EML436 – The Multimodal Writing Process | 21st Century Literacies | Lewis Dennis 1489881

Bost, Danielle

IL

Dennis, L. [Lewis Dennis]. (2017, April 16). EML436 – The Multimodal Writing Process | 21st Century Literacies | Lewis Dennis 1489881 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOf85O0b0zU.

Discusses 21st Century Skills and Learners and how teachers can adapt to teach students 21st century skills, based in Australia.

As a beginner to the concept of 21st Century Skills, this helped me grasp the concept a lot better and understand how to incorporate ideas into my future curriculum.

SAMR – 8 Cool Tools You May Have Missed at ISTE 2017

MaryLee Helm

IL

Common Sense Media. (2017). 8 Cool Tools You May Have Missed at ISTE 2017. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/blog/8-cool-tools-you-may-have-missed-at-iste-2017?utm_source=Edu_Newsletter_2017_07_04&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly

The tools shared in this article move the learner on the SAMR model to Redefinition as they allow for learning to be student-centered and tasks to be completed in new ways. Students get to think outside of the box and have a tool in which to share their learning with others.

I was not able to attend the conference, but am always looking for emerging technologies that can be utilized in the library. This article offers a list of programs to start “playing” and possibly, introduce in a co-teaching lesson or through a genius hour period.

Teaching to the Test

Katy Golden

ET

Shepard, L., Hanaway, J., & Baker, E, ed.s. (2009). Standards, assessment, and accountability. Education policy white paper. National Aacdemy of Education, Washington, DC. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED531138.pdf

I thought this article brought up a lot of great points because, being in the education world today, you can easily understand how tempting it is to teach based on the standardized tests your students are taking – in my case, those tests are a big part of my evaluation, so it’s important to me that they do well! However, when education policy makers are the ones deciding what’s on the test and how it’s formatted, it often makes it so that what’s being tested – and therefore what’s being taught to – is not useful knowledge nor does it involve 21st century skills, rather being rote question-and-answer trivia. This article discusses the idea of standards-based assessments, and how the accountability to standards creates pressure on teachers to “teach to a test.”

This article discusses the complications of having politically created standards, which can lead to either “overly full, encyclopedic standards” in the case of some states, and “vague, general statements” in others. The authors describe the growing movement to the creation of new standards that distinguish between performance standards and content standards, and recommend that educators be given a voice in determining standards. This was a relief to me to hear, because I’d love to hear more about educators being the ones to decide standards. In my old district, they were just starting to incorporate teachers in the development of district wide tests, and hopefully that trend will continue!

Anna Swenson

IL

Gardner, L. (2016). Teaching Information Literacy Now. School Library Journal. Retrieved March 11, 2017, from http://www.slj.com/2016/11/industry-news/teaching-media-literacy-now/#


In this article from the School Library Journal, Laura Gardner offers practical ideas and lesson resources to improve teaching information literacy in the classroom. 

Why Technology Alone Won’t Fix Schools

Iansito, Karah

IL

Toyama, K. (2015, June 3).  Why technology alone won’t fix schools.  The Atlantic. Retrieved

from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/why-technology-alone-

wont-fix-schools/394727/

Summary

Toyama argues in this article that if inequality is what ails public education, technology alone can not help, and, in fact, will only serve to amplify existing inequities.  

Evaluation

Reading this article was a bit of a revelation to me.  I have been an English teacher for 14 years in a diverse socio-economic public school, and have long felt skeptical about the advent of technology in the classroom.  This article named for me what I have been feeling.  I came to the article via a book given to me by my supervisor, Amplify:  Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom by Katie Muhtaris and Kristin Ziemke.

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The Four Cs of Learning

The Four Cs of Learning

This is an interesting blog post by Jeff Utecht, who is an educator, consultant and author. He writes about the Four Cs and says there is nothing new in the list that educators haven’t been doing for years. How we view them now is new. He expands and gives ideas on these:

• Communication: Teaching to communicate the way the world communicates
• Collaboration: Across space and time
• Creativity: To a global audience
• Critical Thinking: Creating Problem Finders

Then he adds one more, the ‘C’ word of education, CONTROL. He says, “When we talk about giving up control in the classroom we do not mean giving up structure. If you are going to give the control of the learning over to the students it means you need more structure in place not less. Routines need to be in place, timing needs to be clearly delineated, and a system needs to exist so that students can have control of the learning. Giving over control of the learning to students does not mean less prep-time, less work for the teacher…..at the beginning it actually means more work as teachers learn a new way of structuring their classroom around student interest, student questions and take on a new role as a facilitator and coach of learning.”

KOHOUT, J., & GAVIGAN, K. (2015). The Years of Our Learning Commons. Teacher Librarian, 43(2), 18-23. Retrieved from http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=111875239&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following article discusses the journey from inspiration to innovation as several librarian are inspired by our own professor David Loertscher.  This article discusses how two librarians who had attended a conference decided they were going to implement what they learned in their own school district. It outlines their project from the idea stage to full implementation within several libraries within their district and what they did in order to bring their idea to life.

Spector, J. M., Ifenthaler, D., Sampson, D., Yang, L. (., Mukama, E., Warusavitarana, A., & … Gibson, D. C. (2016). Technology Enhanced Formative Assessment for 21st Century Learning. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 19(3), 58-71.

Retrieved from http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=116991598&site=ehost-live&scope=site

This article details the importance of providing formative assessments.  It discusses how formative assessments have changed over time and how now they are more important than ever. Since, these types of assessments have grown in importance they have changed a great deal in structure. This article discusses how formative assessments how grown to include 21st century learning topics or technology.  It discusses how educators have changed their assessements to reflect these new 21st century skills.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Kira Koop

IL – Creativity

Robinson, K. (February 2006). Ken robinson: Do schools kill creativity? [Video] TED.com: TED2006.
(but also here: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en)

Summary:
Sir Ken Robinson delivered this TEDtalk more than ten years ago, and in it, he very cleverly mixes story and ideas to illustrate his points and connect to his audience. He addresses the notions of creativity, of failing, of the hierarchy within schools of subjects and values, as well as multiple intelligences.

I quite enjoyed this talk, in part because it’s always immensely satisfying to listen to English accents, but the content was also very interesting. I personally disagree with his emphasis on “originality” – after all, the quotation “good artists borrow, great artists steal” – Picasso, probably – is generally understood to mean that most creative content references other ideas – but he did say one thing that has resonated with me specifically: to be creative, you must be prepared to be wrong, to fail.

I was thinking about this within the context of my fine art background through high school, before my BFA. My high school art teacher built “idea pages” into his assignments for us. We weren’t allowed to start a project until we had shown that we had sat down to think about and work through the process, come up with three separate plans (complete with symbolism, colour theory, media, and style) and chosen the one that worked best. It was still a high school class, and grades were still very much the method of receiving feedback, which meant that “failing” was tied into assessment, rather than the thing you created, but this process allowed us to figure out a few failures (to communicate? to create? to idealize?) before we even started. Furthermore, it removed the fear from the process: if you didn’t show through your idea page that you had grappled with failure as part of the creative process, you didn’t do it right, and you wouldn’t receive the marks for it.  

Nevertheless, his talk goes far beyond this one idea, and I hope you enjoy it.

Teaching Methods for Inspiring Students of the Future

Teaching Methods for Inspiring Students of the Future – Joe Ruhl – TEDxLafayette

Ruhl talks about how he changed his teacher-centered way of teaching to a student-centered way of teaching. He calls the move from front and center to a guide on the side.  Ruhl has been teaching for 37 years and teaches high school biology. Ruhl believes there are 6 Cs regarding important 21st Century skills, with the first C being Choice. Give students a choice in their learning process, then you have the 4 Cs of Collaboration, Communication, Critical thinking and Creativity and the sixth C is Caring. If students know the teacher cares about them it will be one of their most effective, motivating, powerful and inspiring tools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFg9bcW7Bk