's Centre for Digital and Media Literacy

Interesting interview regarding the potential future of Digital Media Literacy

"Despite more than a century of being bombarded with advertising and other media, educators all too often underestimate the importance of how we communicate using images"

"If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool," Rheingold said Thursday.

ABSTRACT This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical principles originally articulated in the Multiliteracies project, an approach to teaching and learning that addresses literacy and learning in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. The need for a new approach to learning arises from a complex range of factors - among them, changes in society and the economy; the potential for new forms of communication made possible by emerging technologies; and rising expectations amongst learners that education will maximize their potential for personal fulfillment, civic participation and access to work. The authors first brought together the Learning by Design team of researchers and teachers in 2003 in order to reflect upon and create new and dynamic learning environments. A series of research and development activities were embarked upon in Australia and, more recently, in the United States, exploring the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future - learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. One of the key challenges was to create learning environments which engaged the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles - from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. It was also about enabling teachers to explicitly track and be aware of the relationship between their pedagogical choices and their students' learning outcomes.

As an instructor of undergraduate and graduate students at University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, I created a syllabus for the benefit of other college/university level instructors. I created a copy of the original syllabus for modification to use with high school students (probably juniors or seniors). I will rely on actual high school teachers to help me modify this source document. Please feel free to use, modify, and share this syllabus in your own way. Reorder the modules, add or subtract required or recommended texts and learning activities. Use your own assessment methods. If you wish to help improve this seed document, contact howard@rheingold.com and I will add you as a commenter and/or editor. 

from the Center for Social Media at American University's School of Communication

"With the many enhancements to mobile devices, multimedia websites, e-books, interactive graphics, and social media, there's no question that the nature of reading has changed during the past decade. But has the way reading is taught in elementary schools changed as well? And what should teachers be doing to get students ready for the realities of modern reading?"

Great resource for evaluation of of digital images.

"Perhaps, instead of proving that handwriting is superior to typing, it proves we need better note-taking pedagogy."