Joyner+Christi+Michele+-+Closing+Reflection


 * Closing Reflection**:

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?


 * After attending the NLI and reflecting upon my experience, I would define new literacies as incorporating "old" skills in a new way. New literacies are reading, writing, and comprehension skills as they apply to new technologies. This would translate into using technology in the classroom and incorporating the necessary skills to appropriately and effectively use this technology in the learning process. At the beginning of the week, new literacies seemed to be incorporating technology in the classroom, but over the course of the week, it became clear to me that it is so much more than that. The importance of incorporating the skills necessary to use technology effectively as a learning tool is the overarching idea that to me was carried throughout the NLI this week.**

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?


 * This week I was introduced to some new cool tools, but many of the cool tools that were introduced, I had heard of and many I had used before. I think that my "take away" from the week was the fact that the implementation of these tools required more than just their introduction. The specific new literacy that I feel that I learned the most about was "thinking". This was most explained in the PBI process. PBI is not a new idea for me but the way that it was explained in NLI was a "light bulb" moment for me. I have had some training with PBI, but thus week really brought it all together for me. The instruction in the compelling question along with how to present this to students really enhanced my understandin of the process and gave me real ideas about the implementation of this process into my classroom. It became clear to me as the week progressed that technology was merely the tool to activate or inspire these new literacies.**

3. In what ways are the new literacies prompted by technology? How do they affect one another?


 * As technology becomes such a part of our lives, it becomes necessary to integrate these into the educational experience. This cannot be a haphazard thing with little thought. It must be an intentional implementation. This is where the idea of new literacies comes onto play. Exposing students to instruction in reading, writing, and comprehension and thinking skills, makes them more successful in life in the 21st century. I think that technology has made it necessary fof the implementation of new literacies and the incorporation of new literacies is enhanced with the use of technology. For example, students have access to so much information at any moment using the internet. This is an awesome tool, but without the implementation of new literacies, can be ineffective in promoting the learning by the student. New literacies provide the students with the necessary skills to effectively use this information.**

4. How do new literacies affect the way we think about academic]] content? Describe an examples of how some specific academic content is affected by changes in the ways we reading write and thinking (i.e. new literacies).


 * New literacies affect the way we think about academic content in the depth by which we learn content. By incorportating the new literacies of reading, writing, and thinking into our academic content, the depth of content can be extended. I think that by applying the PBI process to a lesson provides a way of incorporating new literacies which leads to the a greater understanding of the content. I teach Environmental Science and one of the important topics is alternative energy sources. The information about these sources can be provided and students can merely learn the basic definitions, etc. By incorporating new literacies, and more specifically the PBI process, the students now become "owners" of their own learning and can go far beyond basic definitions and develop a true understanding of these sources not only as they exist independently but as they are connected to each other.**

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?

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.
 * New literacies definitely change the way in which we think about teaching practices. Teachers must move from providers of knowledge to facilitators of knowledge. This means that the teacher is no longer the center of the classroom with all of the students focussed on the teacher. The teacher is now facilitating the learning process and the student becomes the center of the classroom. This requires developing new teaching practices that incorporate these new literacies. Approaches to teaching now become facilitation and questioning that evokes thinking from the students. This may be a different approach than many teachers have been exposed to.**


 * To me, new literacies is the process of teaching "old" skills in a new way. Teaching reading, writing, and comprehension and thinking as it relates to current times. Students have always needed these skills, but I think that these skills are now necessary to effectively use technology. The PBI process is a way to implement all of these in a way that also incorporates all of the other things that are necessary, such as Common Core, etc. TPACK is also a way to incorporate content into this new literacies idea. With the world becoming so much more interconnected, the incorporation of global literacies will be necessary in our students' success. I see all of these as being pieces that all lead to the overarching topic of New Literacies. I believe that if we can connect all of these in a way that is easy to "see" it will be easy for us to see how we can effectively incorporate these into the classroom.**

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?

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?
 * The design process that we learned was quite inspriational in my understanding of the PBI process. At the onset of the week, it seemed impossible to effectively create our own PBI lesson. As the week progressed, and we learned more about the design process, the task seemed possible and was a great learning experience. I think that this session made it seem possible to create these PBI lessons in a short amount of time. I think that when this is introduced to teachers, it seems overwhelming and time consuming to teachers, but the way in which this was introduced and implemented at NLI made it seem possible by giving a specific design technique. I think that this experience will encourage me to implement this process in more lessons.**

9. If you had one more day in the Institute, what would you like to learn more about and why?
 * My online identity was mostly professional with a small amount of personal information. I think that I will cintinue to limit my personal information but would like to expand my professional information. I would like to expand my Twitter network to include a more educationally based following. I would also like to extend my following of content related organizations.**


 * I really enjoyed the subject specific cool tools session and would love to have more information in this area. I think that it would be helpful to further break this content are down and make it more specific. For example, I would love a session on secondary life sciences and how new literacies could be incorporated into this subject specifically. I think this would make it easier to implement and incorporate new literacies into my own classroom.**