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For notes during the Elluminate session on Literacy, Jan. 2, 2009.

Chat transcript [|Session archive]


 * Ben Grey, who started the conversation and could not attend, sent along these thoughts:**

//My summation of where I believe the distinguishing points are in the 21st Century Literacy and Skills discussion.

1. Literacy and skills are two entirely different concepts. Literacy is the ability to establish thoughts and draw meaning from communicating ideas. I would say this encompasses reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Like you and I discussed yesterday, I think viewing and showing have come up, but I'm not ready to accept them as new rather than say they are an integral part of reading.

2. People have started using the term literacy synonymously with general proficiency or understanding. As in the term "technology literacy". I think that inaccurately portrays the heart of what literacy is all about. Literacy is about understanding through communicating, not establishing a finite skill set to be able to be proficient at a given concept.

3. The use of the term 21st Century, while certainly facilitating much discussion, I feel actually hurts the cause of what we all want to accomplish. Of course we all want teachers to begin engaging students in what the Partnership is calling 21st Century Skills. We also want teachers to engage students using various media and technology and culture, but to say all that is specific to a 21st Century heading, makes it sound too much like a fad that will soon fade away. It makes it too trivial. We want teachers to understand these are timeless truths in teaching that transcend specific eras, and by adding the 21st Century to it, we give them the perception that they are new and that they will soon change to something else. Yes things change and evolve organically, but they do so within specific parameters that allow them to remain, at the core, that which made them what they were to begin.

//[|Intro to Emerging Technologies course] 

... there is a nice starter definition from: http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition