Digital Literacy for Teachers

Digital Literacy for Teachers

Lori and I saw each other at the eLearning Symposium and we are really excited to get this blog back up and running.  I got so many good ideas at this symposium, but like Lori, I am still processing how they fit into what I am doing and what I want to do!

I went to a session presented by Will Richardson called Digital Literacy for Teachers.  He made a lot of excellent points, but I will share the ones that really resonated with me.

Currently, there are more that 30 million blogs with over 1.5 billion links in them.
There has been a 3600% increase in consumer generated video in the past year.
What does this mean?  The web is no longer a read-only medium; it is a read/write environment where users can create content.

Collaboration.  I think Lori will agree with me that this was the underlying theme of the symposium; and this is an important aspect of the web for students and teachers.  No longer is knowledge determined and written by one group of people (for instance the encyclopedia from our days) but users collaborating to create knowledge.

As teachers, the key skill we can pass onto our students is the ability to recognize relevant information quickly.  Remember when we used to have to memorize formulas in math?  Students can find the formulas anywhere now – it is more important to know which formula to use and when.  Think of our roles as teachers as teaching our students “know where” learning – to help our students know where to find information.

This point of “know where” learning really made an impression on me.  As a history major I was always taught there is no sense to memorizing exact dates when they can easily be looked up.  It was more important to have a sense of chronological order of events.  When I first graduated college, I always dreaded telling people I was a history major because people immediately asked me dates – “When did the Romanov Dynasty rule?” or “Name all of the Kings of the Roman Empire” to prove I really was a history major.  I had learned it was more important to know where to find the information rather than to memorize it.  This was a “new” way of thinking about history.  Now here we are thinking about a new way of learning, interesting I would be in this place at this time…

Will concluded by listing what teachers are in the 21st Century.  Teachers are:
     
     Curriculum & Content Specialists;
     Content Creators;
     Connectors to Content;
     Collaborators;
     Mentors to Critical Thinking; and
     Change Agents.

Do you agree that this is our new role in the 21st Century?