New Literacies and NETS

When I think of New Literacies, in its upper case form, I am reminded of my coursework in emergent literacy development. I connected the idea of New Literacies to the visual representation that is commonly connected to phonological awareness- a large umbrella. The umbrella was the overarching skill (phonological awareness) and underneath were the components of this "bigger picture." To me, the umbrella of New Literacies, is the skills students and global citizens need to have to successfully interact with the internet as a learning tool. In "Comments on Greenhow, Robelia and Hughes: Expanding the New Literacies Conversation,", the authors state how new literacies can have different meaning to different people. New literacies, in its lowercase form, were those underlying skills of the umbrella, the concepts that need to be achieved in order to reach full aptitude of the overarching idea. In the case of New Literacies, it was important to note that although the new literacies build and further learning possibilities, these skills are continually changing along with the bigger picture. Also, new literacies differ for each person because each persons motives and objectives differ as well.

Think about the constant improvements and changes being made to the internet and the endless possibilities it holds. Parallel this thought with the many schools already behind in educational technologies and think, will education ever catch up and maximize the potential in the internet as a learning tool- as an instructional means to extend learning and increase engagement, collaboration and reflection?

In the recent years of educational reform there has been lots of attention and time focused on learning standards; state standards, national standards, content standards. Although they have been mentioned and grazed over there has not been much thorough discussion on technology standards (at least not at my school).  Administrators look for technology use in lessons and teachers experiment with using the internet to supplement their instruction, but without a rigorous expectation of technology integration and accountability, education will continue to be well behind in instructional options.

The National Educational Technology Standards mirror the lack of discussion in the manner that they too are vague and lack specificity. The NETS for teachers and students both follow five main ideologies. Interesting to me, were the standards for teachers and the action verbs used to describe teacher roles in student learning:  facilitate and inspire, design and develop, model, promote and engage in growth and leadership. It isn't that I do not think this is too much responsibility on a teacher, because these are the things we do for our students on a daily basis, but in terms of technology to teachers have the skill set or opportunities to develop their own tech skills in order to teach today's students? 

From these initial readings and looking closely at the standards, I think an easy way to start incorporating technology into lessons would be modeling the way I navigate the internet to show students the videos or articles I was already planning on sharing. Teachers (including myself) will often have links imbedded into presentations or sites already up and waiting for lessons however I could see getting to these resources a lesson in itself. Students, especially elementary students, could benefit from seeing how to search a webpage or check validity of written works.