Connect 2.0

Reading and writing = literacy, right?

Reading and writing used to mean pencil and paper, chalk and board, and one author (one source of knowledge) to many readers (receivers of knowledge).

But 21st century reading and writing is different… We now have:

• information constantly at our fingertips
• two way communication
• participatory culture
• multimedia streaming
• easy publishing and contributing ideas

The speed and nature of literacy has changed.

Our students need to learn how to be literate in this new environment. To get us started, we will be using a wide variety of communication tools in our elementary classrooms. Tools include:

• blogs (why?)
• wikis (why?)
• podcasts (why?)
• multimedia (why?)
• social networking (why?)

We are educating 21st century students. Our students need to know how to:

• learn how to find appropriate information,
• learn independently how to utilize the information they find, and
• learn how to communicate their learning to a wider audience.

These skills have become essential in today’s society and will only become even more important as the wealth of information available to us grows every second of every day. At the learning hub we’ve already started to bring exciting and engaging 21st century literacy projects to our students. We can’t wait to see how much they learn!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 2:51 pm and is filed under 21st Century Literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.