Digital Eyes

Thanks to Carol Soma for her presentation at the Library Technology Conference yesterday. Carol spoke about how the brains of our younger generations are developing differently, in large part due to the amount of multimedia they are exposed to. Some interesting factoids that came out of her presentation: The visual cortex in brains today are 20% than they were 20 years ago Kids today are attracted to certain bright colors while ignoring black and white A study of young kids watching Sesame Street found that those who played while watching retained as much information as those who only watched Studies show that people master skills that they spend 10,000 hours practicing. Kids spend 10,000 hours playing video games, using cellphones, watching tv Less than 5,000 hours reading These are fascinating facts. What do they mean for education? We can discuss the implications of our changing brains. There is no question that there are benefits as well as detriments to these adaptati...

There has been a really interesting debate raging about 21st Century Skills and content in education. It seems that many in education think 21st Century Skills is counter to learning content. You can read about their views here: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2009/03/what_about_21st_century_skills.html http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/03/flawed-assumptions-undergird-the-partnership-for-21st-century-skills-movement-in-education/ http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/2009/02/25/21st-century-skills-fadbusters/ It is an interesting debate. Both sides make good points, but I find myself stuck in the middle. Why is teaching content counter to the goals of teaching 21st century skills? I for one can not question the need to learn deeply about a topic in order to have relevant arguments. I believe one must understand their topic in order to speak, write, or present on it. But where I believe 21st Century Skills is more than just a fad is in the way in which it shifts our u...

Check out Share a Story - Shape a Future ! It's a week long blog tour about issues connected to literacy. Each day centers around a theme. The themes include: Raising Readers Selecting Reading Material Reading Aloud Visiting the Library Technology and Reading What a great idea! Each day a group of bloggers will talk about one of these themes. You can easily link to all the blogs from this one blog: http://shareastory-shapeafuture.blogspot.com/2009/02/share-story-shape-future-blog-tour-for.html Enjoy!

You are more likely to behave yourself into new ways of thinking than thinking yourself into new ways of behaving.   -Michael Fullan Sometimes you just have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down.  -Kobi Yamada Thanks to my Personal Learning Network for sharing these quotes with me. I always learn so much from the people I work with. As I read these quotes and discussed them with colleagues, I began thinking about how quickly things are changing around us. Our model of careful and thoughtful deliberation before making decisions is not practical anymore. We need to change first and consider the implications as we go. Consider the first quote. We spend so much time TALKING about what technology means for education, but little time DOING the things that create actual change. Maybe it is time for us to start doing and see what happens. If we start using the technology, our thinking will follow. We will find the connections to curriculum and education. This is scary, but it...

I recently read "Writing in the 21st Century: A report from the National Council of Teachers of English" by NCTE Past President, Kathleen Blake Yancey. In it Yancey does a great job of looking at writing historically and framing how new forms of writing like email, text, Twitter, blogging, etc... have a place in education. She calls for educators to do three things: Developing new models of writing Designing a new curriculum supporting those models Creating models for teaching that curriculum This is a great challenge for us as educators. If we view writing as a powerful form of communication, we must begin to accept powerful tools as viable ways to write. Blogs, wikis, Twitter, and others allow our students to reach greater audiences, work collaboratively, and utilize multimedia effectively as part of written communication. We must explore these opportunities to maximize the potential of our students as writers. We must be open to changing formats of writing as well. The mes...

I have been having a lot of conversations recently about the power of social networking. Tools like delicious, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others are everywhere we look. Radio hosts invite people to Twitter about their shows. Everyone advertises by saying, "Check us out on Facebook!" What does it all mean? Many people I have spoken to are concerned that social networking is just online meaningless blabbering. I disagree. Think about how you converse. When you are talking to one or two people, everyone focuses on the same conversation. That is how email works as well. But what happens when 20 people are in a conference room? Multiple conversations start to take place. You, sitting in the middle, have to decide which conversation to participate in. Maybe halfway through, you decide to switch to another conversation. Such is the way social networking works. You don't pay attention to all of it, but choose what elements are relevant to you and ignore the rest. So why bot...

With my apologies to President John F. Kennedy, I think this is a question we all need to ask ourselves seriously. In my conversations with people, it often comes up, "What will technology do for us?" In other words, how will it make our test scores improve, how will it make my life easier, how will it make me a better teacher? The answer is simple. IT won't. However, if we ask the right question, technology can be a powerful tool to help us improve our students education, make our lives easier, and make us a better teacher. The question we need to ask is, "What are we going to do with technology?" If we use the technology to communicate with our colleagues, it will improve our lives. If we use the technology to access information, we will become better teachers. If we use the technology to creatively solve problems and communicate our ideas visually and in an engaging way, it will improve our students. If we use technology to connect our students to people arou...