Future Continuous Learning - Thoughts on Education and Learning Today

“Reader” has long been a facet of my identity. I was one of those kids who would bring a book to read at the table when out to eat with my family. My “journey to reader” wasn’t always a straight line though. Due to a surgery, I missed the first couple of months of 1st grade, which set me back in my reading development for the rest of the year. I remember reading haltingly and nervously, slowly sounding out each syllable and for awhile just not enjoying the process. Thankfully my parents were able to get me a reading tutor the following summer, and I somehow made up for lost time. Then came college, where, as an English major, I suddenly had hundreds of pages of reading to do each week, and I just couldn’t do it: I couldn’t comprehend complex text at that volume. So I froze in anxiety about it and just… didn’t attempt to. I’m not proud of it, but my inability to successfully complete and comprehend all of my reading led me to even attempt very little of it. My “reading” at that time i...

And just like that, EDC534 Digital Authorship comes to a close. This class came at the exact right time for me as I start my new position in a new district. I'm excited to embark on the action research project I've laid out in this final project. Over the next year I will consider:  How can technology integrationists utilize digital citizenship themes when working with teachers? Can digital citizenship inspire new ways of utilizing digital tools across the school curriculum? More in my ignite video below. Thank you to my classmates and to Dr. Hobbs, for continuing to inspire with content and pedagogy. I've learned so much. See you all this summer at the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy!

The latest creation from this #EDC534 journey is <drumroll> this Powtoon!  This project was admittedly a bit outside my comfort zone. Write an essay? Sure, I can do that. Develop a collaborative video? That made my palms sweat a bit. As my partner, Jessica Cabral-Lafreniere , and I said over email, collaborating digitally wasn't simple. We used various tools for assistance: email, a Google Doc for co-note taking, then this Powtoon. We came together over a vague theme -- goals of digital learning opportunities in the classroom. We were each approaching this from different perspectives though (me from secondary education, she from primary; me from the classroom, she from a school library), and so what we each saw as goals was slightly different. I was inspired to think about this as I start a new job and begin conversations with teachers at all ends of the digital learning spectrum. It was helpful for me to re-answer for myself the question: yeah, why SHOULD we be getting...

When discussing how to implement creative projects in the classroom, a question can arise as to why? What are the benefits of creative learning activities? Actually, there are quite a few. Creativity is good for society. You might have heard before that ours is a “knowledge economy.” Our predominate export is no longer things we’ve constructed, but ideas we’ve generated. And if your economy relies on ideas then it relies on a creative populace. In her article, “ The Cult of Creativity: Opposition, Incorporation, Transformation ,” Kirsten Drotner writes, “If knowledge is an engine of societal survival, obviously new knowledge is its fuel” (p. 78). And you can’t have new knowledge without creativity because, as Drotner notes, “creativity is the precursor of innovation” (p. 73).  Creativity is good for the individual. And if creativity is good for society, then getting creative is good for the individual as well. Drotner writes, “Creativity is a means to an end, namely competenc...

As a middle school digital literacy teacher, one of the toughest topics to unpack is online surveillance. When we start discussing the Patriot Act and the use of cell-site simulators by some local law enforcement agencies , for example, I worry that students walk away from class feeling frightened, with vague notions that “the government” is “watching” them. While I don’t want to sow the seeds of paranoia, the fact is that government agencies (and corporations, and hackers) really are watching what users do online, and I want my students to know about it. So together we build understanding of what governmental and corporate surveillance looks like, who sponsors it, and the motivations for this surveillance. We also look at how protections from surveillance differ around the world.  But inevitably comes that comment. You know the one. We’ve all heard it: from friends, coworkers, family members.   “Well, I don’t care. I’m not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide.”...

I'm always thinking about how technology can enhance understanding and learning, but also how it can just as easily diminish those same things. Trying to tell the difference requires a sensitivity to how technology more generally enhances and diminishes our lives. I'm consumed by these thoughts as I put together a lesson on skills needed for the digital age. I'm teaching this class to 11th and 12th graders as part of a digital citizenship unit in a civics class (more on that in future posts). To think about what skills are necessary I'm thinking about the pitfalls that kids and adults alike fall prey to when using the Internet.  Howard Gardner and Katie Davis' 2013 book  The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World  provides some great insight on this topic. Gardner and Davis explore how the Internet and the technologies we use to go online most often lead to only surface level understanding of comple...

I love this post titled  Why I Hate "Digital Citizenship"  from Keith Heggart on Edutopia and Heggart's own website . Heggart in fact really cares about digital citizenship, but not narrowly defined as keeping children safe online, as it so often is. He distinguishes between digital responsibility and digital citizenship, and writes, "It's kind of like teaching children to cross the road safely, and then claiming that's teaching citizenship. Citizenship is how to participate - safely, yes, but also meaningfully and thoughtfully - in civil society, in political, social and other spheres." The verb "participate" is the key. Digital citizenship education is about so much more than telling teenagers "what to post and what not to post", which, as Heggart says, is a very noble endeavor, but just doesn't go far enough in our quest to grow active citizens. I'm developing a digital citizenship unit within a high school civics course,...