Category: 21st Century Learning

Posted in 21st Century Learning, family conversations, leadership, parent child conversations, parents and technology, reading

Reading Promotes Leadership Skills — Even in a Digital World

Posted on by Marti Weston

As parents, children, and teachers prepare for the start of a new academic year, many may enjoy reading the Harvard Business Review blog (HBR Blog) post For Those Who Want to Lead, Read. Parents of digital kids may want to take the time to share this short, thoughtful. and well-written article with family members as a back-to-school activity.

In today’s digital world, many people — including individuals who consider themselves literate — are not reading books as often or as deeply as in the past. In this HBR Blog post, John Coleman notes that reading digital chunks of content is far more common today. He provides inspiring examples of leaders who are well-read and describes in detail how reading benefits individuals who aspire to lead. Plenty of links take readers back to the sources of information that are mentioned in the article.

Best Quotes (Choosing only two was really difficult.)

  • Even as global literacy rates are high (84%), people are reading less and less deeply.
  • … Deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.

For Those Who Want to Lead, Read concludes with recommendations that can support people who want to read more. After you peruse these suggestions, take a few minutes to think about how you might encourage the people in your family (or your students) to develop and maintain a deeper and more literary reading life?

You can also check out the post, How to Raise a Lifelong Reader at the Common Sense Media website.

Posted in 21st Century Learning, digital citizenship, digital learning, evaluating web site resources, parents and technology

New Google Lessons: Understanding YouTube and Digital Citizenship

Posted on by Marti Weston
Visit the Google lessons site.

Check out the Google interactive lessons, videos, and slides, all focused on digital citizenship, privacy, and YouTube best practices. Useful for teachers as well as parents, these discrete units are easy to use and share, especially when students need an organizational framework before beginning to look for school project resources. Each lesson is readily downloadable as a Google Doc and even for other presentation media such as PowerPoint.

Many of the Google videos include tips that can help students use YouTube more effectively while honoring copyright principles and evaluating content carefully. Google developed these digital resources for secondary students, but in many schools, the videos will also be valuable for middle schoolers. Even fifth grade teachers may find that some of the videos can help them in the context of curriculum units.

A conundrum exists, of course…          Continue reading “New Google Lessons: Understanding YouTube and Digital Citizenship” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, digital citizenship, digital learning, digital literacy, parents and technology, web 2.0

Digital Footprints: Changing What We Teach

Posted on by Marti Weston
Check out Richardson’s Book.

Recently, after reading Will Richardson’s article Footprints in the Digital Age, I began thinking about how much attention we pay to online safety and security without thinking nearly as much about teaching kids how to be literate consumers and competent creators of content. Richardson’s article started me thinking about how I might refine the way I teach digital citizenship to fifth graders.

While safety and security will never be left out of the curriculum, the 2008 Educational Leadership article convinced me to put more effort into helping my students think of digital footprints as only one part of the digital life equation. The other part of this equation involves teaching children to think proactively about the online narratives that they are creating and helping them begin to understand how other people will be searching for each of them — and for appropriate reasons. My students and their parents need to become curators of the digital content in their profiles, just as any highly skilled museum curator creates an exhibition.

A strong digital profile, Richardson writes, “Google’s well.”        Continue reading “Digital Footprints: Changing What We Teach” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, blogging, generating content, online communication, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

British Girl’s Blog: Why Make Such a Big Deal About It?

Posted on by Marti Weston
Visit the Never Seconds blog.

You might enjoy reading British Girl’s Blog on School Lunch Stirs it Up in the Sunday, June 17, 2012 Washington Post about a nine-year-old girl who is blogging to change the quality of food in her school lunches and to raise money for a local charity, Mary’s Meals, that feeds the hungry. The blog, Never Seconds, has become a sensation…

… because some officials decided to make an impromptu rule — the young blogger cannot take any more pictures of her school lunches.

So let me get this straight. A child or adolescent starts writing about an issue or a topic and doing it well. She offends no one as she points out that change is necessary — in fact, she writes rather respectfully while taking a stand on making the meals better. People are short-sighted enough to try to stop her?

How long will it take adults in today’s world to understand that life, 21 Century skills, and communication have fundamentally changed — people can create good-quality digital content just about anywhere. They can share it and other people can also share. Reminder to Adults: Stopping this type of creating on a mere whim doesn’t work. Continue reading “British Girl’s Blog: Why Make Such a Big Deal About It?” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, collaboration, digital learning, parents and technology

What in the World is a Wiki?

Posted on by Marti Weston

A wiki is an online document, viewed in a web browser, that allows a user or users to add and accumulate information on a topic. Usually, but not always, people work collaboratively on a wiki, so it’s a terrific learning tool.

The word wiki comes from a Hawaiian word that means fast.

Anyone can set up a wiki and invite others to contribute. All of the pages are visible and can be edited in the browser. What is unusual about a wiki, compared to many other forms of writing, is the ability of all users to edit and change the work of fellow collaborators, definitely a “we’re all working together project” that teaches group members to cooperate with one another and respect their work. A wiki document can include text, links, pictures, and video.

The In Plain English Wiki tutorial provides a good introduction filled with useful information. Also, check out the comprehensive wiki explanation with an emphasis on wikis in the workplace at OreillyNet. A wiki tutorial at TeachersFirst walks people through the basics of starting a wiki and includes a page with wiki ideas for the classroom. Wikipedia, as its name implies, is a wiki.

A Few Suggestions for Wikis at Home Continue reading “What in the World is a Wiki?” →

Posted in 21st Century Learning, blogging, digital learning, digital parenting, parent education, parents and technology

You Can Start a Family Blog – Summer 2012

Posted on by Marti Weston
Visit Start a Family Blog and Get Started!

This summer think about starting a family blog. It’s a terrific communication project as well as a collaborative learning opportunity for everyone — kids, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Last year I taught a short online blogging course to parents at my school. My Start a Family Blog class, hosted on a WordPress blog, is still available. The posts will guide interested families through the basics of starting a blog for relatives and friends.

Over at some novel ideas, a blog authored by librarian Stacy Nockowitz would be bloggers will find a comprehensive and rich list of resource links to help get started. She organizes her links into categories:

    • Blogging Basics
    • Blogging Resources
    • Blogs About Blogging
    • Blogging Platforms
    • Images

Also included at the bottom of the resource page is a cool glossary of blogging terms.

Posted in 21st Century Learning, digital learning, digital parenting, evaluating web site resources, family conversations, online research, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

Help Students Evaluate Digital Sources-Howard Rheingold Video

Posted on by Marti Weston
Rheingold’s vision of a person’s personal trust network copied from the video.

Teaching children to evaluate resources and determine credibility is the biggest challenge of our 21st Century world. Until now authoritative textbooks have dominated the world of education, but not anymore.

In the video below, Howard Rheingold, the digital thinker, professor (Stanford and UC Berkeley), and personal learning network advocate, describes how parents and educators should help students develop the ability to ask questions when they discover digital information, thereby evaluating the quality or lack of it. Rheingold calls this “crap detection,” a term originally coined by Ernest Hemmingway.

We need to teach kids, Rheingold points out, “how to search and how to find” and how to be sure that what is found is of good quality. The long-range goal is for each individual to develop what Rheingold calls a “personal trust network.”

Continue reading “Help Students Evaluate Digital Sources-Howard Rheingold Video” →