"Although images were present on the pages of textbooks before, there are more images now; these images look and function differently from those found before. The page is used differently to the way it had been"
When comparing textbooks and writing from many years ago, one can see that the way in which images and diagrams were utilized than is very different from now. Images are now used from often in print texts, and they are often used to tell more of the story than the print is.
"If, going one step further, we compare a contemporary textbook with “pages” on the Web dealing with the “same” issues, we see that modes of representation other than image and writing—moving image and speech for instance—have found their way into learning resources, with significant effect."
When comparing print textbooks or to 'pages' on the internet, we see that not only are images used to further the information but that moving images, which I can only assume are gifts or videos, and speech are also utilized to further share information.
As student writing moves from page to screen the key difference between the traditional writing process and OCC is that teachers and students need to consider other elements that are particular to working with online informational text (e.g., semiotics, visual literacy, multimodal design).
Basically, online content construction brings in ideas of mulimodal design visual literacy, and semiotics. When students are working with print information and creating things in print contexts they usually do not encounter these things nor have the opportunity to incorporate the into their work easily (besides drawing but that can be difficult for some as well). Since they do not encounter it much in their learning environments, they must be led through the process of what to do with these elements and how to appropriately use them in their own work. Just like we do with reflections.
OCC is defined as the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary as students construct, redesign, or reinvent online texts by actively encoding and decoding meaning through the use of digital texts and tools.
Honestly, this explanation confuses me a lot but here it is.
As society has incorporated dynamic and new media in everyday life, educators are required to expand traditional understandings of text and literacy that have replaced many of the ways that we communicate, create, and socialize
It is very important that this is actually taught within the classroom since it is so important that students actually understand the new ways they are interacting with literacy and online information. While they may know how to access it, read it, etc. not all students are taught how to actually use what they view online in a productive manner like they do print sources we have in the classroom. This ties into online content construction because students will have a better grasp at online comprehension if they can use it with online content construction which would be using it hands on.
Construction calls on creativity as well as persistence, flexibility, and revision. Construction asks our students and teachers to focus on the power and patience employed during work process…and not just the final resultant work product.
Online construction has more to do with process of creating rather than just getting it done. This means that more attention is given to the steps within the process like editing, revision, getting others opinions, etc.
Online reading comprehension (ORC) has elements of “communication” identified as the last of the five skills students need.
I never would of thought ORC had elements of communication - though I can see how communication could be used when doing online reading comprehension especially when discussing pieces of text.
With Google Classroom, teachers can incorporate interactive reading lessons for students to work on comprehension and fluency skills while creating a fun, supportive, and engaging learning environment.
The key here is interactive and that students will be working/getting feedback from each other.
Make it a policy to always teach a new technology, with new literacies, to your weakest reader(s) first. This enables struggling readers and writers to become literate in this new technology before other, higher-performing students in reading. Those who struggle with reading and writing become literate in a new literacy before others and can teach this new literacy to others who are not literate with this new form.
I love this idea, though it is very true that it is very rarely done this way.
4.New literacies are multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted, and, as a result, our understanding of them benefits from multiple points of view.5.Critical literacies are central to new literacies.6.New forms of strategic knowledge are required with new litera-cies
Some of the more important aspects of New Literacy findings.
However, this does not nec-essarily mean they are skilled in the effective use of online information, perhaps the most important aspect of the Internet. Studies show that stu-dents lack critical evaluation skills when reading online
This is where critical thinking skills and reading comprehension skills would come in handy. We were never taught how to look at online literacy spaces like we look at print literacy spaces, so we assume that the strategies we use for one cannot be replicated with the other but this is untrue.
Hess is the first to admit that this strategy could easily be done with paper and pencil.
See strategy explained above. This shows again that strategies designed for digital spaces can also be used in non-digital spaces and students will still get the same depth of knowledge from it.
“Number two is to engage them in an active way with the text, and number three you want to encourage oral discourse. And number four you want them to do some reflection.”
More ways to read deeply in any format but especially in digital spaces.
It means teaching kids ways to break down a complex text, find key ideas, organize them and defend them.
Ways to read deeply in any format but especially in a digital space.
It takes more self-control to stay focused when reading digitally, a challenge for many students used to quickly navigating around the Web.
I can attest to this. I know that I am a skim reader when reading print, but I am a very bad skim reader when reading digitally. I may only catch 1/4 of the content when reading digitally compared to 3/4 when reading print. We are so used to quick reading and just getting the gist when reading digitally.
Technology won’t repair those gaps.
Need to remember that just because you can throw technology into a lesson, does not mean you should because it is not always the best answer in that situation.
Discourse is at the center of the strategies he teaches, which is why he’s not a fan of one-to-one programs that isolate kids on individual computers practicing rote skills through software.
I like how he stresses talking to someone else and how that impacts your understanding (for the better). Programs within schools to emphasize individual work and doing things silently for the best work, usually is not the best way for students to learn. This goes especially for reading comprehension. Why not incorporate technology into reading in a way that allows for productive collaboration and discussion, while still keeping an organized classroom?
“I don’t believe technology should ever be taught separately,” Hess said. Most of what he helps teachers learn are plain old good reading strategies, but he tries to highlight how practicing them in the digital space can make feedback easier and help students go further in their thinking.
Reading strategies for digital spaces and for paper text can be interchanged and used in each type of reading. This is important to remember so one is not stressed to incorporate technology into everything in order to get those strategies in.
“For more than a century, educators have strived to customize education to the learner. Connected Learning leverages the advances of the digital age to make that dream a reality — connecting academics to interests, learners to inspiring peers and mentors, and educational goals to the higher order skills the new economy rewards.
Connected learning allows learning to be more personalized to the individual student. It connects their academics to their interests, learners to peers & mentors who are interested in the same thing (digital world) and education goals to higher goals and skills.
The key is to structure the activities collaboratively so that learners are mutually dependent on each other yet are held individually accountable.
Group work can be construed as "divide and concur" by your students instead of them knowing they have to work together equally as a group. One must prepare collaborative learning scenarios so that students rely on each other but are still accountable for their own work. In the end, only one grade would be given.
First, students need to feel safe, but also challenged. Second, groups need to be small enough that everyone can contribute. Third, the task students work together on must be clearly defined.
Some require a thorough preparation, such as a long-term project, while others require less preparation, such as posing a question during lecture and asking students to discuss their ideas with their neighbors (see concept tests).
Collaborative learning does not need to be the sole way to learn in the classroom. It may just be five minutes of a lesson one day, but the whole lesson another.
actively engage his/her peers, and to process and synthesize information rather than simply memorize and regurgitate it.
Collaborative learning allows students to process and synthesize information rather than just memorize it for a test. They can critically think through problems and ideas this way. They will also better remember the information this way because they were active agents in their learning rather than passive ones.
"Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves (Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talk that learning occurs."
Collaborative learning is based in the idea that learning is a naturally social act - so the act of talking through the problem or idea is how the students will learn the best and the deepest.
connected learning offers a way of connecting the often-fragmented spheres of home, school, and peer-based learning, leveraging the affordances of digital and networked media.
Connected learning is a way to connect home, school, peer-based learning, and individual interests.
connected learning posits that the most meaningful and resilient forms of learning happen when a learner has a personal interest or passion that they are pursuing in a context of cultural affinity, social support, and shared purpose.
What is connected learning as a learning theory?
In math classes, students are grouped intentionally to provide a mix of skill levels, which helps them to be more sensitive to group members’ needs.
I love this idea and firmly believe in it! While grouping students by skill level is beneficial in some cases like group assessment in reading, it can also be a dark cloud over some students heads. By grouping mix skills levels together, everyone can have a different role and can contribute differently. In these situations some students may learn more, while other students may teach or lead, but they will all come out with a deeper understanding of the material than they had before going in.
Letting Students Teach One Another
I believe this type of learning/teaching is extremely important for all classrooms. Students can sometimes learn much better from their peers than they can from the teacher, especially when given the chance to have student lead teaching after the teacher has taught the material. This allows students who do understand the material to help those who do not in different ways that they might understand better.
focus on the mathematical process
Focusing on the process, not the product which would be a right answer. This brings critical, deeper thinking into the discussion which will allow the students to have a better grasp on the knowledge.
Harkness table (a large wooden table capable of seating the entire class),
A more cost effective way would be sitting the class in a circle so everyone can be seen by all students and the teacher.
encourage classroom collaboration by assigning students to groups to review their homework, do daily class worksheets, participate in moderated discussions, and complete hands-on projects. Often, teachers give students group tests, which, like the class worksheets, are designed to be harder than the individual assignments.
Ways to bring collaborative learning into the classroom with minor disruptions to traditional learning
Other things to consider are the need to create an effective classroom geography, focus on the process, build accountability, let students teach one another, and encourage students to be in tune with one another.
Important things to consider when creating a collaborative learning environment
Collaborative Reasoning, the teacher poses a question likely to incite different points of view, and students provide reasons to support their positions. Collaborative reasoning aims to "encourage students to use reasoned discourse as a means for choosing among alternative perspectives on an issue" while drawing on personal experiences, background knowledge, and text for interpretive support
Another way to hold student lead discussions
discussion-based teaching, including the Harkness Method, in which the role of the teacher in facilitating discussion is to serve "mostly as an observer," and act as little as possible.
Way to hold student lead discussion
discussion-based practices improve comprehension of the text and critical-thinking skills for students across ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic contexts
When students are allowed to talk out their thoughts to peers, they think more critically about the material. When they are forced to only think to themselves, then do an individual examination on their thoughts - it can become very narrow minded because they have no one else to bounce their ideas off of. We all do better when we can talk through something.
More than 1200 studies comparing cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts have found that cooperative learning methods improve students' time on tasks and intrinsic motivation to learn, as well as students' interpersonal relationships and expectations for success
Cooperative learning is better for students retention of information and their motivation to learn in the classroom.
When compared to more traditional methods where students passively receive information from a teacher, cooperative, problem-based learning has been shown to improve student engagement and retention of classroom material
Students are thinking and engaging with the material on a deeper level when they work together in a collaborative setting. They can talk out the problems, get feedback from each other, and build on each others ideas to get the answers.
College Prep math teacher Betsy Thomas gives her students a group test prior to the individual test for each unit during the year.
I love this idea. This shows that she isn't reaching for her students to fail or do bad if they did not understand the material the first time around. By giving the group test before the individual test, she is allowing her students a second chance to learn or review the material and help each other! It gives them a greater chance as success on the individual test.
You need a culture that values every student's strengths and a school community that believes everyone can learn from each other.
Taking away the stigma that only the "smart" kids can contribute in class.
"We're really learning that you don't necessarily have to be right. You just have to believe in your conclusions and find ways to prove them."
This brings in the idea of critical thinking. If students are thinking critically about what they are studying or working on then it is better if they find an answer or idea that may not be traditionally right but if they can justify it and make someone else understand it then they are still learning!
In English classes, students are encouraged to share and to listen to each other's individual interpretations of the text, underscoring the notion that there can be multiple right answers.
I love this idea of learning in English class. It is very important to allow students to feed off each others ideas and interpretations so they know now everyone has to think the same in order to be going in the same direction.
In math, for instance, the teachers prompt the students to ask each other their questions before asking the teacher, so that students learn to rely on their own collective wisdom.
While I know most students hate this type of rule in a classroom, it is extremely beneficial for those who will give it a chance.
What you see and hear are the age-old power and impact of collaborative learning, where three boys, sharing strings and chalk, are bent over the blacktop surveying triangles, as the father of geometry, Euclid, might have directed them to do more than 2,000 years ago.
It is interesting that instead of focusing on the money aspect of the school (and since they pay $34,000 a year in tuition I am sure they have a very nice campus and very nice amenities) they focus on how they are allowed to learn and be taught. Collaborative learning means a lot within schools and I hope one day more schools realize this because it is a very easy and cost efficient thing to bring into all school environments.
Tuition is about $34,000 per student and roughly 25 percent of students receive financial aid or scholarships. None have special needs or require English-language-learner services; 100 percent are admitted to college, most to top-tier universities.
While these college prep schools are wonderful for students, this seems to be a very noninclusive school environment. Just a thought.
Today, her students will become land surveyors, using rope and chalk to draw geometric shapes on the courtyard's blacktop.
It is amazing that she is taking her students outside to be active agents in their learning instead of teaching at them in a classroom where they sit and practice problems. Active engagement like this will allow her students to remember so much more and understand the material on a deeper level.
Moreover, this knowledge is unlikely to be used unless teachers can conceive of technology uses that are consistent with their existing pedagogical beliefs (Ertmer, 2005).
This can be challenging when teachers become set in their ways and refuse to venture out of their set pedagogical beliefs on teaching. This can also be seen when looking at collaboration and student contributions in the classroom. Some teachers get stuck in their existing pedagogical belift that they are the one sole educator in the classroom, and the students bring very little to the table. Both of these instances are very negative for a modern classroom teacher.
Teachers often have inadequate (or inappropriate) experience with using digital technologies for teaching and learning.
This is very true, many teachers have classrooms full of students who know 10x the technological information that they themselves know. This can slow down the use of technology in the classroom. Though it can had a good verse situation of the educator/student dynamic in the classroom, where the students can help the teacher learn someone new or further their knowledge.
particular technologies have their own propensities, potentials, affordances, and constraints that make them more suitable for certain tasks than others
One needs to think about what kind of technology they are using, especially in the classroom, and if it the appropriate type to use for the situation. If the wrong type of technology was used for a certain activity or project, it could possibly lead to unnecessary frustration and unneeded struggle on the student, as well as the teacher.
Thus, effective teaching depends on flexible access to rich, well-organized and integrated knowledge from different domains (Glaser, 1984; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Shulman, 1986, 1987), including knowledge of student thinking and learning, knowledge of subject matter, and increasingly, knowledge of technology.
Teaching requires flexible access to knowledge of all areas in the discipline because they may have to quickly redirect or change their plan based on student understanding or comprehension. Students may not respond well to how a lesson was planned or taught, therefore teachers need to change their plan so the students are best catered to.
The perfor-mance tasks ask students to apply their learning to a new and authentic situation as means of assessing their understand-ing and ability to transfer their learning.
This seems like a more authentic way of assessing students knowledge.
Understanding is revealed when students autonomously make sense of and transfer their learning through authentic performance. Six facets of under-standing—the capacity to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empa-thize, and self-assess—can serve as indicators of understanding
Important critical thinking skills that can be transferred outside of the classroom
Simply stated, students are often not provided with opportunities in school to practice the web literacies necessary to read, write, and participate on the web.
This is very true. As stated in another article, students are often taught about digital skills but not digital literacy. And when they not being taught about it, they probably are not being allowed to participate in critical ways.
When we encourage students to use technology, do we remind them of the risks of placing their information online and give them choices of how much personal information to reveal?
This is how so many students (and adults) get into sticky situations in the digital world. We are thrust into a technology based world, encouraged to put our information online to 'be with the times', and then never asked to think deeper about what it all really means.
Digital skills would focus on which tool to use (e.g., Twitter) and how to use it (e.g., how to tweet, retweet, use TweetDeck), while digital literacy would include in-depth questions: When would you use Twitter instead of a more private forum? Why would you use it for advocacy? Who puts themselves at risk when they do so?
This encourages students to go beyond the "how" of the situation and go into the "why". By asking in-depth questions, critical thinking skills are brought into a digital space.
Digital literacy would focus on helping students choose appropriate images, recognize copyright licensing, and cite or get permissions, in addition to reminding students to use alternative text for images to support those with visual disabilities.
I do not remember this topic ever being covered in school. We were shown the digital skills but never given any further explanation that encompassed digital literacy. This is very important to teach because these are things students will need to know outside of school. It will also enhance their digital work so it can be used beyond a classroom setting.
Digital skills focus on what and how. Digital literacy focuses on why, when, who, and for whom.
I did not know there was a difference between digital skills and digital literacy. I can see how it is important to differentiate between the two when teaching them.
Approachable and accessible to diverse audiences and their needs
This is the most important aspect of the web literacy map, because those that have ore understanding of the web are not the ones that need all of this. It needs to include those that are not computer or web experts, or else it is just another thing that deters some people from using the web/technology. The web/tech world is also a place were equity is not always included.
the degree to which you can read, write, and participate on the web while producing, synthesizing, evaluating, and communicating information
It's interesting to see these components combined together. Within a learning environment all of these will be used at some point, but rarely do teachers illustrate or explain that all of these need to intricately work together in order to get the best and most useful outcome.
Knowing how to read, write, and participate in the digital world has become the 4th basic foundational skill next to the three Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic—in a rapidly evolving, networked world.
This is extremely important to remember in a school setting. Kids need to learn how to operate technology and the online world in order to keep up with everyone around them.
Social media can thus provide a good forum to practice skills related to identity development, such as self-presentation and self-disclosure.
I believe that this is one the huge benefits of social media and the internet. A mentioned above and below this quote, adolescents can find individuals that are like them on social media which thus helps them feel better about themselves. If you find people that are like you, you no longer feel so uncomfortable with who you are. I also believe that social media helps us shape who we are through our social media mistakes and phases. If you mess up online, or go back and look through what you used to put on the internet, you may feel better about the person you have become or you may decide I want to go back to being like that. It keeps a timeline of our ever changing emotions, personas, and life events.
However, in older children, gaming has the potential to encourage more family interactions because children often attempted to bring parents into their online and console playing
A friend of mine and his dad bond over playing video games and discussing what is going on in those digital universes. They do not have much free time to spend with each other and neither of them are very communicative so that is their way to bond and show their love. If they did not have video games, they probably would not be as close and open with each other as they are today.
A recent meta-analysis revealed that both restrictive and active mediation can reduce negative media effects, such as the learning of aggressive behavior, substance use, and sexual behavior, whereas co-viewing (without discussion) tends to enhance or facilitate media effects
This topic was also lightly discussed in the TED Talk by Sara DeWitt. If parents took the time to discuss what kids did with screen time, such as what they watched or what video game they played, then they can both gain more insight and knowledge from it. Active participation by both parties can lead to more conversations and more understanding of each others lives. My mom would always talk to me about what I was doing, watching, or reading which lead to us having a deeper insight into the others day to day life. If she found something she didn't like within what I was viewing, we would discuss it and it would be over with. There were never any negative effects because we discussed things such as consequences, life experiences she had, and why such things were a bad idea. A lot of parents complain and say technology takes their kids away from them or allows them to get away with breaking rules, but if they would inject themselves into the child's interactions with technology they problem wouldn't be present.
This means they have some say — although not complete — over their personal data, and in turn they begin to have an understanding of the technologies that underpin the Web, including how their work and their data circulate there.
It is important that students have more agency and understanding of their work and online presence. This can lead to more personal responsibility and understanding how the web can alter ones life.