I remember when, during my first year of teaching, I approached some of the administrators at my school and said "You know, literacy is very important... but I don't understand why we aren't teaching these kids digital or media literacy. I mean, words are wonderful and they serve a powerful purpose that visual media can't; but on the other hand, our modern society, global economy, and ease of media creation means more and more communication is occurring via graphics, video, animation, and websites. Why is there no focus on new literacy, including analyzing, using, and creating multimedia?"
I was lambasted for having such a thought, especially since I was a language arts teacher. Ironically, this was at a middle school in San Jose, California -- in the heart of Silicon Valley, the birthplace of "new media." This was the home of Apple, Cisco, Oracle, eBay, Adobe, and Google. And these schools were saying that technology and multimedia literacy are irrelevant??
Lo and behold, 8 years later and the higher powers (NCLB) certainly haven't shifted their focus... but a lot of sensible and rational people have started to realize the validity and importance of a "new" definition of literacy. The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory and the Metiri Group (2003) provide a definition of Literacy for the Digital Age which includes verbal/traditional literacy, scientific literacy, economic literacy, technological literacy, visual literacy, information literacy, multicultural literacy, and global awareness. These are all things which I argued were becoming increasingly critical skills for students to be independent citizens and contributors in our global society.
The original (and often still-held) viewpoint on learning "tech skills" or tech literacy is that students can get those abilities by occasionally attending a computer class or computer lab session, or (even more fallacious) that they will automatically acquire these skills on their own since most students have computers at home.
Fortunately, many forward-thinking schools and teachers are starting to realize that, although students may become quite adept at learning skills they want to learn (Facebook, MySpace, iPhones, texting, Twitter, YouTube and video games), these may not exactly be the skills that will translate into productivity or success throughout their lives. For that, they need frequent guidance and opportunity.
To see how such skills can be seamlessly incorporated into other important higher-order thinking, we can look to Bloom's Taxonomy -- a long-standing and widely adopted hierarchy of cognitive abilities in students. If we simply look into what actions are required at each level of the taxonomy -- as Andrew Churches (2008) has done -- we will see that computer skills can be incorporated, learned, reinforced, and used as tools at every stage of cognitive growth.
Given the reasonableness and reality of this situation, it would be wise to start adopting and strengthening such skills immediately. To this end, ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) has developed National Educational Technology standards (NETS) for students. These standards reinforce and delineate the types of skills laid out both by the Metiri Group and by Mr. Churches -- and, by extension, Benjamin Bloom -- to prepare the students of today for the world of tomorrow.
I was lambasted for having such a thought, especially since I was a language arts teacher. Ironically, this was at a middle school in San Jose, California -- in the heart of Silicon Valley, the birthplace of "new media." This was the home of Apple, Cisco, Oracle, eBay, Adobe, and Google. And these schools were saying that technology and multimedia literacy are irrelevant??
Lo and behold, 8 years later and the higher powers (NCLB) certainly haven't shifted their focus... but a lot of sensible and rational people have started to realize the validity and importance of a "new" definition of literacy. The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory and the Metiri Group (2003) provide a definition of Literacy for the Digital Age which includes verbal/traditional literacy, scientific literacy, economic literacy, technological literacy, visual literacy, information literacy, multicultural literacy, and global awareness. These are all things which I argued were becoming increasingly critical skills for students to be independent citizens and contributors in our global society.
The original (and often still-held) viewpoint on learning "tech skills" or tech literacy is that students can get those abilities by occasionally attending a computer class or computer lab session, or (even more fallacious) that they will automatically acquire these skills on their own since most students have computers at home.
Fortunately, many forward-thinking schools and teachers are starting to realize that, although students may become quite adept at learning skills they want to learn (Facebook, MySpace, iPhones, texting, Twitter, YouTube and video games), these may not exactly be the skills that will translate into productivity or success throughout their lives. For that, they need frequent guidance and opportunity.
To see how such skills can be seamlessly incorporated into other important higher-order thinking, we can look to Bloom's Taxonomy -- a long-standing and widely adopted hierarchy of cognitive abilities in students. If we simply look into what actions are required at each level of the taxonomy -- as Andrew Churches (2008) has done -- we will see that computer skills can be incorporated, learned, reinforced, and used as tools at every stage of cognitive growth.
Given the reasonableness and reality of this situation, it would be wise to start adopting and strengthening such skills immediately. To this end, ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) has developed National Educational Technology standards (NETS) for students. These standards reinforce and delineate the types of skills laid out both by the Metiri Group and by Mr. Churches -- and, by extension, Benjamin Bloom -- to prepare the students of today for the world of tomorrow.
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