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It's been a while...

It's been a while since you have heard from me. A lot has been going on in the last few months. Change is happening faster than ever before. There is so much to wrap our minds around in education FOR OUR OWN LEARNING and in consequence also for the learning of our students, of course. 

We can't sit still and rest on the way we have always done things or the way we have always learned and taught things. The urgency is real, the responsibility enormous and the work important!

Join me in your renewed and continued commitment to staying relevant and in continuous process of "becoming" literate!

Information and Media Literacy for 2020 and Beyond...

As an information literacy problem, it becomes an urgent amplified challenge for our schools to teach the skills for critical thinking when it comes to digital information. How to proceed when most teachers did not grow up in the era of fake news and are hesitant to tackle the subject with their own students?

Adults may need media literacy even more than students is the title of a recent article by Eliza Newlin Carlin… and I fully agree… Just because our students might be digital natives, it does not necessarily mean, that they are digitally literate.

Read more

Fit2Learn

This is a potential roadmap (among many others)… a guide to getting fit to learn how to learn in (only a few weeks away from) the third decade of the 21st century and to teach and educate children who will live into the 22nd century!

Designing learning experiences for teachers I work with is one of my passions. Learning experiences that give educators, who were most likely born in the 20th century with their own formal education lacking some of the new skills and literacies that the 21st century is demanding, NEED to have their own learning experiences where they can LIVE these new forms of teaching and learning first hand AND be metacognitive of the changes in order to translate these experiences into their own classrooms with their students. This requires educators to be open to learning how to learn (again) in a new century, for the future and not our own past.

Read more and download the infographic for Fit2Learn

A new approach to contemporary documentation and learning

What is learning? How do we look for, capture, reflect on, and share learning to foster meaningful and active engagement? This vital resource helps educators answer these questions. A Guide to Documenting Learning facilitates student-driven learning and helps teachers reflect on their own learning and classroom practice. This unique how-to book

• Explains the purposes and different types of documentation
• Teaches different "LearningFlow" systems to help educators integrate documentation throughout the curriculum
• Provides authentic examples of documentation in real classrooms
• Is accompanied by a robust companion website where readers can find even more documentation examples and video tutorials

Welcome 2020

More Dangerous than Technology

I shared my worries a few weeks ago, as I was diving deeper into information, media and news literacies. As the 2020 election in the United States approaches, so are my concerns. As the gap between political parties is continue to widen, families, friends and neighbors are growing further and further apart, increasingly incapable of talking with each other, finding it impossible to see the others’ point of view.

I sincerely hope that the issue of information, media and news literacies is not being dismissed as the problem of one party line or the other. I am hoping, I will be able to present the issue at hand from a non-political point of view, but through the lens of EDUCATION. Read more...

Documentation of Learning About News, Media & Information Literacy

My (and Grandaughter’s) Life as a Reader- 10 Years Later

This is the third post in a series of posts, I am planning to be writing alongside my life. The Title: My Life as a Reader. You can read the previous two posts here: My (and Mother’s) Life as a Reader (2010) and My Life as a Reader- 6 Years Later (2016).

Here is the explanation of the challenge, I wrote back then:

I participated in a Blogging Challenge in 2010. We were supposed to write a post about our Life As a Reader. The challenge consists in simply making a bullet list about your connections, reflections and thoughts as a reader. It is an exercise of putting pen to paper (finger to keyboard) and not lifting your hands for 5/10/15 minutes or until you emptied your mind completely and can’t think of anything else. This exercise was very valuable, reflective and fun. Since six years have passed and I thought it might be time for an update. The world around us has changed tremendously. How has this change affected my reading habits? I recorded 62 bullets about my life as a reader in 2010, please see part II from #63-100 (six years later) below.  I wonder about the reading habits my grandchildren will have when they are grandparents? I would love to start documentation of their lives as readers. How about you? Will you accept the challenge to share YOUR Life As a Reader?
 

Upgrade your KWL Chart to the 21st Century

Learning to Blog FOR your Students

 A series of seven blog posts digging deeper into learning about blogging FOR your students.

1. Reading Blog
2. Writing Blogs
3. Commenting on Blogs
4. Connecting Blogs
5. The Reciprocation Factor
6. The Consistency Factor
7. The Quality Factor

• What is learning? What is evidence of learning?
• How do we look for, capture, reflect on, and share learning to foster meaningful and active engagement?
• How do we amplify learning as members of a globally connected learning community?

Why Digital Portfolios?

The simple act of having digital portfolios for your students doesn’t necessarily mean they are working. The learners need to own them and see valuable benefits, use them to learn and think about their own thinking.  Digital Portfolios are so much more than a digital version of a paper portfolio or someone’s writing journal. The power of portfolios are in revisiting and connecting learning artifacts. The learner does not only share the “best” work, but also captures the process of learning that it took to get to the “best” work of this particular moment in time. Digital Portfolio work raises awareness of and deepens the learner’s “now” literacies and skills. 

Why the Urgency for the “Now” Literacies?

Literacy is being defined as the ability to read and write and being able to express and communicate our ideas to others effectively. As we shift and extend our notion of what it means to be literate, we have to acknowledge that merely reading and writing in text form and on analog platforms is simply not enough to call yourself literate. The skills and abilities MUST include reading and writing in various media forms and on multiple platforms INCLUDING digital spaces. We can’t continue to differentiate between our analog and digital world.

A new approach to contemporary documentation and learning

What is learning? How do we look for, capture, reflect on, and share learning to foster meaningful and active engagement? This vital resource helps educators answer these questions. A Guide to Documenting Learning facilitates student-driven learning and helps teachers reflect on their own learning and classroom practice. This unique how-to book

• Explains the purposes and different types of documentation
• Teaches different "LearningFlow" systems to help educators integrate documentation throughout the curriculum
• Provides authentic examples of documentation in real classrooms
• Is accompanied by a robust companion website where readers can find even more documentation examples and video tutorials