The Big Shifts
The way we think about content and curriculum.
In the Read/Write Web classroom it's all about the transfer of information; of collabortive, individualized learning; and active participation of all members of the class. It is marked by the continious process of creating and sharing content with a wide audience. These tecnologies are demanding that we reexamine the way we think about content and curriculum, and they are nurturing new, important shifts in how best to teach students.
Big Shift #1: Open Content
It used to be that schools and teachers 'owned' the content they taught in the classrooms. Favorite units, lesson plans, themes were well guarded. Most curriculum was taught from a textbook with a few 'favorite tried and true' resources thrown in.
Today, however, that same information is as far away as a Google search with the depth and breadth of content staggering. The content is always more current, and most importantly, availiable 24/7.
Big Shift #2: 24/7 Learning
The ability to interact with content when it's convient to do so means that learning can take place anytime we are ready for it. Unlike the traditional student-teacher relationship, the student no longer just consumes the content provided by the teacher. Relevant content can come from anyplace at anytime.
Big Shift #3: Social, Collaborative Construction of Meaningful Knowledge
The typical expectation of our students has been that they work independently ("do your own work") and produce that work or content for a limited audience, usually just the teacher giving a 'grade'. The work when finished was just that...finished. The Read/Write Web makes it easy for students to produce work in truly collaborative ways for large, and diverse, audiences. Content created in a collaborative way takes on a new social context that requires us to change the way we think about what we ask our students to produce, not as something to be 'finished' but as something to be added to and refined by those outside the classroom.
Big Shift #4: Teaching is Conversation, Not Lecture
Publishing to a 'world' audience is saying "these are my ideas, my understanding". That in itself is empowering. Students learn that their voices matter, they are being heard, that people are listening and responding, that their ideas count.
Big Shift # 5: Know "Where" Learning
In the past when information was not as accessible, it was important to memorize facts and formulas. Today it's not as essential to know what the answer is as it is to know where to find it. Knowing where to find information is one of the 21st century literacies called "information literacy". But it's not enough to simply find those sources. We must be able to identify which of those sources are worthy of our attention.
Big Shift #6: Readers Are No Longer Just Readers
In the era of textbooks and printed resources reading was a fairly passive experience. The web is now a printing press for the masses and readers must be critical consumers of the information they consume. The opprotunity to interact with others, to converse, demands that our readers must also be writers. Reading is becoming a more active undertaking, no longer neatly compartmentalized in books.
Big Shift #7: The Web As Notebook
As the web becomes more and more a source of content for our teaching and learning, it renders paper less and less effective as a way to capture the information we find relevant. Using Web2 technologies students can collect, organize, and retreive not only text content but audio, video, and pictures, connected in ways that paper textbooks never could.
Big Sgift #8: Writing Is No Longer Limited To Text
Writing remains crucially important to be able to express oneself in writing using words. But it's hard to deny that more and more we are a multimedia society. The definition of what it means to write is changing. Today students can 'write' in audio and video, in music, in photographs, even in code such as XML, Java, HTML; all of which can be eaisly published to extended audiences.
Big Shift #9: Mastery Is The Product, Not The Test
Mastery of content is often limited to, or exhibited by, passing a test. Most of those tests are not based on what you could do with the information. Today, students can display mastery of content in countless ways that involve the creation of digital media for large audiences.
Big Shift #10: Contribution, Not Completion, As The Ultimate Goal
Instead of handing in countless assignments to teachers to read, grade, hand back, or maybe put on a bulletin board, we can can now offer our students a totally new way of looking at the work they do. It's not meant for just the teacher or the class or even the school. It's meant for the world; it's meant to be added to the conversation and used by others.
Top Ten Myths in Education
Grouping students by age into grades for twelve years at 180 days per year is a reasonable and successful way to organize schools.
Getting A's is the point of school.
Filtering all the "bad stuff" from children while they are online in school promotes Internet safety and media literacy.
Paying teachers based on students' test scores, will motivate them to work harder and be better teachers.
Homework teaches independence and good work habits, "reinforces" what has been taught, and helps students to become more successful learners.
High stakes testing provides an accurate measurement of "achievement".
Interactive whiteboards are a school district's best investment of funds to move classrooms out of the Industrial Age model.
When the money follows the child, all children will benefit--particularly the ones living in small, rural, poor school districts.
Its all the parent's fault. No wait, its all the teacher's fault. No wait it's all the policy makers fault. Oh wait it must be society's fault.
Politicians, corporate executives, ex military brass, and others not in the classroom all know better than those in the classrooms how to "fix" education. Besides, anyone can teach, right?
The way we think about content and curriculum.
In the Read/Write Web classroom it's all about the transfer of information; of collabortive, individualized learning; and active participation of all members of the class. It is marked by the continious process of creating and sharing content with a wide audience. These tecnologies are demanding that we reexamine the way we think about content and curriculum, and they are nurturing new, important shifts in how best to teach students.
Big Shift #1: Open Content
It used to be that schools and teachers 'owned' the content they taught in the classrooms. Favorite units, lesson plans, themes were well guarded. Most curriculum was taught from a textbook with a few 'favorite tried and true' resources thrown in.
Today, however, that same information is as far away as a Google search with the depth and breadth of content staggering. The content is always more current, and most importantly, availiable 24/7.
Big Shift #2: 24/7 Learning
The ability to interact with content when it's convient to do so means that learning can take place anytime we are ready for it. Unlike the traditional student-teacher relationship, the student no longer just consumes the content provided by the teacher. Relevant content can come from anyplace at anytime.
Big Shift #3: Social, Collaborative Construction of Meaningful Knowledge
The typical expectation of our students has been that they work independently ("do your own work") and produce that work or content for a limited audience, usually just the teacher giving a 'grade'. The work when finished was just that...finished. The Read/Write Web makes it easy for students to produce work in truly collaborative ways for large, and diverse, audiences. Content created in a collaborative way takes on a new social context that requires us to change the way we think about what we ask our students to produce, not as something to be 'finished' but as something to be added to and refined by those outside the classroom.
Big Shift #4: Teaching is Conversation, Not Lecture
Publishing to a 'world' audience is saying "these are my ideas, my understanding". That in itself is empowering. Students learn that their voices matter, they are being heard, that people are listening and responding, that their ideas count.
Big Shift # 5: Know "Where" Learning
In the past when information was not as accessible, it was important to memorize facts and formulas. Today it's not as essential to know what the answer is as it is to know where to find it. Knowing where to find information is one of the 21st century literacies called "information literacy". But it's not enough to simply find those sources. We must be able to identify which of those sources are worthy of our attention.
Big Shift #6: Readers Are No Longer Just Readers
In the era of textbooks and printed resources reading was a fairly passive experience. The web is now a printing press for the masses and readers must be critical consumers of the information they consume. The opprotunity to interact with others, to converse, demands that our readers must also be writers. Reading is becoming a more active undertaking, no longer neatly compartmentalized in books.
Big Shift #7: The Web As Notebook
As the web becomes more and more a source of content for our teaching and learning, it renders paper less and less effective as a way to capture the information we find relevant. Using Web2 technologies students can collect, organize, and retreive not only text content but audio, video, and pictures, connected in ways that paper textbooks never could.
Big Sgift #8: Writing Is No Longer Limited To Text
Writing remains crucially important to be able to express oneself in writing using words. But it's hard to deny that more and more we are a multimedia society. The definition of what it means to write is changing. Today students can 'write' in audio and video, in music, in photographs, even in code such as XML, Java, HTML; all of which can be eaisly published to extended audiences.
Big Shift #9: Mastery Is The Product, Not The Test
Mastery of content is often limited to, or exhibited by, passing a test. Most of those tests are not based on what you could do with the information. Today, students can display mastery of content in countless ways that involve the creation of digital media for large audiences.
Big Shift #10: Contribution, Not Completion, As The Ultimate Goal
Instead of handing in countless assignments to teachers to read, grade, hand back, or maybe put on a bulletin board, we can can now offer our students a totally new way of looking at the work they do. It's not meant for just the teacher or the class or even the school. It's meant for the world; it's meant to be added to the conversation and used by others.
Top Ten Myths in Education