Jenkins,+Penny+Thomas+closing+refection

The New Literacies Institute has helped me come to understand what new literacies are about using technology to improve the way I teach and to help students achieve their learning goals. I entered the professional development expecting the same old computer literacies that have been rehashed over the past few years; I left with an understanding that New Literacies is about how to question, think, and use technology to produce better learning outcomes. Some new literacies that I learned about included how to question using the new Bloom's taxonomy, a plethora of new websites to help me reach and motivate my students and a team built PBL on a school based project known as "The Giving Games" in which our students will reach out globally to help the citizens of Sudan attain access to drinking water. Using technology to make the world a smaller place- to aid the students of Patton High School into becoming global citizens, is now a part of my new literacy! I too became a student of the New Literacies learning community. By incorporating sites like gapminder, I can help my students become 21st century learners and more important, doers! The New Literacies are changing the academic content of the classroom by aiding both the teacher and the student in their quest to be better prepared and successful leaders for the world we live in. The way we read (e-books), write, produce (animoto), and think are all being challenged and adapted to assimilate into the new literacies curriculum. Perhaps the most important thing I will be taking from the new literacies training is in my teaching methods. I am going to use the new literacies technology components to become more of a learning facilitator. Two very important lessons I learned was the questioning technique and the exploration of ideas- I plan to have my students "question" chapters for discussion and not just "outline" the information. Through the questions, we can explore answers together. In the exploration of ideas, the students will be challenged to think about and explore the vast information highway to understand important key concepts in history. During the past week, I worked with my team partners to develop a school based BPL. During the planning stages of this project we explored and experimented with several new teaching tools. The institute allowed for me and my co-workers to gain new perspectives on teaching locally and globally using new literacies as a basis of understanding. During the Design Studio and Digging Deeper videos, I had to face my technology fears and jump head first into the project. The time limits were a bit scary at first, but I found that it forced me and my partners to work together, use teamwork and incorporate the new literacies to create and finish the assignment in a short amount of time. Online Identity was also addressed this week. I was a little surprised as to what information about me was so easily accessible on the web. I hope to extend my online identity to include information about my teaching career and successes in the classroom. If I had one more day at the institute, I would love to have more time for the cool tools sessions. Anytime teachers are given time to explore and share ideas, everyone grows and learns from the experience. Overall, I feel like I learned and grew as a person and as a teacher during the week long professional development. The time spent brainstorming with my team and building up our repertoire of ideas was very rewarding and will allow us to share and grow our entire school community.