The Kind of Needed Digital Literacy

Much has been discussed about the kind of literacies educators and students need to master nowadays and for the future. Shelly Blake-Plock in her post "Talking 21st Century Skills Blues" pins it and goes to the central aspects we need to be aware of to survive in this digital world.


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Education - Change.org: Talking 21st Century Skills Blues via kwout

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Images4Education in Classroom2.0 Live

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Images4Education and EVO-Special Guest: Carla Arena - via kwout

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Yesterday I had the big pleasure to be with the girls, Peggy George, Lorna Constantini, Kim Caise and Steven Hargadon in a live session of Classroom2.0. A nice crowd probably hungry at lunch time wanted to know more about the Electronic Village Online and the session we moderated in Jan/Feb 2009, Images4Education. Incredibly exciting to see how more and more educators are understanding the power and need for sustainable professional development. Not one that starts and finishes, but an ongoing effort, non-linear with thrilling connective opportunities. Technology provides us with the power of linking to educators, ideas, cultures around the world with a search of international best practices for our classrooms. Tempting even for very busy educational professionals!

Note: I just learned about http://gl.am with the girls and loved it! It shares our links in a more visual way.

Classroom 2.0 LIVE Resources for June 13, 2009-Images4Education and EVO on gl·am - Link Group Service via kwout

I'd like to thank to all who could be there with us, asking and sharing. I always learn from that.

Web 2.0 Cool Tools Presentation

On June 5th, I was gladly to surprise to see a nice little crowd in the Auditorium of the Binational Center I work for. I presented a Potpourri of cool tools for the classroom for the Braz-TESOL regional chapter. A very motivated audience of friends and new faces who are willing to take that step further, get started. My advice was just set one single small tech goal for next semester. Chances are that if they succeed in their microstrategy, they will succeed in bigger, more daring endeavors. That's exactly what I still do every semester, setting a tech goal. For this semester I decided to take a different blogging approach, making the bridge between parents and my juvenile class with a blog called Crescer Digital. I must say that I'm very pleased with the feedback of parents, their engagement in their kids' learning and the sense of accomplishment we are all feeling!

Small steps take us far...

How about choosing one tool to explore next semester with your students?

A Potpourri Of Web Tools

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Cool Tool of the Week - My Studiyo - Creating Online Activities

Just tested My Studyio because a tweet from @GrahamStanley and @NikPeachey. What a great surprise as tomorrow I´ll be presenting about cool tools for the classroom for a group of Brazilian educators. I liked My Studyio because it´s user-friendly and very easy to register. You can have multiple choice questions with an attractive layout adding images, youtube videos and texts. The final result is an embeddable quiz that you can put anywhere on the Net, or even send to students.

Also, I can picture my students creating quizzes and posting them to the others to take the quizzes. By doing that, they will learn a new skill and practice the language structures they are focusing on. Oh, by the way, the fact that you can embed the quiz in Orkut is a plus for Brazilian students who are totally hooked to this social network.

The Google Wave

I'm here watching Google's Wave demo to be released at the end of the year. WOW. As an educator, I couldn't help but see the applications it could have in our classrooms. It's just like having a single platform to perform many many digital tasks we do in different online spaces. Of course we'll have to work with learners on how to work properly and productively in waves, but things look extremely exciting!

Brazil is rich in huge Waves
Google Wave is the one I can finally ride
Even being in Brasilia (where there's no sea)

Informal Learning in Future Lab

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Futurelab - Projects - Informal learning ideas via kwout

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I could spend days exploring FutureLab as an inspiration to my current practices as educator, EdTech supporter, teacher trainer. It provides us with the latest trends in so many aspects of learning that it would be hard to list it here.

I´d highly recommend that educators browse through these resources.

Cybersurfing with Young Learners

I had the great opportunity to present for the IATEFL Young Learners SIG invited by Dennis Newson, who moderates the list.

What a pleasure to explore one area that is dear to me, but I´m not an expert at it. The presentation reminded me once again that there is no need to be an expert. Information is out there, your network is a powerful human resource that you can count on to learn about what is happening around the globe. Of course I had my own examples as I teach a group of tweens and the examples of my colleagues at the language school I work for in Brasilia. However, I wanted it to be a worldwide mosaic of young learners digital production. Twitter is the way to go. Just ask Twitterverse and you´ll be suprised by the abundance of resources, examples, ideas and generous educators ready to share and interact with you.

Just by preparing for the presentation I revisited some of my own beliefs in terms of teacher training and the fundamental role educators have in the process of their students´ digital literacy. I was reminded that, yes, young learners can have fun while doing serious school work. And certainly these youngsters can become better citizens, more prolific citizens if they are enabled to think critically, create, remix concepts, understand the process by which they become digitally literate, and not only persons that use the Net to socialize, as I see most of the students doing.

By starting with very simple, cost-effective tools, educators and learners can give a learning boost their digital experience to use the power of the online world to make a difference.

All the resources of the presentation are available at
http://brazilbridges.pbworks.com/Cybersurfing-with-Young-Learners

Cybersurfing With Young Learners

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