Two more questions?

[DEMacIsaac]

I’ve been trying to think of more questions for the third discussion. I reflected again back to the issues of time and quality.... and became “devils’ advocate.” Here goes...


Number one
If we are going to add the teaching of these new literacies... what can we abandon as no longer important.... are there remnants of knowledge, skills, attitudes from the past that no longer match the requirements of the future citizen? If we are going to teach new things, we cannot do that without the "selective abandonment" of some other things from the curriculum. There is only so much time available....

Number two
If the students are self motivated, directing the progress and final results of a project, then what factors do we need to be proactive about so that we don’t lose quality in the process (and perhaps the product)?

Dawn

[Therese Mair]

Hello!
I hope you are all getting though these challenging readings.
Dawn, your question number one intriqued me. What can we abandon as no longer important? I thought first of older technologies and wondered what people would think if they saw me at home. I sort of live in the past. I have an old family home built over a hundred years ago. I have a dial telephone still (and only one phone in the house) and don't have a cell phone. I don't even have cable TV. That means I only get CBC and the reception is very poor. This means that I rarely watch TV. I do sometimes pick up a movie as I have a DVD player. I have a computer but only Dial-up service. That means getting into ibrary is a long, slow process. So, what I'm trying to say is, I'm rather behind the times when it comes to technology.
However, I am interested and I want to become a leader of technology at school, but don't really relish the thought of it entering my home. I run a small museum here in the summer time and am very interested in helping people make connections with the past. However, as an educator, I need to help my children make connections with the future. How can I do this and be effective at it, yet still keep my values for the past?

[DEMacIsaac]

Threse,
Marlene put me in touch with this web site on meda awareness. Maybe it will help. Although most initiatives are for older grades.

http://www.media-awareness.ca/blog/index.cfm?catID=20

Also, have you seen any virtual museum website? There are many, even the Louvres in Paris
Dawn

[Marlene Asselin]

Thoughtful questions Dawn as you ponder the relationship between your personal and professional life. In my work and as a result of having 4 "net generation" children, new technologies are rampant in my home! My challenge is advocating their use for "new ethos" purposes -- sometimes not very successfuly but that confirms for me the need for schools to take that responsibilty fully and seriously.

[Rosemary Driscoll]

Good questions Dawn. I've been wondering about basic skills and a teacher brought that up with me today. She was referring to teaching 6 + 1 Traits of Writing but she said how can we be concerned about voice and tone when students can't even write a sentence? And in math, if they don't know that a nickel = 5 pennies, how can we expect them to understand deeper concepts and work independently towards their understanding?

That's always been my question when being told to teach math through problem-solving. We still have to teach kids the basic skills so that they feel confident tackling those problems and they strategies to deal with them. The response has always been, they'll pick up the skills, but I'm rather skeptical. We still need to teach them, especially some kids who need it because they're not "getting" things as quickly as others or because they're not motivated.

So, what do we abandon in order to fit new literacies into our teaching?

And yes, how much input can we give without turning it into a teacher directed enquiry? It should be teacher-guided but is there a fine line there?

[Amanda Biggar]

Hi Dawn, In response to your first question, my thoughts are that if we add teaching of new literacies, we don't abandon anything, we adapt what we are doing to ensure that students are able to develop these skills and later so that they practice employing these skills.
Amanda B.

[Marlene Asselin]

Excellent questions Dawn as others have also voiced these concerns about re-configuring the literacy curriculum to best serve our students, and what will be the role of the teacher in classrooms where relationships have shifted from authority models? Explore these in the next section of your program as you get a chance to apply practice to critical theory.

[Kim MacIsaac]

Hi Dawn
I think it goes back to our earlier question what is new literacies? A summary of a magazine article I quoted in a previous discussion stated that we are still doing the same research and learning that we have always done but we are using faster and easier ways of accessing and obtaining information that was not other wise available to use before.
Kim

[Charity Becker]

Dawn, your second question really stands out for me. Particularly at the high school level, so many students are marks driven that they only care about the final mark, not how they get there. There has to be some way that we can assess the process -- maybe self-reflective journals -- but of course these types of things are always tricky to assign a "mark" to. Definitely a very good question.
Charity