The New Literacies - Who will teach them?
I don’t think we have to extensively review the reasons why it is important to know about the new literacies our children must master, not only in order to for students to be able to economically prosper in the future, but also to supply them with the skills and attitudes to protect themselves from duplicity in a digital world.
Relative to these new literacies, a recent news article states that the Educational Testing Service has devised a simulation-based / performance-based assessment of information and communication technology skills. The test is called the Information and Communication Technology Literacy Assessment, ICT for short. According to the article, the results of the first 6300 high school and college students who piloted the exam were surprising.
The National Educational Technology Standards for Students describes Profiles for Technology Literate Students in order to provide performance indicators describing the technology competence students should exhibit upon completion of certain grade levels. One of these is that students should be able to “evaluate the accuracy, relevance, appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and bias of electronic information sources” by the end of grade eight. The new article stated that “just 52% of the test takers could correctly judge the objectivity of a Web site and only 65% assessed the site’s authoritativeness. When asked to use a search engine to look for information on the Internet, only 40% entered multiple search terms to narrow the result.” This tells us that, even though our children are natives of this new digital world, somewhere along the way about half never learned survival basics.
It’s obvious that our students are not picking this up on their own. My question relating to this is who will teach them, and how will they be taught? With the continuing and ever increasing pressures on teachers to increase standardized test scores through following district anointed curriculum roadmaps and the like, what place do the new literacies have in the classroom?
The new literacies can be approached educationally in one of three ways. The first is teach them in the framework of a “technology”, “computer skills” or “computer lab” class which some students get for a period of time. In my experiences, some schools rotate students through this type of class for one period a day for four or six weeks. Some students are in these classes once or twice a week. These courses or “specials” generally are not correlated to what students are learning in their academic classes at the time. Though the new literacies may be taught in these classes, unless students continuously apply these skills and attitudes in various ways, this learning may be lost. These courses mostly are thought of as by academic teachers as a chance for them to do some necessary educational work while their students are at this class, the same as when students go to gym, art, etc.
The second approach is for classroom academic teachers to consider the new literacies something “extra” to teach, which takes time, resources and effort away from the main goal of improving scores. In this approach, teachers may develop a resentment to having to do yet another thing imposed on them which they think has little to do with reading, math, writing and other subjects for they are held responsible.
The third approach is to for teachers to incorporate the new literacies as tools to help their students answer questions and solve problems based upon educational goals. In this approach the new literacies are attained by students as “just in time” proficiencies instead learning them “just in case”. Therefore, students see the new literacies as integral and necessary skills and attitudes which help them find the answers they seek. The important thing is that there is a strong base of research which indicates that teachers who do take a problem-based / product-based learning approach which incorporates the new literacies find their students’ scores on standardized tests rising more than those who take the other approach.
It can be daunting for teachers to try something new, but in my experiences I find the vast majority of teachers always looking for better ways for their students to learn. If given proper assistance such as meaningful professional development and technical support, the new literacies can be an integral part of the ongoing learning process.
I don’t think we have to extensively review the reasons why it is important to know about the new literacies our children must master, not only in order to for students to be able to economically prosper in the future, but also to supply them with the skills and attitudes to protect themselves from duplicity in a digital world.
Relative to these new literacies, a recent news article states that the Educational Testing Service has devised a simulation-based / performance-based assessment of information and communication technology skills. The test is called the Information and Communication Technology Literacy Assessment, ICT for short. According to the article, the results of the first 6300 high school and college students who piloted the exam were surprising.
The National Educational Technology Standards for Students describes Profiles for Technology Literate Students in order to provide performance indicators describing the technology competence students should exhibit upon completion of certain grade levels. One of these is that students should be able to “evaluate the accuracy, relevance, appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and bias of electronic information sources” by the end of grade eight. The new article stated that “just 52% of the test takers could correctly judge the objectivity of a Web site and only 65% assessed the site’s authoritativeness. When asked to use a search engine to look for information on the Internet, only 40% entered multiple search terms to narrow the result.” This tells us that, even though our children are natives of this new digital world, somewhere along the way about half never learned survival basics.
It’s obvious that our students are not picking this up on their own. My question relating to this is who will teach them, and how will they be taught? With the continuing and ever increasing pressures on teachers to increase standardized test scores through following district anointed curriculum roadmaps and the like, what place do the new literacies have in the classroom?
The new literacies can be approached educationally in one of three ways. The first is teach them in the framework of a “technology”, “computer skills” or “computer lab” class which some students get for a period of time. In my experiences, some schools rotate students through this type of class for one period a day for four or six weeks. Some students are in these classes once or twice a week. These courses or “specials” generally are not correlated to what students are learning in their academic classes at the time. Though the new literacies may be taught in these classes, unless students continuously apply these skills and attitudes in various ways, this learning may be lost. These courses mostly are thought of as by academic teachers as a chance for them to do some necessary educational work while their students are at this class, the same as when students go to gym, art, etc.
The second approach is for classroom academic teachers to consider the new literacies something “extra” to teach, which takes time, resources and effort away from the main goal of improving scores. In this approach, teachers may develop a resentment to having to do yet another thing imposed on them which they think has little to do with reading, math, writing and other subjects for they are held responsible.
The third approach is to for teachers to incorporate the new literacies as tools to help their students answer questions and solve problems based upon educational goals. In this approach the new literacies are attained by students as “just in time” proficiencies instead learning them “just in case”. Therefore, students see the new literacies as integral and necessary skills and attitudes which help them find the answers they seek. The important thing is that there is a strong base of research which indicates that teachers who do take a problem-based / product-based learning approach which incorporates the new literacies find their students’ scores on standardized tests rising more than those who take the other approach.
It can be daunting for teachers to try something new, but in my experiences I find the vast majority of teachers always looking for better ways for their students to learn. If given proper assistance such as meaningful professional development and technical support, the new literacies can be an integral part of the ongoing learning process.
posted by Rich Levine | 12:07 PM
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