New and Traditional Media

“New and Traditional Media,” Media and Information Literacy. UNESCO, 2011.

The way people communicate has changed through time, specifically by the improvement of ways to spread those ideas. Currently, the use of technology has not only influenced communication, but also interaction and information exchange. We were originally only exposed to traditional media, such as television, radio and news papers, but with the development of technology this has changed to a new media that includes, social networks, blogs, sites, twitter, among others. Both medias follow the same path, but the use of technology has made possible to more people to be not only informed, being just a consumer; but has made possible for them to post an opinion on different issues. Therefore, this way of communication allowed democratizing the ability to inform others by enhancing a participatory democracy. This has allowed people to participate in social, economical and political matters. It has also widened the area of interaction. The information posted can be accessed by anyone in the world.

Accordingly, teachers have also been influenced and can now share knowledge, get ideas or interact with other teachers around the world. This has powered the construction of tools for education and “teacher or student sites”. Regardless of all the benefits that are clear to the use of technology in class and with students, there is still much to be done. As teachers we have to make sure students learn that what they publish will have an impact, that not all the sites are reliable, that they have to be critic, to show them the tools to enhance their learning, authoring, among others.  Communication will continue evolving and students need to be prepared to face those changes and become a responsible link in new global media.

Taken from: http://www.123rf.com/photo_12186053_social-media-globe-the-development-of-global-communications.html royalty free

Visual Literacy Standars and the Use in the Classroom, a response to the article from ACRL Visual Competency

Burgess, J., Medaille, A. ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Association of College and Research Libraries. 2011 http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/visualliteracy.pdf

Education is always changing in order to fit social needs. Currently, our society is highly visual and has allowed almost anyone to create visual media. However, being able to be in contact with all of that information does not mean that people are critical about what they are looking at. There is a need for teaching people these skills, especially with a visually oriented global society.

Students are expected to use visuals and most of the time it is taken for granted that they will use them appropriately. However there is a strong need to prepare students on also doing research, interpretation, analysis and evaluation of these visual materials. Showing them about visual information etiquette is also a need. Although there is a great need to teach this, there are no standards showing learning outcomes around visual literacy. The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education has already determined that there is a gap and has provided tools for teachers meanwhile. As teachers we need to develop classes that meet social needs and even trends to help students be prepared.

We should learn to treat visual information not just as a picture or the extra, it is now an essential tool to learn and it is very powerful. In my classes I like to incorporate lots of visuals because in science and math having abstract ideas makes concepts difficult to understand. Once you make them part of their daily lives it becomes easier to understand and remember. However, I still believe there is a lot of work to be done, in my case I have to incorporate media and visual etiquette to my lessons.

According to the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education having visual literacy incorporated in the classroom is a group effort. I agree with this idea, I believe that department and level teams should work having specific visuals incorporated in the curriculum just as it is done with the other information. This allows having better structure, organization and cross curricular information. At my school librarians are also a key point to develop this. There are several visuals and media provided by them that should be incorporated in the lessons. 

                                                

 Image taken from: 

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/creative-visualization-urban-legend/#axzz27AkHgbTB

Why do our schools need to embrace the innovations of visualization, a response to the article "Innovation Through Technology"

Lemke, C. “Innovation Through Technology,” 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn. (2011) pp. 243 – 269.

Taken from: http://unswict.wikispaces.com/file/view/Creativity.jpg/289200309/314x246/Creativity.jpg

When we talk about integrating technology in education we should start by understanding why we need to do so. According to Cheryl Lemke’s Innovation Through Technology our students should be integrating technology into three different areas of innovation, visualization, democratization of knowledge and participatory cultures for learning. Every single one of them is important in developing 21^st century skills in our students. Our students need to be engaged and skillful teachers will be able to create a flow where students will be engaged and therefore continue their learning in a flow where they will build skills, be creative and acquire a certain expertise in the area. The use of these innovations will help the teachers and students create this learning flow. Students are exposed everyday to visuals and these are organized in our minds through different channels. Teachers should use technology to capitalize the power of visualization and should focus on building their visual literacy by engaging students into thinking critically and creatively about visuals, including advertisements and media. Students should also be able to communicate effectively with visuals and to become informed and critical consumers of information. Along with visualization comes the democratization of knowledge, where access to information has been available to more and more people everyday. The access not only to random information but also to innovative tools and instruction and education in different areas has been made more accessible to everyone with an Internet connection. This has democratized knowledge because it is no longer in the hands of those who can afford it but rather in the hands of whoever is willing to access it. The skill our students need to develop is to be able to sort out which information is valuable and to continue that drive for learning new things. With this access to knowledge, our world no longer works in an individual basis. More and more we are talking of cooperative and collaborative learning. We are now living in a culture of participation. Our students no longer observe a class, or just watch a video, but rather participate and enhance it by collaborating with their peers and learning in a cooperative environment. The use of technology such as Google docs and wikis provide our students with the perfect place to work together and cooperatively produce quality work.

In Middle School at my school we are motivating our students to collaborate in their work. Technology such as Google docs has allowed them to be able to work together with a common goal even if they can’t meet in person. Our projects are collaborative and cooperative, creating a natural flow for motivation, learning and sometimes reaching an area of expertise. Some of the challenges we have faced are having the tools to work cooperatively with technology. However, by implementing strategies such as the BYOT or BYOD (Bring your own device) we have been able use the technology that the students feel more comfortable with and are more successful with. I am sure we will be facing many other challenges but engaging the students and empowering them to work collaboratively to find solutions will always surface over any challenge. 

Taken from:

http://www.scoop.it/t/educational-technology-theory-practice

Traditional Education Does Not Meet Our Needs

Zhao, Y. “The Wrong Bet: Why Common Curriculum & Standards Won’t Help, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Learners. Pp. 23 – 45

The traditional educational paradigm appears to be outdated for several reasons. The first on in my opinion is that the world is not the same and things now change faster and can be communicated faster that what we have ever seen before. The amount of information people can access in seconds is huge and therefore we, the teachers, are no longer the sources of information, but rather the moderator and enabler on how to use that information and how to access it. Education these days does not need memorization since we can easily access it on line in no time. This paradigm has also been outdated since we no longer need people that know how to do the same things, we need people who know the skills to do different things and communicate in a global way, hence they need to be prepared to be citizens of the world and not only limited to their own culture. Traditional education seems very limited when thinking of the skills that our children will need in the future.

These limitations have affected our own opportunities because some children in different countries, especially developing countries, will not be able to learn these skills and will fall behind in the race for the future. They will lack the skills to be successful in this world. However, luckily not every school in these developing countries has to be limited. Teachers often compensate for these deficiencies in the educational system by adapting new techniques they share with other teachers around the world. We have then been able to create and accommodate a second curriculum aligned to the core one to supplement the needs of our children. I am very fortunate to work in a school that tries to implement these new ideas and that works toward helping our students acquire all those skills. In my classroom we constantly integrate not only technology but the knowledge that the children have from their trips to different countries, and we have been able to share this with other people as well. Technology has been an essential tool in allowing me to create an interesting and challenging environment for my students to develop these skills.