21st century learning – Page 6 – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century Learning, 21st Century life, 21st Century teaching, parents and technology, searching

Why Word Order Matters When You Search!

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Marti Weston

The word order of a search matters in today’s connected world, so 21st Century learners of all ages should understand how search results change when a user rearranges the words. A short video on word order, uploaded by Google’s Search Anthropologist Daniel Russell – check out his Search-Research blog – teaches this lesson effectively.

Use this less-than-two-minute video, featured some months ago in a blog post at Free Technology for Teachers, as a quick and succinct teaching tool with students, parents, and other educators.

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, parents and technology, spelling and editing, writing

Spell Check Your Spell Checker!

Posted on April 19, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Spring vacations are just about finished for 2014, so now it’s time to think about staying challenged and strong for the last few months of school.

One aspect of completing a school year is to pay special attention to writing and editing while completing assignments and projects. And an important part of editing is searching for misspelled words using two steps.

In spell-check, step one, a computer program or website, runs through a person’s prose, identifies the misspelled words, and offers the writer options for correcting, changing or leaving a word alone. These days many programs and sites spell check as a person writes, but that is no excuse for not going through the editing process.

The second, more challenging step — and perhaps the bigger responsibility — requires a writer to follow-up the spell checker, searching for errors that the automated process may have missed. Many of the remaining errors are not technically mistakes. Instead they are correctly spelled words that the writer typed by accident (or with the help of auto-word completion) or misused homonyms — accurately spelled but used incorrectly. So the spell checker missed these words. Continue reading “Spell Check Your Spell Checker!” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital citizenship, digital footprints, digital kids, digital learning, parents and technology

How We Teach Digital Citizenship Makes a Difference

Posted on April 7, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Digital Citizenship Posters Become a Hallway Exhibit — Digital Citizenship Posters Become a Month Long Hallway Exhibit

When it comes to digital citizenship, we cannot just lecture or watch videos.

Everyone learns best by doing — whether it’s tying a shoe, mastering letter sounds, figuring out a science concept, learning to drive, parenting a new baby, or any other activity, including what we need to figure out on computers and digital devices. When people tell us how to do something by talking a lot, most of us can’t wait for the person to stop talking so we can try to do it ourselves.

Now consider how we have gone about teaching 21st Century children — at home and at school — about digital devices and digital world behavior. Mostly adults talk and talk, telling children, pre-adolescents, and teens about all the things that can go wrong and explaining what we don’t want them to do.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve spent way too much time talking to kids about digital life issues and not nearly enough time doing things with them. So these past few years I’ve changed the way I teach. Continue reading “How We Teach Digital Citizenship Makes a Difference” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century teaching, connected learning, digital kids, digital learning, digital literacy, digital world conversations

Innovative Teaching: How on Earth Do We Get Started?

Posted on March 19, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Years ago as a beginning teacher, I asked one of my University of Chicago professors how it was that my mentoring teacher seemed to do everything at once — teaching one group, keeping an eye on other parts of the classroom, and continuously but quietly communicating with everyone in the room — all at the same time. She even knew when a student some distance behind her was not completing the assigned task.

“She acquired those skills step-by-step,” my professor replied.

Today as we cope with the challenge of transforming our teaching skills to make what goes on in our classrooms applicable to the ever-changing world of digital information (a.k.a. innovation or 21st Century learning), many of us are renewing our commitment to lifelong learning as we explore and acquire a range of new skills and behaviors. We are learning, step-by-step, how to teach differently and stretch ourselves in ways that help students access, process, and use information in innovative but sensible ways. Continue reading “Innovative Teaching: How on Earth Do We Get Started?” →

21st Century Learning, connected learning, parents and technology, Safer Internet Day

International Safer Internet Day – February 11, 2014

Posted on January 23, 2014March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Parents and educators may want to encourage 21st Century learners to participate in the International Safer Internet Day celebration on February 11, 2014. This year I am especially looking forward to the event, because it focuses on what is good about the connected world. (Unfortunately, way too often people concentrate on the fear aspects of the connected world.)

One Good Thing — Instructions for Submitting a Video

Over 100 countries observe Safer Internet Day each year on a day in February. As a part of the celebration, United States organizers are asking participants to make short videos that share their thoughts about the good things that can happen on the Internet concentrating especially on how these good things contribute to making the world a better place.

The United States sponsors of the event are journalists Anne Collier and Larry Magid, who jointly run the ConnectSafely.org website. Anne also writes on her blog at NetFamilyNews.org and Larry writes on his at LarrysWorld.com.

Check out the U.S. Safer Internet Day website below. Continue reading “International Safer Internet Day – February 11, 2014” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, connected learning, Great TED Talks, parent education, parents and technology, teaching digital kids

Real Answers to Parents’ Digital Questions? You Bet!

Posted on October 22, 2013March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

My greatest connected learner satisfaction comes when I discover answers to questions that I haven’t yet thought to ask — something that occurs almost every day in my digital world. Online I’ll search on a topic, read, or merely glance over a site, and suddenly I discover a resource and think — I need to know about that!

As I read the blog post, Learning Online: Real Answers to Real Questions, by colleague and master teacher, Susan Lucille Davis, that’s exactly how I felt. Davis shares a range of digital parenting resources that help to answer parents’ 21st Century learning questions, and along the way, she helps us realize just how much more we can learn in our connected world.

Writing for A Platform for Good, Davis offers resource suggestions that parents can use to gain digital skill and knowledge right along with their children, and teachers can share with their students’ parents.

A Few of My Favorite Tips — For links and more information read the entire post.

I had no idea that parents can set up subsidiary e-mail accounts, despite the fact that I am on Google and Gmail countless times each day.
Somehow I’ve missed Joyce Valenza’s TEDTalk about helping kids expand online research skills, but it’s a resource to share widely in an academic community.
Good quality COPPA information sources, that provide basic information to share with parents, are hard to find, but Davis found one and it’s good.

I, too have found that parents need lots of information about digital kids and learning. On my “class-on-a-blog,” initially set up for parents at my school, I write about tools, apps, and sites. On this other site, Discover Your Child’s Digital World, my posts concentrate on digital adventures that kids experience and adults may not know much about.

21st Century Learning, parents and technology, video use

If So Many Adults Use Online Video – Imagine How Many Kids Use It?

Posted on October 10, 2013October 12, 2013 by Marti Weston

Check out the video below that explains the results of a survey about how adults use video online. The Pew Internet and American Life Project conducted the survey in July 2013.

According to the report, “Over the past four years, the percent of American adult Internet users who upload or post videos online has doubled from 14% in 2009 to 31% today.” Read the full report and look at the graphics. Nearly eight and ten adults use video on the web in some way, with the youngest group, ages 18-29 doing the most.

Can you imagine what 21st Century adolescent and pre-adolescent learners must be doing with video? Parents who have not taken the time to learn a bit about the ways their digital children use video will be at a disadvantage. Moreover, it will be difficult for adults to ascertain the amount of screen time their children are getting.