Shivar,+Pamela+McDow+-+Closing+Reflection

Questions
1. Now that you’ve had this professional development experience, how are you defining “new literacies?” How do you think your definition has changed or evolved this week? New literacies are those in which enable our student to use technology to enhance their learning over time. Being literate in a digital world encompasses many skills. Students must be able to research effectively, which includes being able to read and comprehend material in multiple formats. Students must also be able to create in a digital world.

2. Describe some new literacies that you learned about this week? What did you know about these topics before the week began and how has your experience this week contributed to your understanding of these new literacies? The PBI model is the most important literacy that I learned. I did not fully understand what that was when we arrived and have learned a lot about the questioning and research process involved in the Project Based Inquiry model. Getting students to develop their own questions from their research is also a powerful tool to understanding what they are learning.

3. In what ways are the new literacies prompted by technology? How do they affect one another? I believe the new literacies are the technology. It is using the technology in a more powerful way. New literacies involve technology and media and deals with online comprehension.

4. How do new literacies affect the way we think about #|academic content? Describe an example of how some specific academic content is affected by changes in the ways we reading write and thinking (i.e. new literacies). The first thing that comes to mind for me is in the area of just research. Our students are open to so much more than I was as a child in the K-12 school system. Students have access to the world online and in a matter of minutes. I used library card catalog searches and encyclopedias for my research. As a student I never had to wonder about the validity of my research, if it is in the book it is valid. Our students today must make sure that their sources are valid and reliable and are based on sound information and /or practice. Students not only have to do the research but also make sure their research is based on facts and not someone’s opinion.

5. How do new literacies affect the way we think about our teaching practices? How do they affect the development of new teaching practices or approaches to teaching? Teaching changes in these new literacies. No longer are the teachers the “feeders of the information.” Teachers are now moving to the facilitators of the learners. Students can now be free to ask more thought provoking questions and seek out the answers to those questions. We no longer live in an educational setting where we are simply satisfied with regurgitated information. Students are being asked to analyze, synthesize and create.

6. During the week, you learning about several conceptual / theoretical frameworks for understanding the new literacies including, project-based inquiry, TPACK, Bloom’s revised cognitive theory, online identity, and #|global literacies (i.e. cultural competence, cultural awareness, cosmopolitanism). Describe your personal perspective on new literacies as it is informed by these conceptual and theoretical ideas. PBI has had the most impact on me. I like its framework and will definitely use this training to train our staff next school year. Our teachers are already including TPACK and Blooms in their lessons and having success. Like I mentioned earlier our students are in a global classroom even though they are located in eastern NC.

7. How does the design process you learned about in your design studio work and the video digging deeper session support your understanding of the creative process? It has helped me to see some of the problems that our teachers will run into, what difficulties they will have to overcome with the technology. But it has also made me excited to see where this will take our teachers and students and what they will create.

8. You learned this week about how to manage, and in some cases create, your online identity. What action steps will you take (are you taking) to manage and further extend your online identity? It makes you very aware that some of things that you do in your personal life can affect your professional work. You must make sure that your digital footprint represents exactly what you want it to portray.

9. If you had one more day in the Institute, what would you like to learn more about and why? I would like to learn more about iPad apps for classrooms and student use and how to incorporate them into the learning environment. I would also like to learn how to manage using cell phones in a class without it getting out of control.