Saturday, July 20, 2013

Edu. 710 - Reflection on Multimodal Tutorial/Creative Commons/Open Educational Resources

As I worked with the 2 articles on multimodal tutorials, creative commons, and open educational resources and viewed the John Seely Brown video an interesting thing happened.  I realized a shift in my own learning style, it was a sort of epiphany.  Last week during our class discussion I commented about how I felt I needed to connect with a paper and write notes on an article to internalize the information presented.  At home I decided to try something new and go right to the keyboard for note taking.  To my pleasant surprise I realized that I don’t need the “paper connection”.  I could feel the information processing happening in a different, but significant, way.  Now I am analyzing how to become a more proficient digital note taker and my first step is to practice keyboarding as I have developed some inefficient typing habits over the years.  

Now onto reflections on the content for this week.  The John Seely Brown video reinforced my belief that so many of our students really want to learn ways to be the best they can be.  I was amazed at the statistic that it can take as little as 48 hours for a new surfing move to travel around the world, that is exciting and impressive.   

As I read the John McVerry article I was captured by his idea about the... “shift in the skills and social practices of language use”.  I immediately thought of the numerous lessons my teenage daughters have given me on the language of texting, for example the meaning of such things as: g2g, ttfn, btw, k, lol  and many others.  In a very short article I think he presented a great overview of the need for ORMS to be included across all content areas.  I think this article will be well suited for a staff introduction/PD session at our school as we begin to revise our school technology plan.

The article by McVerry, Zawlinski & O’Byrne was very helpful in understanding the  New Literacies Duel-Level Theory.  I completely agree with the authors that the internet needs to be viewed as a literacy issue as opposed as a technology issue.  I was saddened to read about the lack of reading comprehension skills which were not included in the 2009 NAEP in reading.  Finally, I could definitely relate to the discrepancies between different socioeconomic groups in terms if online access.  I see this disparity as a teacher in New Haven Public Schools and a parent in Branford.  Our children have very different access, experiences and understanding of online learning/teaching.  Perhaps I can be a part of a solution to this issue!

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