Reflection

The Internet does not leave today’s students awestruck because of its many capacities; it is simply an everyday tool. Many teachers recall referring to hardcover encyclopedias and maybe even, an informative computer program to locate information about particular topics. Not surprisingly, these are things of the past. Just as we were taught to locate information in an encyclopedia, today’s students must be taught how to use the Internet effectively as a learning tool. Throughout the past few weeks, I have gained a greater understanding of how many new literacy skills must be taught in order for students to become proficient in the 21st century. Simply put, the definition of “literate” has definitely changed.

The new literacy skills include: questioning, searching, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating. Prior to this course, I simply went through the motions of using these skills in my everyday life and never put much thought into the importance of the skills. Although many of these skills were self-taught, today’s students need explicit modeling and guided practice beginning at the early stages of their schooling careers because they will be required to develop and use these new literacy skills in order to be considered literate in the 21st century.

One goal that I am creating for myself is to utilize more collaborative learning, especially with others outside of our school and classroom. Will Richardson states that it is important for our classrooms to have “thin walls” when teaching our students the new literacies. “If we sincerely want to prepare students to read, write, and edit their way through complex online networks, we need to make these literacies part of the way we do business as educators/learners” (Richardson, 2009, p. 31). To support this thinking, I plan to set up a collaborative project with one of my good friends who teaches Third Grade at another school. Every year, my Kindergarten class creates a fairytale during our fairytale unit and this year, I think it would be fun to create a digital fairytale between the two classes. This project would promote imagination and collaboration amongst the students in my classroom and it would provide a framework that allows for creativity in a timeframe that is appropriate for my students’ attention span. Such a project will not only teach my students valuable collaboration and new literacy skills, but they will also have a product that the students will be proud of.

Reference:
Richardson, W. (2009, March). Becoming network-wise. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 26–31.