Technology & Learning - May 2008 - (Page 26)

NCTE’s Recommendations for 21st-Century Literacy In February 2008, the National Council of Teachers of English adopted a new definition of 21st-century literacies. According to the NCTE Executive Committee, “The 21st century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies— from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms— are multiple, dynamic, and malleable.” More specifically, NCTE believes that 21st-century readers and writers need to: • Develop proficiency with the tools of technology; • Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally; • Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; • Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; • Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts; • Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments. SOURCE: www.ncte.org/about/gov/129117.htm Also encourage students to responsibly edit Wikipedia articles. Go over the site’s own policies and guidelines. Discuss what makes a reliable source and what makes a piece of information verifiable. Also, read together the “discussion” section of Wikipedia, where editors pose questions, raise concerns, and explain why they think certain items should be added, deleted, or modified. What makes a source viable? Another interesting learning opportunity for users of Wikipedia is the site’s explanation of what it is not— a dictionary, a blog, a Web directory, a vanity press, an online newspaper, a soapbox for opinion-sharing, or a publisher of original work. Analyzing such a list and getting students to define for themselves what makes an encyclopedia, a newspaper, and various other sources is a useful exercise. Such conversations might also involve a look at the advantages and disadvantages of various resources—not only with regard to the accuracy issues discussed earlier but also in terms of the fluidity and speed at which information is updated. Students’ use of the Internet for scholarship has moved beyond browsing. Bookmarks no longer suffice as the sole organizational tool needed to manage and organize information. Forward-thinking teachers are encouraging students to explore the new generation of options designed to connect them with digital media as well as with other human beings— tools such as del.icio.us (for organizing and sharing links with others), Flickr (for photo sharing), or aggregators such as Bloglines (for consolidating information based on RSS tags). Such tools help support an important National Council of Teachers of English literacy recommendation: the need for students to learn to manage “multiple streams of simultaneous information.” (See sidebar). Being aware of different media and their effectiveness at conveying information is another important component of 21st-century literacy. Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Are there times when video or music—or simple text, even—would be more effective? Having students compare diverse treatments of a single subject and critique the effectiveness of the media used is one way of exploring such issues. Encouraging them to experiment with more than one way of presenting their own research or ideas is another. Who owns the words? Copyright is a huge topic that goes beyond the scope of this article, but it is important for students living and interacting online to have a clear understanding of the legal issues involved in copying and redistributing the work of others. Some key concepts worth reiterating here include: ■ The creator of an original work— whether a student or a professional artist—automatically owns all rights to its use, with certain exceptions, including the exception for “fair use.” ■ Fair use allows people to use copy- righted materials, without paying or getting special permission, if they are using the materials for the purpose of education, review, satire, or journalism, and are 26 | www.techlearning.com http://www.ncte.org/about/gov/129117.htm http://www.techlearning.com

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Technology & Learning - May 2008

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