Greg's English & Music Pages
  • Home
  • Blog Articles & Posts
  • Music & Song
  • My Recordings
  • Learn
    • Learners' Wall
    • Learning Help
    • Play
    • Read
    • See
    • Study
    • Talk
  • Teach
    • Teaching Ideas
    • Teaching Help
  • Portfolio

Digital Literacy - A Set of Vitally Important Skills

27/4/2012

0 Comments

 
09:42  -  It is vitally important that we build the skills of digital literacy in ourselves, our families and our students. At this time, when there is so much growth in dependence on the Web as the primary source of knowledge and information, everyone needs to understand how to value and how to interpret what they see online, as well as how to find the best of what is available in efficient ways.

I was fortunate to be an education student at a time when much initial work on digital literacies and the closely allied area of critical literacy was underway, so I learnt how to share these principles with my students, how to build students' skills through various projects and activities, and how to assess whether they were using these skills in their own time online.

Now that I am teaching in a non-English speaking country, my role does not offer the same opportunities, and I worry that no one else is filling this gap for students here either. My understanding is that the majority of the world's digital users do not speak English as their first language, or at all, so they may also be missing out on building digital literacies, and may be making poor or less effective choices as a result.

I am looking forward to reading Netsmart by Howard Rheingold, not just for my students and family, but for myself too. From the reviews, other resources, videos and tweets, I am sure it will be a valuable addition to this critically important field.Howard Rheingold originally shared this on http://www.rheingold.com/netsmart

"Digital literacies can leverage the Web’s architecture of participation, just as the spread of reading skills amplified collective intelligence five hundred years ago. Today’s digital literacies of attention, participation, collaboration, crap detection, and network smarts can make the difference between being empowered or manipulated, serene or frenetic. Most importantly, as people who are trying to get along day to day in a hyper-scale, warp-speed civilization that seems so often to be beyond anyone’s control, digital literacy is something powerful we can learn and exercise for ourselves and each other. "Netsmart »How can we use digital media so that they help us become empowered participants rather than passive consumers? In Net Smart, I show how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, min...
0 Comments

Experience in Teaching DOES Count

21/4/2012

0 Comments

 
I posted the following comments to an excellent article entitled "Teaching Counts" which was written by David B. Cohen on the InterACT blogsite: http://accomplishedcaliforniateachers.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/experience-counts/#comment-2725

"Sadly, in Taiwan as much as the USA, experience is undervalued. It is most clearly so due to having annual contracts rather than the possibility of continuity, and in having no senior or leader teachers. English language teachers here operate at the whim of school and government administrators whose principal motives are not always educational ones.

I fear that the situation in the US is that it is easier to quantify exam results using "scientific" methods, than trying to measure more qualitative aspects of the very complex teacher-student-parent-school-community relationship, or even than by attempting to conduct longitudinal (more expensive) studies of teachers' work over several years. It is also easier to keep budgets within limits by hiring lower paid recent graduates than continuing those working higher up the pay scale.

Administrators, accountants and governments like easy, quick answers. What they do not care about is whether or not the measures used reflect the work being performed.

One aspect of all of this that is working against the vast majority of teachers is the small number of those who are stuck in a time warp, teaching the same way year by year, not reflecting on what they are doing, not listening to students, parents and colleagues, not preparing students for the future they will face, refusing to consider the place of interactive and computer-based technologies in a range of teaching tools, and incapable of being moved on due to inflexible tenure arrangements or lack of non-contact positions. While hey are certainly not doing the rest of us any favours by staying, at the same time, "the system" should have ways of ensuring this does not happen as well.

David, I congratulate you on an interesting article, and I will share it as widely as possible with other educators.

Greg."
0 Comments

Testing of Students - Student Joseph - Violating His Rights

20/4/2012

0 Comments

 

I sent this email today to respond to a posting about a principal who threatened a family with serious consequences if they stood in the way of their son completing a standardised test. The original post is here:http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2012/04/tell-bully-principal-how-you-feel.html 


I hope you will look at the case and consider taking some action too.
"Dear Principal,
Sadly what your vision statement lacks is the same respect, acceptance, celebration or valuing of parents. In fact it doesn't even mention parents.
You can hide behind rules if you like - I suppose your job depends on it to some degree - but it is more fundamental to recognise that parents, not legislators, have the primary responsibility for the education of their children, and for the choices of how and where that will happen.
So, I do not agree with your approach to student Joseph. It will do nothing for your attempts at forging a school-home partnership, especially if your approach is that the school is right and parents are wrong. This is an unequal partnership at best, and sounds quite hollow given your threats of intervention.
Sure, you have the 'discretion' to contact CPS, but equally you have the choice not to. If you want to work with parents, I would respectfully suggest that such an approach would be counterproductive.
More fundamentally, you are violating both the rights of Joseph and his parents. I refer you to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (a much higher authority than you quoted in your email). In particular, I would highlight:
(1) governments should respect the rights of parents in guiding their children (you do not)
(2) governments are to assist families in nurturing their children (you are trying to separate them)
(3) when making decisions, children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinion taken into account (did you even talk to Joseph?)
(4) children have a particular responsibility to respect the rights their parents, and education should aim to develop respect for the values and culture of their parents (if you don't respect their values, how much less will Joseph do so by following your example?)
I suggest you should re-consider your position, apologise to Joseph, his family, any other students and families you have abused, and, finally you should act as an advocate for families rather than their adversary by lobbying for them with legislators in your State who obviously are disregarding rights accepted by the US government on behalf of the country.
Greg.
0 Comments

    Tweet

    Archives

    April 2020
    February 2019
    September 2017
    January 2017
    May 2016
    March 2016
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    June 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    May 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All
    Assessment
    Bali
    Blog
    Book
    Buddhism
    Celebration
    Chicken Little
    China
    Christmas
    Classrooms
    College Quals
    Colour
    Computer
    Computers
    Co-teacher
    Countries
    Courses
    Creativity
    Critical Analysis
    Criticism
    Culture
    Curriculum
    Drawings
    Earth Day
    Education
    Efl
    Elementary
    Elt
    English Name
    Esl
    Essay
    Exams
    Expectations
    Facebook
    Feedback Validation
    Feel
    Flow
    Flowers
    Forums
    Friendship
    Games
    Glbt
    Goodbye
    Grammar
    Harpsichord
    Height
    Identity
    Ideology
    Ielts
    Interactive
    Ipa
    It
    Iwb Training
    Korea
    Learn
    Learning
    Leaves
    Lesson Plans
    Life-long
    Links
    Literacy
    Location
    Me
    Mothers Day
    Motivation
    Murphy's Law
    Music
    Myspace
    Needs
    New Year
    Online
    Opening
    Organ
    Paper Planes
    Paragraph
    Pd
    Performance
    Phonics
    Photos
    Pln
    Programs
    Pronunciation
    Publishing
    Punctuation
    Reading
    Referencing
    Resources
    Shape
    Size
    Skills
    Smartboard
    Smell
    Socialnetworking
    Social Networking
    Song Contest
    Speaking
    Speed
    Spelling
    Student-centred
    Taboo
    Tai-an
    Taiwan
    Teach
    Teaching
    Teaching Music Education
    Technology
    Testing
    Textbooks
    Textbooks Taboo
    Toefl
    Toeic
    Tools
    Training
    Trees
    Twitter
    University
    Unplugged
    Vegetarianism
    Verbs
    Vocabulary
    Web 2.0
    Web2.0
    Whiteboard
    Word Clouds
    Writing
    Young Learners

    Blogs I Read

    #ELT Chat
    ABC Teach Blog
    An ELT Notebook
    Angela Maiers
    Breaking News English
    Buddha,Dharma, Sangha & Me
    ED Compass Blog
    Educating Her World
    EFL Teaching Recipes
    Emerging Ed Tech
    Free Technology for Teachers
    Heads Up English
    IH Journal
    Jeremy Harmer's Blog
    Kalinago English
    Literacy, Languages & Leadership
    Maria Constantinides
    Nik's Learning Tech Blog
    Nik's Quick Shout
    Online Learning Insights
    OUP ELT Global Blog
    Sean Banville's Blog
    Some Random Thoughts
    Stephen's Web
    Storynory
    Teacher 2.0
    Teacher Reboot Camp
    Teachers' Tech
    Teach English Brit Council,BBC
    Teaching Life
    TEFL Clips
    The e-Learning Industry Blog
    The Innovative Educator

    RSS Feed

    FIND E-BOOKS

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.