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 post:Today's quote from 
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...

Why don't more teachers have a PLN? #edchat #efl #elt

- they don't know what they are

- they don't have time to explore the huge range of options, evaluate their merits, and make the best choices

- some are stuck in a rut and are unmovable

- some don't appreciate them or use the underlying technologies in other situations let alone in PLN ones

- the Educator's PLN group for EFL seems to be dead (it's my teaching area), so it doesn't do much for those of us in this industry, apart from general English discussions and tech-related ones

- selling the idea to schools might help, but it's teachers who will opt in or not

How to improve the situation:

- set up generic PLNs for different subject areas, besides tech ones, to get people started (of course they can add more later)

- get the word out there, particularly marketing the benefits in terms teachers will understand

- include PLN's in PD programs

- in EFL world, it needs peak bodies to promote e.g. IATEFL, as many teachers work in isolation from colleagues

- will offer to run a PLN session in my city - there are 55 "foreign" teachers here - but tendency is to wheel in local professors who live in academia. Also I may need support in putting together an appropriate presentation (up to 2 hours)

 

Sorry for being tardy. Sometimes hard keeping up.

Posted on Twitter @gregqbear today.