December 4, 2007

• I’M CAUGHT UP ON GRADING.
  FOR NOW.
  BETTER NOT GET TOO COCKY.

  So, Wade was right. The newest Council Chronicle (November 2007, Volume 17, No. 2) is full of information (“The Shift to 21st-Century Literacies”) that not only backs up my own methodology but gives me even more ideas on how to use technology in the classroom. A few interesting tidbits:

  “In order for teachers to know how to teach students using technology, says Kajder, they need to use this technology themselves. This means, she says, that teachers might want to start their own MySpace pages and keep blogs, as just two examples” (5). Yes.

  “‘I don’t believe that these 21st-century literacies should be thought of as being in competition with print literacy, ’ says Kist. ‘I think it’s too bad some English teachers see it that way. I think it’s just an enrichment or broadening of our field to include more forms of representation.’ If 21st-century literacies are used well, they don’t eliminate existing curricula. Instead, teachers can use these literacies to broaden and complement what they’ve always taught”(6). Precisely.

  “‘There’s a fallacy that kids aren’t reading and writing anymore,’ says Bruce. ‘They are, but they are just reading and writing differently than what we’ve traditionally done in schools… A 21st-century approach [doesn't] say that print writing is bad. It’s not competing literacies; it’s complementary literacy’” (7).

  *Encourage students to reflect regularly about the role of technology in their learning. (Media Memoir!)

  *Using a wiki to develop a multimodal reader’s guide to a class text. (The Rule of the Bone? Fahrenheit 451?)

  • 11:48 am
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