Blog 4

21st Century Literacies. What do they imply?

I’ve learned a few things while researching this topic. The most important one: This class IS Connectivism Pedagogy and should be re-edited to emphasize that point. I’m disappointed that it took me 16 days (1/2 the time) into the class to get “it”; maybe it was outlined in the beginning and I missed it. Oh well. At least the lightbulb has finally gone on.

Second most important thing: Howard Rheingold approves of my thesis project. I haven’t spoken with him personally, yet, but I do follow him on twitter and know how to speak with an expert. Also- WAY COOL that the presentation that we saw was only a few weeks old! And awesome. Depressing for public schools, but awesome for me. More will be revealed later in my webQuest….(she said mysteriously).

The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (2007) literacies:

Digital Age Literacy Basic -
Scientific, economic, and technological literacy
Visual and information literacy
Multicultural literacy and global awareness

Inventive Thinking -
Adaptability and managing complexity
Self-direction
Curiosity, creativity and risk taking
Higher-order thinking and sound reasoning

Effective Communication -
Teaming, collaboration and interpersonal skills
Personal, social and civic responsibility
Interactive communication

High Productivity Prioritizing -
Planning, and managing for results
Effective use of real-world tools
Ability to produce relevant, high-quality products
(from FSO ETC class 08.09)

I reproduced these verbatim for a very important reason: my project design had come to a stand still over the obstacle of curriculum and standards until I saw these. It still amazes me how much my brain can work, learn, create when it has the right tools and incentives. Well, it has, after all, not been used for much for the last decade.

Life long learners is a very personally interesting topic for me, as I suppose it is for all educators. I love how the brain works. I love research about it. I love to apply that research. Since I used the word love 3x already, I figured it was time to indulge my waning attention span to this: Mozart, music, and the brain learning on it from BrainConnection.com. Yeah, I suspected as much. My kindergarteners got ½ hour each day of classical music. But its nice to have the research to back it up. Note to self; I’ll have to incorporate it into my project.

I’m not sure where the lifelong learner vid fits. Some of the points were good- but out of context, some were weird. It was still a nice illustration of making your own vid to teach something.

On life long learning:
1 positive attitude
2 listen
3 read (because you think)
4 go to live seminars
5 learn how to present
6 record yourself speaking
7 record yourself reading (something positive)
8 record yourself making a sale
9 record your own commercial
10 record your own set of sales tapes
11 listen to your own stuff as much as you listen to others
12 spend 30 minutes a day learning something new
13 practice what your learn immediately

Personal Learn Networks? Brilliant. I was doing this myself (of course). But I did realize how important it was to students to show them what/how/why. Good job.

And finally, on skills, I’ve cut and pasted from the blog website on Connectivism

➢ should be the thrust of this course
➢ Principles of connectivism:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning3 may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

To reiterate once again that this is the primary, overarching theme of this class and should be more prominently displayed. (In fact, if anyone is listening/reading, there’s a bit of editing I could do as well on some of the other activities pages…)