jlearn2.0

What exactly is digital literacy? The term is used quite often, and yet there seems to be a fuzziness about it. It’s easy for this concept to become a catch phrase and a catchall for all things technology. The CEO Forum on Technology and Education’s report, Key Building Blocks for Student Achievement in the 21st Century (2001) offers this definition of digital literacy:

The literacy skills for the digital age include language proficiency, namely, reading, writing, listening and speaking; scientific literacy, defined as the knowledge of science, scientific thinking, mathematics and the relationships between science, mathematics and technology; and, technological literacy, including competence in the use of computers, networks and digital content.

Other definitions include the following:

“Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century” by Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan, Educause Quarterly, Volume 29 Number 2 2006:

Digital literacy represents a person’s ability to perform tasks effectively in a digital environment, with “digital” meaning information represented in numeric form and primarily for use by a computer. Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments.

“New Strategies for Assessing Digital Literacy: Connecting Research and Policy - NECC 2003 Spotlight Session” by Margaret Honey, Cornelia Brunner, Diny Golder-Dardis, Cheryl Lemke, Joyce Malyn-Smith, June 2003:

A range of business, government, and research organizations are calling for students to master “digital literacy,” a critical approach to technology use that moves beyond the mastery of technical skills and includes knowing how to:

* Analyze new media messages critically,
* Create media products that present information accurately and persuasively, and
* Take full advantage of technology’s capacity to support effective communication.

It is increasingly necessary for students to attain these skills if they are to become successful members of society and thoughtful citizens.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills contextualizes these types of skills (as information and communications literacy), among others, as part of a unified vision for 21st century learning:

1. Core Subjects.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, identifies the core subjects as English, reading or language arts; mathematics; science; foreign languages; civics; government; economics; arts; history; and geography.

2. 21st Century Content.
Several significant, emerging content areas are critical to success in communities and workplaces. These content areas typically are not emphasized in schools today:

* Global awareness
* Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
* Civic literacy
* Health and wellness awareness

3. Learning and Thinking Skills.
As much as students need to learn academic content, they also need to know how to keep learning - and make effective and innovative use of what they know - throughout their lives. Learning and Thinking Skills are comprised of:

* Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
* Communication Skills
* Creativity and Innovation Skills
* Collaboration Skills
* Information and Media Literacy Skills
* Contextual Learning Skills

[note: information and media skills are defined by the Partnership as: “analyzing, accessing, managing, integrating, evaluating and creating information in a variety of forms and media. Understanding the role of media in society.”]

4. ICT Literacy.
Information and communications technology (ICT) literacy is the ability to use technology to develop 21st century content knowledge and skills, in support of 21st century teaching and learning.

5. Life Skills.
Good teachers have always incorporated life skills into their pedagogy. The challenge today is to incorporate these essential skills into schools deliberately, strategically and broadly. Life skills include:

* Leadership
* Ethics
* Accountability
* Adaptability
* Personal Productivity
* Personal Responsibility
* People Skills
* Self Direction
* Social Responsibility

6. 21st Century Assessments.
Authentic 21st century assessments are the essential foundation of a 21st century education. Assessments must measure all five results that matter - core subjects; 21st century content; learning skills; ICT literacy; and life skills. To be effective, sustainable and affordable, assessments must use modern technologies to increase efficiency and timeliness. Standardized tests alone can measure only a few of the important skills and knowledge students should learn. A balance of assessments, including high-quality standardized testing along with effective classroom assessments, offers students a powerful way to master the content and skills central to success.

Source: P21 Framework for 21st Century Learning

This holistic approach seems somewhat more realistic and satisfactory. It provides a clearer context for our work and lays out a road map for achievement. Folding information and media skills under Learning and Thinking Skills makes it more organic to how people learn; it is another skill and resource for lifelong learning. In parallel, ICT is singled out as a means for developing and supporting learning and teaching, and not as an end in and of itself. Most of us understand this, but in the midst of work and its pressures, it is all too often easy to lose sight of this goal.

No doubt as we better understand how we learn and the skills we need to thrive as citizens in an ever-changing world these ideas will continue to be refined and shaped. Are there other definitions of digital literacy that speak to you? How does our work as Jewish educators and learners mesh with these 21st century skills? What other skills would we include for the 58th/21st century Jewish learner and educator?

Two interesting quotes from recent books:

From The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Release 2.0 by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006 (pp. 10-11):

The flat-world platform is the product of a convergence of the personal computer (which allowed every individual suddenly to become the author of his or her own content in digital form) with fiber-optic cable (which suddenly allowed all those individuals to access more and more digital content around the world for next to nothing) with the rise of work flow software (which enabled individuals all over the world to collaborate on the same digital content from anywhere, regardless of the distances between them). No one anticipated this convergence. It just happened – right around the year 2000. And when it did, people all over the world started waking up and realizing that they had more power than ever to go global as individuals, they needed more than ever to think of themselves as individuals competing against other individuals all over the planet, and they had more opportunities to work with those other individuals, not just compete with them. As a result, every person now must, and can, ask: Where do I as an individual fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?”

From Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Penguin, 2006 (p. 67):

In its purest form,[peer production]is a way of producing goods and services that relies entirely on self-organizing, egalitarian communities of individuals who come together voluntarily to produce a shared outcome. In reality, peer production mixes elements of hierarchy and self-organization and relies on meritocratic principles of organization – i.e., the most skilled and experienced members of the community provide leadership and help integrate contributions from the community.

There has been some preliminary discussion about issues of technology innovation, peer collaboration and hierarchies on the jlearn2.0 wiki.

Although the books cited above refer primarily to corporate culture, practical implications for Jewish education, particularly for peer collaboration, are intriguing. How does this mesh with Jewish educational values? What are some challenges? Do these concepts carry over into the offline world?

Ideas? Comments?

Marc Prensky offers an interesting perspective in his article, “Adopt and Adapt: 21st Century Schools Need 21st Century Technology,” published Edutopia, December 2005. He reviews the typical four-step process of technology adoption in schools:

1. Dabbling
2. Doing old things in old ways
3. Doing old things in new ways
4. Doing new things in new ways

Prensky concludes that until recently, schools have been dabbling, and for the most part, they are still doing old things in old ways, even though the tools may have changed. He reflects on the technical (one-to-one computing) and sociological (”digital natives,” “digital immigrants,” the conservative nature of schools) challenges to the kind of educational transformation could occur if schools were able to do new things in new ways.

Does his article ring true to your experiences? What are some examples in your school or organization?

A recent posting on the jlearn2.0 wiki noted the difficulty of introducing the use of a new technology, in this case, a wiki. In theory, the use of the wiki would seem to be a natural tool for collaboration on a project by colleagues who are already familiar with one another but who are geographically dispersed. In reality, there can be great challenges in introducing and implementing any kind of change, no matter how seemingly slight, even under the best of circumstances.

What are some of the challenges you have come across? How have you addressed them?

How are educators thinking about blogs?

Blogs are generally considered to be online journals. In terms of format, they are made up of entries that are organized chronologically, the most recent listed first, and can be further indexed by topic. Blogs often include a mixture of text content, audio, photographs, videos, and links to other sites. Blog culture encourages reader comments, cross-references to other blogs, and opportunities for collaborative publishing. A blog’s relative ease of use provides a publishing forum for anyone with an Internet connection and the patience to learn a new medium.

Educators are experimenting with the use of blogs in their work and have coined the term “edublogs.” Many of these projects use the traditional concept of blogs in highly creative ways.

Below are ways to think about genres of blogs in education. Please note that it is not clear that all of these types of blogs currently exist for Jewish education. However, with your assistance, we will try and identify examples of the variety of Jewish education blogs on the jlearn2.0 wiki (jlearn20.wikispaces.com; see under “Jewish Education Blogs.” Or add your blog suggestion in the comment section at the bottom of this post or email us at jlearn2.0. More about wikis in future posts).

General for Educational Stakeholders

Blogs about Jewish education – these sites tend to offer information, resources, policy, advocacy, and commentary related to aspects of Jewish education.

Personal voices – independent voices examining issues related to Jewish education; sometimes articles related to Jewish education are posted on individuals’ blogs that address a wide range of topics on Jewish culture.

Educator Blogs

Teacher journals – online diaries describing personal experiences and commentary by educators; these are often projects initiated by individuals and not under school auspices.

Administrator journals – online diaries that share perspectives and experiences of school administrators; these are often personal journals and not under school auspices.

Professional development – sites that provide “just in time” and individualized learning opportunities; blogs that support reflective practice through journaling, feedback, etc.

Communities of practice – sites devoted to specific issues related to the profession; collaborative spaces to share and refine ideas

Student Blogs

Student journals – online entries describing personal experiences and observations by students; these might be self-initiated diaries or related to school projects.

Curricular Resources

Online resource centers – access to curricular resources, annotated links to content and pedagogy, repository for original resources.

Learning Blogs

Student learning – curriculum-related blogs created for, and often by, students to engage with learning through writing, information and communication technology (ICT) skills, podcasts, videocasts, map tools, multimedia presentations and projects, etc.

Digital portfolios – blogs developed for assessing learning including presentation of work, revisions, critiques, and personal reflections.

Community

School collaborations – online space for classroom projects, including those that are inter-class, inter-school, and international.

Mentorships – shared collaborative space for online mentorships, including student-mentor and teacher- mentor relationships.

Travel journals – reports from travelers around the world, interacting with readers who share their experiences virtually.

Social action blogs – sites that promote Jewish social action and related projects.

School Blogs

Schools and other institutions of higher learning – school communications shared by the administration, teachers, parents, and students (school news, homework, assignments, important bulletins, messages from the head of school and rabbi, etc.)

Organization / Institution Affiliated Blogs

Organizations – blogs associated with institutions and organizations; these sites are often developed in conjunction with their organizational websites and offer additional, more regularly updated information and resources of interest to their membership.

Conference Blogs

Conferences – official and unofficial reports and insights related to conference events by organizers and participants.

Do other categories come to mind? How do you use blogs in your work?

Administrators and teachers should be reminded that appropriate security measures need to be taken to assure student safety and privacy. For example, blogs can be kept private with only pre-identified members granted permission to read or post comments. A simple way to protect the student is to have them use a pen name for any work that is publicly accessible. The school community should be aware of the school’s acceptable use policies and should develop appropriate rules of netiquette.

To play with a new idea or tool or resource is to understand it in a different way. It is a means of becoming familiar with it from the outside in and the inside out and to imagine new ways of working with it. How, then, do we encourage educators to play with digital resources? What are some impediments to experimentation? Time, access to resources, and anxiety of the new are a few challenges that teachers often face. Teachers generally consider themselves “digital immigrants” in relation to their students, who tap into different technologies more naturally as “digital natives.” However, many teachers are already familiar with these technologies. They use them for business tasks, communicating, managing their personal lives, socializing, and for leisure and recreational purposes as do their students. In some cases, educators are even ahead of their students in terms of comfort levels and the transparent use of these technologies. What is less clear to both teachers and students is how to include these tools into one’s repertoire for learning.

How does the use of educational technologies become a more normative part of addressing instructional challenges? What are educational appropriate ways to incorporate new technologies of every day life into learning? These tools include podcasts, websites, blogs, wikis, video, VoIP such as Skype, PDAs, social networking systems (think Facebook or MySpace), resource organizer and sharing sites such as del.icio.us and flickr, and yes, even cell phones. How might they be used to support a school’s curricular vision, and not merely serve as “bells and whistles” or distractions from the goals of learning? Should they be used at all? Early adopters are already playing around with these resources. What can we learn from them? How can we provide educators with opportunities to play with these tools, become more familiar with them, understand the capacities and limitations of these tools, and take risks and experiment? Creating a space for play is not limited to the use of technologies. Teachers need opportunities to step back, think, and toy around with ideas, tools, curriculum, etc. Where do they find these opportunities - preservice, inservice, on their own? Is there a culture of play for educators in our institutions, arenas to incubate ideas, try them out, refine them, share, and collaborate?

What are some ideas you have been playing around with regarding the use of digital technologies for learning? What would it take to implement them? If you have incorporated them into your teaching repertoire, what have you learned from them?