They write extremely well!!!  We provide them with scaffolding, experiences and the opportunity to play with words and structure. By Year 5 they have been achieving above State Average results in their writing.

They read to access information in print and on computers. They can read fast but they don’t read like we do. They rely very heavily on the visuals, the images are where they gain most meaning.

Our students are from cultural backgrounds where the normal way of conveying stories is by oral means.

Recently I was sitting in a workshop and the professor said. (People from) “oral cultures don’t see the point in logic / literacy games. They do not get it as they take language at a literal level and do not make inferences from the written word.” Example First Nation people in southern Canada only know bears to be black or brown. They have never seen white bears, therefore white bears do not exist.

Always we lament our students inability to draw inferences in this passage or that . . . how do we work on this one if it is hardwired in?

What I learned . . .

• kids want to be online all the time and given the choice of an ordinary handheld and an iphone or ipod the majority will choose the iproduct

• many apps can be used for educational purposes, by end of July Classroom 2.0 will publish a list of about 300 Apps they’ve reviewed.
• educators are now writing Apps specifically for educational purposes
• qr code is really powerful and has exciting potential in the educational context

We were chattering away in the back about the Conference and things we’d been doing.

The Cabbie was a middle aged Afro-American. Part way through the trip he asked “is there a teacher conference or something happening?” We told him of the NECC 2009.

He became really chatty. He believes technology is really powerful and proceeded to tell us that the ipod shuffle had totally changed his life. How so?

He discovered you could listen to books and they were freely available from a variety of resources to be downloaded to an ipod shuffle. He has “read” 200 books in the past year. He had never read anything before then. His spoken language and vocabulary indicated he was a deep thinker. His voice was light and proud when he spoke of his books.

How many more people like him are there out there?

An educated, articulate, intelligent and informed “illiterate”.

When are we going to look beyond testing and statistics as a measure of our students literacy?

 
Human impulse is to write (21st Century Writing).

Kathleen Blake Yancey believes writing has been affected by the context of history from 1940’s to present

• war and distance created need for people to write letters
• school writing disciplined and punishment oriented
• freedom of graffitti writing, letters of freedom of gaol
• writing process, moves that lead to final product, process became very linear and unlike process real writers use. Energy and using steps in the way they need to be used not as a prescription.
• process became digitised, formatting and publication possible
• writing for connection – visual display powerful in writing
• connection is new and exciting and part of process who for, which medium and why.

Writing is about connection. What does that look like now?

1.  Blogging from school to the world – responses are important and a measure of success, teaches respectful reply. Students like the environment.

2. Take on the personna of characters creating back stories in poetry, drama, blog that represents the author, historical character, scientist

3. Information Ecology, past information owned by experts.

Create a concept map to answer question, search of blogosphere to answer the questions. Found not possible so had to go further into other forms of information: academic, mainstream and alternative. How do we know we can trust resources? Need to be explicit in posing questions.

Go to Time Magazine and see top 100 list of blogs.

4. Blogging as learning in action.

Give an explcit task to pursue and share on communal blog. Where is poetry seen in culture? Students can see poetry almost anywhere but how is it poetic? 

Signs project all signs are about what you can’t do. Used to be words alone. Became mixed and now all pictures. Need to participate not be a voyeur. (Blog Projects done at Virginia Beach Schools)

Three types of participation

1. Experts and laypersons are composing knowledge eg citizen scientist,

2. Citizens composing news, when people help each other information seems to be more reliable. Not just crisis driven but stories of people are being told and their stories are part of History.

3. Citizens have composing power in form of facebook, twitter, blogs etc. This means we need to develop understanding and control of these tools. Need to know which tools are to be used and when to support effective and appropriate connection

I do not necessarily agree with the writer’s conclusions; however, some of the ideas presented provide a very good argument for researchers, educators and testers to take a deep look at the strategies being used by young and old alike to access information on the www. 

The work of Jakob Nielsen, according to Bauerlain, “the guru of  web page usability” was cited. Nielsen has spent since 1994 gauging habits and screen experiences of computer users. He charts “people’s online navigations and aims, using eye tracking tools to map how vision moves and rests”.

Nielsen’s research reveals people scan 100’s of pages using a pattern vastly different from any learned at school. They read in an F pattern . . . extremely fast and only one in six reads a web page linearly.

Let’s face it the old linear way of reading, the emotional comfort provided by fiction books, the rigid content of textbooks are losing their relevance in the burgeoning context of the internet. Books are never going to be irrelevant because there always has been and always will be people who love the comfort and emotional attachment to the printed book. However, the speed, the amount of knowledge and diversity of interests are better catered for by the internet.

It is imperative that researchers and educators join forces to determine the most appropriate strategies needed by all people to be discerning, critical users of the internet as both consumers and creators.

We can’t keep teaching using 20th century methods, educators must adapt to the 21st century . . . almost 10% of the century has passed us by and still there is resistance to this concept.

The Horizons Report (2009, p.6) “call for formal instruction in the key new skills including, information literacy, visual literacy and technological literacy”, but what are they?

The text of the www is not static it is in a constant state of updating. How and what do we teach to cater for this fluidity?

What does it mean to be a reader or even a literate person in the 21st century?

Should we be opening our educational minds to findings from Nielsen’s research and incorporating some of his web usability ideas into our practice?

The concept of connective writing is not about the act of publishing it is what happens before and after publication.

Reading and writing now, are not what they were.

They were:

• Reading to inform, teach and indoctrinate.
• Writing was for the few, the elite of the literatii.

Now  they are skills used by all. They are vital elements for

• Personalisation and establishing relationships based on trust and with respect between readers/writers as the basis for interaction across the web.
• Self sponsored learning and we need to help our students to get to this stage.

What will be the life span of the printed page word?  It is in doubt because the printed word is not as easily accessible when compared to the fast flexibility that is provided in the www environment.

Writing is ubiquitous . . . it doesn’t have to be DONE at a particular time in a particular context.

It happens any where any time when the mood strikes, the link or the connection is made.

Connective writing stems from what we read because ideas for writing have beginnings in what people have read. Others’ thoughts and ideas are reflected upon and writing is then produced.

Sceptics question the quality and preciseness of the information. The audience requires quality and preciseness and they will ensure ideas are fine tuned and written in a knowledgeable way as knowledge is no longer the domain of the few. It is outside of us all. It exists in the world in the space of the www.

Writers on the web synthesise their ideas and link them to sources and context. Writing has to be linked. It cannot occur in isolation. It has little meaning if isolated, unlinked and unread.

What does linked writing look like? Look at Borderland.

Publishing is a cyclical process? It is not only writing it is reading. Is the way we read being changed by  our www experiences? Teachers who know their students and observe the way they work in a classroom can tell you reading for the students of today is a different more complex skill than it was even 20 year ago. The NCTE has endeavoured to address this with their recent NCTE Definition of 21st century literacies.

Do online readers use the same reading strategies as a paper reader?

Is literacy more dependant on images than words?

Is reading as we have been taught and tested still relevant?

What strategies are there to teach reading in an online world?

How do we use web 2.0 and blend it with the best of pedagogy to ensure our students learning needs are met?