Want to bring more space into your class room?
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
“Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.”
Today’s is the Great Carina Nebula – awesome!
Always on the look out for new open source tools for teachers. Check out this one http://www.pixlr.com/editor/.
Here’s a newly released product called TextED. It’s designed to teach safe texting (bullying, image sharing) and looks like it will be great resource.
I love the site, lots of fun. It appears to be in a 100 school trial and produced by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
The following link is to a short clip that is illustrative of what students face today. The disconnect between teaching method and how they learn.
It’s important to Klikables because it is this gap we hope to be a small part of closing.
Although it is a university or college scenario, it applies to elementary and high school students as well. In fact, if I’ve noticed one big trend, it is that children are having more access to technology and greater proficiency than I could ever have imagined.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
Since this was produced in 2007 a plethora of new tools have entered the market. I can see where we’re headed and it’s so exciting it makes me wish I were a student again. I was shown this link at the New Media Literacies Webinar last night where Appropriation and Judgment were discussed. Be sure to sign up for the next one!
Sometimes when people talk about “how children don’t read anymore” I hear others say, “Sure they do! In fact they read more than ever. Online.” The question therefore becomes, is there a difference? What have we lost without the sit down and read a single block of text style of reading? As a novelist, I say a lot, but that’s only because I enjoy losing myself in a story for four hundred pages. I grew up with that.
I see students just as focused flipping from academic papers to wiki’s to blog posts, just an engrossed and for just as long. Or are they? When you read a novel, you read from line to line. Not so with the web. One study suggests that we read online in the pattern of the letter F.
“Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education.
55.4 (Sept 19, 2008): NA. CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals).
Gale. Carleton University. 9 May 2009
So we read deeply the first paragraph.
Less so the second.
And then essentially scroll down
The left hand side of the page
Searching out keywords.
And by the time you
Get to the bottom. Few are
Actually reading at all.
And Well, I like blue bikes.
Because they are slippery.
And flap like penguins.
Don’t forget the eggs.
Recently I was asked how I would define New Media Literacy, and already I’m wondering if we’re talking about the wrong thing. Whether we should be discussing literacy (which has its own plethora of definitions) in terms of both new and old paradigms combined. This has been called Transliteracy.
And in a Liveblog you can listen in on the Transliteracy Conference 2010 currently going on in Leicester, UK, where Sue Thomas is defining the term.
“The ability to read, write and interact across a variety of platforms and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.”
On Bobbi Newman’s blog Librarianbyday.net, she also defines it in New Media style with a slide show.
I suppose whether we discuss Transliteracy or New Media Literacy it becomes a question of emphasis (but I don’t really believe you can achieve New Media Literacy without achieving some measure of traditional literacy skills). It does reveal how important it is for our educators to be trained across platforms. Who teaches New Media? Should it be in the arts or computer science? I’d lean to the former but where does the greatest aptitude and training currently lie?
This is more of a public service bulletin than a blog post, but if you’re interested in what new skills students need to be learning to engage in the new media literacies and wish to be a part of the discussion, you might consider getting in on MIT’s Project New Media Literacies webinar series.
It’s blogged about here. To learn more about the project’s views on the various skills to be discussed read their whitepaper (required reading imho) or watch their video.
To get the dates and learn how to attend visit their webinar page. Access is still not posted, but the first webinar is Feb 11 at 7p.m EST.
This has been a public service announcement.
I’m reading MIT press’ Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media, and in it is a quote from Roger Silverstone (RIP) regarding “proper distance” online:
“proper distance” emerges from the “search for enough knowledge and understanding of the other person or the other culture to enable responsibility and care. . . . We need to be close, but not too close, distant but not too distant.”
And it brought to mind one of the learnings I took from John Gardner’s book THE ART OF FICTION on writer’s craft. He speaks of “narrative distance”, which is the relative proximity which the author or narrator speaks to the reader. First person has a close narrative distance. Third Closed or Omniscient Third are further from the reader. The reader doesn’t get ‘inside the head’ of the protagonist. A lot of this depends on the ‘voice’ of the author as well.
All this to say that I’ve noted a very close narrative distance in today’s genre writing. First person is common place where this wasn’t the case even a decade ago, most thrillers were written in Third person. The author will often tell the reader the innermost thoughts of the protagonist.
Today, it is clear that what Silverstone calls “proper distance” online in terms of personal information sharing, status updates, location sharing, etc. is much closer than it was even ten years ago as well.
I wonder whether the online culture of sharing has changed the accepted norms of narrative distance in genre fiction?
Today Klikables writes itself into being. And we’re excited!
What’s this blog all about?
In researching various projects, we read all the latest research, and we read/watch/listen to pretty much anything that has to do with how kids are using the Internet. This blog is where we’ll highlight some of our favourites.
We’ll also make note of new tools we discover. How teachers are using New Media in the classroom. What amazing art artists have created on the web. Or simply something particularly cool that might interest you.
We’ll keep it short, sweet and relevant.
