Category Archives: Assignment 1: Week 1 Work

Week 1 Summative: “21st Century Thinking” is Different, We Need to Change Our Compass in Education

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Reflecting on this week’s explorations, many aspects of the Connected Self and its disconnect in current educational practice have concerned me. In “Why School?” Will Richardson articulated the need for “different” education, not simply “better.” This stood out to me because I have witnessed a myriad of Ministry or administrative mandates regarding “integrating technology” in the classroom that all seemed like add-ons or poorly applied band-aids.

For example, in my school next year Grade 8 students, who once had an IT course, will now have a handful of sessions in the computer lab learning word processing and Power Point. Their “lessons” will be one period in the computer lab, separate and isolated from “the curricular” learning they were experiencing in Humanities 8 or Math and Science 8. The philosophy is that then students know how to use the tools and can utilize these skills in their future classes when the need arises. To me, this is a prominent example of the disconnection within the education system of the cognitive, cultural and technological dimensions of the connected self. For me, I believe that the cognitive dimension of the connected self is so disconnected within our schooling system that we are not unlearning and learning as our knowledge era reality requires. In TeachThought’s “How 21st Century Thinking is Different,” it is clear that “in an era of brazen technology,” in such new contexts as “digital environments that function as humanity-in-your-pocket—demand new approaches and new habits. Specifically, new habits of mind.” Currently, our education system is not adequately addressing these “new habits of mind,” and instead seems to launch into practices without the cognitive dimension as a guiding compass.

Furthermore, at the precipice of week one’s conclusion I find that the need for a concerted effort to integrate “The New Literacies” in the use of and through technology is very important to me. We opened class with a discussion of social media in education, and this is an area I would like to investigate as the course progresses. I think that many of the emerging literacies are involved in social media, and I would like to collaborate to explore how social media can be utilized to broaden perspectives, deepen understanding, develop a more unified cognitive, cultural and technological connected self within the classroom.

Information Literacy Won’t be Contained by a Definition’s Borders

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According to the ALA information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (2013). This is a simple, summative definition, which are education system’s prescribed learning outcomes are burdened with. Although such definitions offer a starting point. They ignore the complexity, flexibility, and multiplicity of such concepts as information literacy. Naturally, being able to “locate” information, which in today’s world is primarily digital, requires the numerous competencies associated with digital literacy. Further, to “evaluate” information requires the deep-processing skills of critical and media literacy. In addition, “to use” information can and should be in a multitude of modes, therefore requiring social literacy, visual literacy and more. The reading of our world is far from as simple as the definitions indicate.

Points of Inquiry, a guide produced by BCTLA does not attempt to concretely define information literacy, but rather, provides a framework for developing the skills. These include: connect and wonder, investigate, construct, express, reflect, and repeat continuously. I think that this is a more appropriate framework than the all-encompassing definitions ALA and the B.C. Ministry of Education attempt. Furthermore, Donald Leu of Syracuse University expresses it better than I ever could:

“The new literacies include the skills, strategies, and insights necessary to successfully exploit the rapidly changing information and communication technologies that continuously emerge in our world. A more precise definition of the new literacies may never be possible to achieve since their most important characteristic is that they regularly change; as new technologies for information and communication continually appear, new literacies emerge (Bruce, 1997; Leu, in press a; Reinking, 1998). Moreover, these changes often take place faster than we are able to completely evaluate them. Regular change is a defining characteristic of the new literacies.”

This seemingly simple observation has profound consequences for literacy and education. It means that we must help students learn how to learn, just as Richardson advocated (2012), in all literacies, and emerging literacies. However, today’s class exploration of varying mandates and draft curriculum, such as the Digital Literacy Standards, illuminate that there is little clarity. B.C. Performance Standards expresses the need for social responsibility to be taught, but it is unclear how this aligns with the digital literacy mandate, or even with specific courses. Unfortunately, as such, when these vital competencies are unclear cognitively and communicatively, they will be unclear in the classroom. The glimmer of hope is that educators are incredibly resilient and resourceful, turning to social media (such as Twitter and Pearltrees), and to each other, to develop the Professional Learning Networks that assist our teaching to the moving targets that are information literacy(ies).

“Why School?” and Our Ever-Changing Connected Self

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School has always been a place that prepares children for the world, for their world, which they will inherit and co-create. Will Richardson, in “Why School?”, illuminates the drastic disconnect  which exists between our current education system and our present and future world. Our outdated visions of learning, or misguided educational reforms, are resting on a faulty foundation of values and practices that serve only to increase the disconnect between our students’ education and what literacies, what competencies they need to navigate our world and their futures.

In his book Richardson acknowledges numerous faulty functioning of the connected self within the education system:

  • the cultural dimension of the connected self, the collaboration and exchanges, may occur within individual classes, between individual educators, yet there is a critical lack of transparency.
  • the technological dimension of the connected self is transforming at an exponential rate, as is our cognitive values and practices. However, what is deeply flawed is the disconnect between these changes occurring in the techno-saturated world at large, yet the education system and our learning schema and practices remain largely stagnant.

Through Richardson’s work it is abundantly clear that we need to repair the disconnect between our “real world” connected self and the self we are creating through our current education system. Richardson calls for a re-envisioning of education and learning, and as I understand it, he is championing a re-envisioned connected self within education. This starts from the core, from the cognitive beliefs and practices, but continually through our cultural and technological dimensions. A mere reform, as is underway in the United States and “No Child Left Behind” is not the solution, no where near it.

As our world changes rapidly, and education systems and practices lag, the question “why school?” is still essential. For when students can find their answers through youtube tutorials and many more tech tools at their disposal, what makes school relevant? I believe part of the answer lies in this video: The New Media Literacies

Dr. David Warner in Educating in the Knowledge Era articulates numerous “21st Century Literacies” also championed by Richardson. These include empowering learners to be purposeful agents of change. Without facilitating these new literacies, new competencies, we are simply “successfully teaching” individuals to be illiterate, passive citizens of the world. For example, our students are drowning in“infobesity”: the cognitive and physical impact of an over-abundance of information. Nonetheless, together, educators, students and “strangers,” as Richardson says, can connect and learn how to learn, learn how to manage the sheer magnitude of information and to critically think, to create, analyze, synthesize and more. I believe this is part of the answer to “why school?” and this is the area I hope to endeavor within LLED 447 (and beyond): how to manage the “infobesity” and develop systems of purposeful connectivity and discovery in education, so the question “why school?” is a positively rhetorical one.