Jdwilliams33

The Internet has changed what it means to be literate because communication; writing; and how we retrieve, share, critically evaluate, and synthesize information includes digital fluency, which requires a new set of skills.

Originally adapted from: opensourceway via Compfight cc

The development of this new skills set affects online reading comprehension and literacy (Coiro, 2007; Leu et al., 2005; Leu, Zawilinski, et al., 2007). Those who harness the power of the Internet have increased reading comprehension online relative to those who lack online reading skills regarding locating, critically evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating information (Coiro, 2011).

Therefore, we need to change how we teach literacy. Literacy must include sophisticated Internet searching techniques; evaluating the validity and reliability of the content; minding copyrights and giving proper attribution; communicating and collaborating with global audiences; and creating multimedia products.

Communication and conversation

Conversation builds language and literacy skills, requiring strong communication skills. Those skills include paraphrasing, asking clarifying questions, elaborating on main ideas, supporting ideas with examples, adding more information or challenging an idea, and synthesizing main points (Academic Conversations).


Engaging in classroom blogging doesn't guarantee increased literacy; however, when students partake in ongoing academic conversations with diverse audiences for various purposes, then students reap the benefits of blogging.

Furthermore, it helps address some of the learning standards.

Lucidpress is a slick new service from the same team that developed Lucidchart. Lucidpress is a slick tool for collaboratively creating multimedia documents.

If you watch the video below you'll notice that Lucidpress has some similarities to Google Documents. In fact, you can use your Google Account to sign into Lucidpress and you can use items stored in your Google Drive account in your Lucidpress documents. Lucidpress has commenting and sharing features that are similar to Google Drive too. What makes Lucidpress different from Google Documents is the selection of layouts and the layout customizations available to you. I look at Lucidpress as being the best of Apple's Pages and the best of Google Documents combined into one slick service.


Applications for Education
In the email that I received from the Lucidpress PR department I was informed that accounts for students and teachers will be free just as they are in Lucidcharts.

Lucidpress could be an excellent tool for students to create multimedia documents as reports or to tell a creative story. It is possible that your students could use it to create a multimedia online yearbook too.

This is an interesting time to attempt interesting things.

There is a lot being documented at the moment¹ that ought to be shaping how we think and what we do in K12.

• Mike Caulfield’s posts on distributed flips² and the design of open materials for blended classrooms³
• Jim Groom’s posts on creating open source learning environments.
• Alan Levine’s work with the #ds106 architecture and the idea of a “headless” #ds106 course
• Dan Meyer’s MakeoverMondays

That’s just the tip of the iceberg but I think it’s representative of an interesting mixture of elements- creating/shaping content/media, creating context around that media, and workflows around sharing/authoring that contextualized media in a way that encourages communities that both reinforce and challenge ideas around how to teach.

I don’t know if that makes any sense but I’ll try to show how it’s shaping what we’re trying to do in Henrico in the coming year.

Needs

• More and better examples of just about everything – Currently our Henrico 21 site is meant to help show people interesting things to do that fit within our definition of blended/technology-enhanced learning. I think it serves a certain purpose and there are 900 or so lesson plans there but in the end, I don’t think it’s used in a way that justifies the amount of energy that goes into it. This a combination of figuring out what to show people, how to get it there, and how to encourage face-to-face and online conversations around it.
• Bridges – We have many useful resources that are not connected to other useful resources. Our TechTips blog focuses on tutorials and other tips but doesn’t connect in any meaningful way with the H21 lessons or the online tools list⁴ None of those things merge with our orphaned online courses⁵ around topics that should bridge some of these gaps. That doesn’t even get into the idea that we ought to be looking at how to map different resources across content areas and between grades.
• Workflows/Efficiencies – This is comprised of two elements. One is about making the energy in matter to the people who do the work. If this fails, it all fails rather quickly. You might get compliance if you force it but the works will be sub-standard in the same way that most school work is. Secondly, technology should be your friend. This is partially about creating workflows that aggregate bits of continuous work (as opposed to widely spaced herculean efforts) and partially about building systems that make your input spread efficiently to the other places you’d like it to go.
• Tiered Curation – This is to a large degree a philosophical aspect to the workflow above. Part of what makes all this make sense is the fact that there is a huge amount of interesting content on the web and a huge number of interesting people interaction with it- both with and without deliberate educational intent. One essential element in making this sustainable is taking advantage of all that content and the work of all those people.

So far . . .

I’m pretty sure I have most of our content specialists on board with some brand of social bookmarking. The majority are on Diigo.⁶ We have some of the ITRTs on board but I’m not sure how many. It’s always interesting to see who sees a need for something like this. Symbaloo seems like a path some people are taking. I can’t quite figure that one out. Feels like a slightly more attractive version of Porta-portal but I could be missing something. It doesn’t seem to address any of the reasons I use social bookmarking (other than getting the links online).

I see this as a little bit backwards based on my own experience. I ended up needing to change how I bookmarked because I’d created a reading pattern that demanded a different organizational structure to keep track of all the interesting things I’d found (that also included a mindset about the kinds of things I thought would be useful later on). That may be me over-mapping my own patterns on to others. My concern is that if this is a herculean (and episodic) task, rather than a change in process, it won’t change anything longterm. This is easier, however, than getting people to start reading RSS feeds. Although that is a long term goal.

What exists now . . .

We (sometimes just me) expend a lot of energy right now but it doesn’t flow well and there are no decent connections or workflows.

• H21 – A lesson plan repository populated through episodic herculean effort. It seems to have enough detail to frustrate authors but not enough detail, or perhaps the right kind of detail, to make it really useful for teachers.
• Student 21 – is driven by student submissions via a form. It’s another disconnected effort which allows students to enter a contest but has no real purpose and the energy there doesn’t help the student.
• eLearning – is just a list of district wide resources.
• Tech Tips – is a repository of tutorials and other training materials.
• Content specialist sites – there are a variety of these in a variety of formats. They tend to be isolated and radically different in intent and design. They range from simple network file shares to more elaborate sites like our secondary math site.
• Word Games – is a site I was messing around with for English. It’s an attempt to capture fairly ephemeral examples of all kinds of English related material. There’s everything from interesting quotes and unique words to graffiti and comedy pieces. This is something I’d like to have work better.
• The Well – was meant to be a site where anyone could take an inspiring chunk of media and sketch out some rough ideas for how to use it.
• Online Tools – is a somewhat wayward list of technology related tools. It lives a lonely life of isolation and probably confusion.
• Might be of interest – is my version of a curated list of things that might be of interest to ITRTs.
• The HCPS ITRT Diigo group – there are about 10 ITRT members. A smaller portion are participating. Integrating with the specialists and their various groups will need consideration.
• Online courses – our orphaned online courses are hanging out here in a state of suspended animation.

Next steps . . .

I’m trying to figure out how to build a smarter system- a system built around finding and sharing inspiring and interesting things. It should help make doing these things easier. It ought to be based mainly on small actions aggregating to larger results. I’d like to see this system interweave the pieces of media, lessons, tools, pd, curricular maps etc. There should be pieces where the barrier to entry is virtually nothing and places where final curation indicates acceptance into the HCPS canon. Workflows, presentation, searching/sorting will all be key elements and it’ll be driven by some pretty serious needs. Finances are tight. Testing is growing to be more an issue. Morale is pretty low in a lot of cases. Clearly, tools won’t solve any of these problems. I can’t change a lot of those variables but I think I can help lower workloads to some degree, change aspirations, and provide connections/community across our large district.

I’ll be building out the connections in the image below as things start to come together.

At the beginning of the school year, I gave a presentation to our students and staff discussing the three areas that I believe are critical to one's success. My message was that if you can be successful in developing students with the skills/characteristics/dispositions in two of the three categories, you can expect the student to be successful in their future endeavors.  The categories are based on students having the  academic skills/knowledge we expect of our graduates, developing students who have high character, and helping students develop a high level of toughness.  At Van Meter, we describe those three areas as:

1. 90/1/25- The stuff you need to know and be able to do. The numbers for us mean 90% of our students will be proficient, show one year's growth on Iowa Assessments, and we wanted 25% of each grade level to be at the advanced proficient level
2. Good People- Being nice, polite, thoughtful of others, respectful, etc.
3. Grit- Being able to persevere through challenges. Having a level of toughness that allows one to overcome obstacles.

We have worked hard to develop these three areas in our students during the year. The challenge is measuring categories 2 and 3.  It is easy to see if we were successful in the first category.  And quite frankly, we were successful as you can see on the chart below:





Like any other school, we want our students to be good people. We would like to think that they are, but it is a little more difficult to come up with data to support that thinking. We are working on some measures to validate our beliefs, but ultimately, we have no way to prove that our students are good people other than our regular observations of their actions.  We have a lot of good people in our building.

The one category I get most excited about is grit.  To me it is the key to any person's success. If you think of any person that is considered successful, there usually is a level of stick-to-itiveness that has helped them get to where they are.  I have read some of Angela Duckworth's work in the past, and I am encouraged by her findings, but the video below is the first time I have had the opportunity to hear her speak.



You can get your own grit score here.


We are working on developing the grit needed in our students to be successful.  Creating a culture in which students push through the challenges in front of them with a commitment and desire that will help them find continuous success is what we are striving to accomplish at Van Meter.  My favorite quote is from Charles R. Swindoll, "...life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it." This quote summarizes what determines one's success. How we respond to the highs and lows of life, defines who we are as people.

Imagine developing a community of people that have a high level of skills, with high character, and the grit needed to persevere when the going gets tough. This community would guarantee the success of all of its students.  We are by no means there yet, but we are making great strides to enacting our vision for Van Meter students.