"As an innovative educator I often write about fantastic tools that teachers can incorporate into practice. But, what might a 21st century high school literacy class look like? Here is a glimpse into a class I would love to be in if I was a student today.
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In science and math classes across the country, digital tools are being used to conduct experiments, analyze data, and run 3-D simulations to explain complex concepts. Language arts teachers are now pushing the definition of literacy to include the ability to express ideas through media. This report, "Multimedia Transformation," examines the many ways multimedia tools are transforming teaching and learning as schools work to raise achievement and prepare students for careers that require increasingly sophisticated uses of technology.
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"Toy Chest" collects online or downloadable software tools/thinking toys that humanities students and others without programming skills (but with basic computer and Internet literacy) can use to create interesting projects. Most of the tools gathered here are free or relatively inexpensive (exceptions: items that are expensive but can be used on a free trial basis). Also on this page are "paradigms"--books, essays, digital projects, etc.--that illustrate the kinds of humanities projects that software thinking tools/toys might help create.
Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves Internet search skills that start with understanding how digital information is different from print information, knowing how to use specialized tools for finding digital information and strengthening the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs.
I sort of model this when I give exemplars for projects in which writing in their own words is part of a rubric. I'm not sure that is enough, however. I think maybe my writing doesn't sound enough like their writing in all cases
This instruction should focus on the supposedly simple technique of summarizing sources, which is in truth not simple. Many students are far from competent at summarizing an argument— and students who cannot summarize are the students most likely to plagiarize.
This strikes me as someting teachers in many learning areas could work on with kids rather than defaulting to Language Arts as the place where kids learn about plagiarism
The teacher in this tale uses the incident to teach students that using others' words without attribution is a serious crime. He then emphasizes to students the importance of citation and source integration techniques and enlists the school librarian to model how to cite outside works used in a piece of writing.
I'm not sure that I see the evil/missteps in this example. It doesn't say the student was punished it says the teacher & librarian used it as an opportunity to teach about proper attribution...
Educators should also communicate why writing is important. Through writing, people learn, communicate with one another, and discover and establish their own authority and identity.
Being able to write about things that you are passionate about will bring even more importance to students' writing.
it is easy for well-intentioned students to overlook the boundaries between what they themselves have produced and what they have slid from one screen (their Internet browser) to another (their word-processed document)
She begins by explaining that inserting synonyms is not paraphrasing. She then guides students in studying a passage and identifying its key words and main ideas that must be retained to paraphrase the passage. Shirley shows her students poor paraphrases of the passage for them to critique. Finally, she has them write their own paraphrase of a 50- to 100-word source passage that they themselves choose.