Jon Pederson wrote a blog yesterday (Challenge to the “New Information Environment”) about literacy in the “New Information Environment”. In it, he mentioned me and Will Richardson (hey, I’m going to notice any mention of me and Will Richardson in the same article), and other luminaries, in a discussion of literacy. I would add several others to the list who are doing some serious work in defining these literacies. I listened yesterday to a podcast from Wesley Fryer with Chris Moersch talking about what Chris calls Digital Fluency. I’d known about Chris’ work through his LOTI (Levels of Technology Integration), but wasn’t aware that he had done so much thinking and research about literacy.
I’d also add, among many others, Don Leu, and his team at the University of Connecticut. One of the projects they have been involved in is using security tools (software used to keep track of workers productivity by recording every keystroke made on their machines) to track students’ efforts to answer questions and solve problems using the World Wide Web. They have identified a range of higher order thinking skills required to answer basic low level questions within a vast, highly indexed, hypermedia information environment (WWW). Very cool stuff.
Jon went on to ask two questions that I think are very important — and I’d like to take a stab.
When is it developmentally appropriate to introduce this type of thinking to students? I’m confident that this type of critical thinking/information gathering can be applied at high school. I know that my 3 1/2 year old won’t understand. We teach students about evaluating resources in middle school, but are they truly ready at that point to deconstruct a Wikipedia entry and be a critical, independent thinker?
As teachers, I would say that it starts at the beginning — kindergarten. Jon is not talking about technology skills. It’s confusing that this discussion usually happens among technology educators within the context of technology considerations, but the skills are about information.
Treating content as conversation cracks straight through to the way that we talk in our classrooms. When a teachers says, “The world is like this…”, then that teacher is conditioning students to assume that because it was said in a classroom, by a teacher, then we must assume that it is true. Those students will have to be retrained to understand critical evaluation of information as anything other than just another academic task.
Instead, the teacher should say, “According to this author, researcher, scientist, with these experiences, the world is like this…” Including supporting information with the information we are presenting, conditions students to understand that content must be coupled with supporting information, in order for that content to be useful. Again, it cuts right down to how the kindergarten teacher teaches every day.
What percentage of adults have the required skills to a) navigate this environment and b) be critical consumers of information? Can we expect our students to be proficient with these skills when adults aren’t?
This is an excellent question, and I’d love to see the percents myself. Pew Internet and American Life project has a lot of good statistics, but I’d answer the question this way. The adults who have managed to gain these skills are those who had to. People who work in professions that have access to networked, digital information and owe their success to decisions based on that information, have gained those skills, or else they don’t do it any more. You learn it when you have to. It’s called life-long learning.
What’s really hurting our children is that most teachers don’t have to. They can continue to teach with five-year-old textbooks, cut off from the world by four solid walls, and experience the success that their leaders expect. They won’t teach contemporary literacy, because they don’t need it themselves, because they’re still working within an antiquated industrial age institution.
In preparing for a keynote address in Minnesota later this week, I found a fascinating video about a virtual reality tool designed for young children to learn in. It was entirely compelling. Regular readers know that I believe that we need classrooms and teachers to personally guide students into their futures. But unless we become a whole lot more relevant to our students and their future, then we’re just going to drop off the edge.
But it’s going to be a beautiful day here in Dallas, Texas, where I’ll be working with teacher in a 1:1 school district. Great fun!