What are the skills our students learn when they blog? What are the 21st century skills they need to learn -- and can gain fluency with by blogging?
These are the questions left bumping around in my head after attending a couple of sessions at Edubloggercon at ISTE 2010 this year: Jim Gates's session on "Best Practices in Student Blogging," my (and Jim Gates's) discussion group on "Building Personal Learning Networks," and Kevin Honeycutt's entertaining "Conversational Lubricants." I know they learn tagging ("higher order thinking on steroids" according to Honeycutt), and tagging is a skill that is largely absent from their regular Internet lives. They learn to assess one another's blogs by commenting -- and they can learn to comment in more meaningful ways as a result. They learn to share ideas, to engage in intellectual discourse, to collect and make sense of ideas from others. They learn to expand their notion of the world. They learn to write with words and pictures and video -- and to have a point. They learn to think "out loud."
They learn to teach.
Showing posts with label reading and writing in the 21st century. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading and writing in the 21st century. Show all posts
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Reading and Writing in the 21st Century
Tomorrow morning I will give a presentation to the Texas Alliance of Accredited Private Schools on the very lofty and all-encompassing topic that I repeat as the title of this blog. I hope to raise some questions and stir some discussion about how our students actually go about the business of reading and writing as they learn. I will ask some very simple questions.
What's the difference between reading a paperback copy of Jane Eyre, a digital text of the novel, or the digital text of the novel marked up in Diigo and shared with "friends" on Facebook? What's the difference between writing a standard critical analysis of the novel on a word processor and sharing ideas about the novel (with hyperlinks, images, and comments) in a blog? I ultimately ask, partly rhetorically and partly probing for deeper answers, why do we still teach in just one way with these developments in mind. How are we serving our students? What do we owe them as they negotiate these new tools on their own?
I still have a stack of paperback books by my bedside (and a pen to mark them up), but I am also excited by the possibilities for reading and writing suggested by the new iPad. I don't have to settle for just one, do I?
What's the difference between reading a paperback copy of Jane Eyre, a digital text of the novel, or the digital text of the novel marked up in Diigo and shared with "friends" on Facebook? What's the difference between writing a standard critical analysis of the novel on a word processor and sharing ideas about the novel (with hyperlinks, images, and comments) in a blog? I ultimately ask, partly rhetorically and partly probing for deeper answers, why do we still teach in just one way with these developments in mind. How are we serving our students? What do we owe them as they negotiate these new tools on their own?
I still have a stack of paperback books by my bedside (and a pen to mark them up), but I am also excited by the possibilities for reading and writing suggested by the new iPad. I don't have to settle for just one, do I?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)