Chris Lehmann (A View from the Classroom), posted a blog yesterday responding to my recent post, The Problem of Integrating Technology.
This may sound like semantics to lots of folks, but it’s not. As long as we talk about technology integration, then we run the risk of ghettoizing what we do… putting it in the corner, if you will. It remains too easy for technology to remain what “those” teachers do in “that” room that no one else in the school ever goes to…
I delivered the address yesterday, to almost three-hundred principals and central office folks in Charlotte. Many of them got it, commenting that this was a new way of thinking about modernizing classrooms. Other principals (whom I grew to respect after discussing the issues with them) did not initially get it. They said, “But you are integrating technology, you are bringing technology in.”
True. We come from a century that was defined by its technology (cars, planes and jets, satellites, space craft, computers, the atomic bomb. However, as our students are playing their video games, it’s not the machines that they’re thinking about. It’s the information. The technology is as much in the background to them, as paper is to us. This is where we need to be. Like our students, we need to be thinking about the information and adopting into what and how we teach — the changing nature of information (networked, digital, overwhelming [NDO]).
Chris goes on to pose the following questions for us to consider as professional educators.
When we think about expanding the notion of literacy to include all of the ways we expect students to digest, synthesize and create information, then the questions we ask become different. Just a few that come to mind are…
* How will our students learn when they leave our classrooms?
Me: They’ll learn from and within a new information environment (NDO).
* What is the revelance to how we learn in the classroom with the way we learn outside of it?
Me: There is little relevance, unless we are teaching from the new information environment (NDO).
* Will our students be prepared to be information providers, not just information consumers?
Me: If we teach them from the new information environment, where content becomes as much a conversation as it is a product to be consumed.
* What are the new modalities of information storage / retrevial / transferral, etc… that our students will face and how do we prepare them for it?
Me: It’s all in the new information environment (NDO).
My usual 2¢ worth
Dave,
Great take on this topic! I was reading what John was saying over at pedersondesigns as well and left a comment there. I wanted to share this with you as well…
A lot of what you are talking about here can also be seen in Information Power. Only Information Power was last updated rather a few years ago (1998) and so doesn’t talk about blogging. A new version is supposed to be out in the next year or so.
Information Power is the “bible” for school library media specialists. The learning standards addressed in the book are available online at http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/informationpower/InformationLiteracyStandards_final.pdf
In brief, they are:
Information Literacy
1) accessing information effeiciently and effectively
2) evaluate information critically and competently
3) use information accurately and creatively
Independent Learning
4) pursue information related to interests
5) appreciate information in various forms
6) strive for excellence in information seeking
Social Responsibility
7) contribute to the learning community & recognize importance of information in a democratic society
8) be ethical about information
9) participate in group information efforts
So what do we have in there?
I see Wikipedia in the access, evaluation, pursuit and participation standards. The creative expressions speak to podcasting. Certainly everything from the read/write web speaks to being the active participant and seeing importance of shared information.
I think librarians have been working towards this new conversation about literacy for a while. Part of the problem there, though, is that the new conversation uses new tools (blogging, wikis, rss, podcasting, etc) that haven’t been as readily adopted in all libraries. In some cases I think the lack of adoption has been a resistance to fall into the technology “thing” fetish which you are talking about changing into a literacy/idea conversation. When the two worlds merge, there is real power and potential!
Libraries have long taught information literacy and lifelong learning tempered by ethics. The first edition of Information Power was published in 1988 with the same ideas of learning for a new information environment. The challenge for libraries now is to stay up with the new information environment without loosing sight of the basic tenents of literacy.
Wonderful thoughts here! Keep them coming!
I agree that information is what we need to really consider when we are thinking about technology in the classroom. So many people get hung up on the tools and not the products of the tools.
David — I gave a presentation at a scheduling workshop today and I thought of you because the professor who gave the keynote lecture was talking about changing the structure of class to allow for more use of technology… I was chatting with him afterwards and mentioned your work and your desire to change the terminology. He was very receptive…
Inch by inch, row by row…