Multiplication Video

Next Steps

Now that we have finished reading both books, what are our next steps. What do you think are the critical elements that we need to teach our students about web literacy, and how will we go about teaching them?

Chapter 6: Web Literacy for Educators

Expanding the Boundaries:

This chapter was very good & interesting. With education starting to go more & more to technology, there also comes a lot of negatives and "fire walls". Alan November does a great job of giving examples & sites to help teachers be able to use blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis. The best part is the examples from real teachers and how they use them.

The biggest thing to take away from this chapter is that blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis can be dangerous, but we teachers should provide excellent role models & thoughtful ethics for students to be able to use them in the classroom. We don't have control of what they do out of school, but need to set the examples for them to use and carry over.

Blogs: There was a teacher who was having his class blog about the book they were reading, Mississippi Trail, and the actual author got involved on the blog and ended up coming to their school. Several examples talk about the possibilities of global connections on assignments that students across the world could connect on. More students are excited about writing. They enjoy doing it, look forward to doing it, & continue with this on their own.

RSS: is the new way of "bookmarking" websites, but much better. Teacher's can subscribe to receive feeds from their favorite sources and they receive information the minute it hits the web. This in not very popular, but is gaining.

Podcasts: is audio or video. Lets students experience knowledge of lifelong leraners. There are lots of podcasts you can download through iTunes. The students become the leaders & learners.

Wikis: is a web based tool that allows groups to work on a piece at one time & add to it. Wikipedia has had bad press because anyone & everyone can add to it. There are community members who do monitor to check how valid every entry that is made. The example for this is a project that students all over the world can come together & tell stories of where they live.

Alan November says that these are some of the technologies that students are using & will be asked or required to use in the future. That teacher's need to step up and be the "positive" role models for our studnents.

Chapter 4 of Web Literacy for Educators

Chapter 4 in Web Literacy for Educators was about using forward and back links to help students decide if a website is legitimate. This is the last step in the REAL process. The forward link can be used to get to a link from your website to a page on someone else’s website. The backward link can be used to link from someone else’s website to your website.
The forward links are highlighted on the web page. If you click on them, the website that is linked to it will appear. The main questions students need to ask themselves with forward links are “What are the URLs of the forward link?” and “Do the domain names change?” Red flags would be if every single forward link contained the same domain name in the URL as the homepage. Also if the same person writes all of the referenced materials in the forward links. The latter was compared to an author who writes a book and all of the referenced sources with it. If this happened, then his or her work would not be of academic quality.
To check the back links you must follow these steps:
1. Go to http://www.altavista.com/.
2. In the search box type link:
3. Leaving no space after the colon, type the address of the website you are
you are researching. For example, to find the back links to our school website, you
would type link:http://www.buhlerschools.org/index.aspx?nid=57.
4. Click the Find button and you will find an assortment of sites that are linked
to us.
Questions students would want to ask are: “Who is linked to the website?” “Why are they linked?” and “What do other sites say about the material on the site?” A look to see who has linked to a site gives you an idea about the quality of the information. If there are few or no links then, probably the website is not from an academic or legal field.

Chapter 4 Accessing Primary Sources to Enhance Critical Thinking

This chapter really makes me think about 21st century skills. As was reading I analyzed how much our world has changed and how much information and visual stimuli students are inundated with each day. On pg 64 November states "many students have not been taught to develop strategies for thinking about and evaluating primary sources. The role of the teacher is to provide structure and direction to a student's ability to make meaning."

It is November's belief that students should be taught perspective. (pg 64) I too hold this belief. I think most high school social studies teachers start teaching this skill. However, with students starting to use the web much earlier then high school; it is another skill that must be taught much earlier, so students can make meaning of their research.

November suggest that we teach students to question primary documents; including all of those on the web. I would consider blogs, wikis, and other web resources a form of primary resources that need to be questioned.

I really like his suggestion on pg 69 about connecting experts in the field. It has become so easy for students to do this with the internet in the classroom. I have a vision of a wiki that includes resources about a project and a page where experts can edit to inculde their up to date resource for our students. I can see students, teachers, and experts skyping and emailing. To me this is a powerful way for students to learn. It makes learning real, present, and important.

To summarize teachers should teach visual literacy, search skills and perspective to help students focus their research. The teacher is a guide that directs, facilitates, and evaluates.

Flying Penguins

Could you imagine showing this video to your students? How many of them do you think would believe in flying penguins? Would some catch on when they fly to the Rainforest?
This would be an example of something I would show my class to lead into a discussion on web literacy. It's on the internet; so it must be true right?

Be sure to check out Mr. Romand's Blog to find more activities like Flying Penguins to use with your students.

Ch 3 Emerging Roles Within the Knowledge Community

This chapter begins by telling us that there is way too much for teachers to learn when it comes to technology. (pg 38) However, November states on the next page that teachers don't need to know a lot of technical skills; they need to know how to manage the technology. I think he means the physical management and integration of technology into everyday lesson plans. In addition, teachers need the knowledge of collaboration. In the future teachers will need to collaborate on real world problems, with parents, and the community into order to perform best practices.

I think USD 313 has already started in our own backyard when it comes to collaboration. We collaborate with our teams already often by using googledocs. That is a great beginning. Some of us may be ready for the next step which is collaboration beyond our own school and district.

As we embark on the 21st century classroom roles change. Students become problem solvers, learners, experts. Sometimes they even assume the role of the teacher. The teacher moves to a facilitator role. The changing roles often cause fear in teachers, and this is only natural. I love the last statement on page 54, "if fears are articulated, validated, and discussed, adults are in a better position to learn new skills."

Hopefully, we have enough trust in each other that we as professionals can address our fears together and help each other to overcome them.