Literacy Support

Literacy Support, where I have reached and what I’ve found.

“My ideas are not alone. Others have similar. My quest: find those minds and balance my thoughts with them”. – Marquez

During this amazing process, I’ve been reading and researching all around. Thanks to my mentors Dr. Thibodeaux, Dr. Haraupnik and Mike Yakubovsky, I have found relevant information por my ePortfolio and specially for my Innovation Plan.

On this journey, I have observed many relevant individuals talking about the same subject I am working on, and…. I found very interesting ideas and thoughts.

Come with me, read along, while I share a little bit of these amazing digital learning advocate, their ideas and how, through their work, they have been collaborating with support my innovation plan.

Let’s start with Steve Jobs. On an interview named Lost Interview, he states that computational thinking (today known as coding) should be taught in all grades. Coding gives students the opportunity to develop their mind.

“I think in this country should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.”Computer programming teaches you how to think”.

Why he says that? Because computational thinking gives the learner the ability to communicate with precision, give exact decisions. At the same time, the learner must determine what is happening, what would happen, and what is going to happen. All these three situations are key elements to  develop critical thinkers. And my main idea of all my project is precisely that: CREATE CRITICAL THINKERS.

World’s whole information in our hands

Another Steve, but in this case the famous photographer and president of CrossKnowldege and strong supporter of digital learning, Steve Fiehl, talks about how school has been the same and is boring for his kids. He understood this, because his sons has the information of the whole world in their hands. Any information they might need, is in their cellphones. So, what is the reason to keep learning by heart information that any of us can get in a second?

Fiehl is helping me to support my idea about why we don’t have critical thinkers despite we have all the information we need as far as less than 1 foot away and 1 second away? Because we don’t have e do not have critical thinkers. Without critical thinking, a person might have the best tool in their hands, but it will do nothing if they do not know how to use it.

Education needs to adapt

Thomas, D, & Seley Brown, J. in their book “A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change” talk about embracing change in education. If everything in our world evolves, why not education? Factories, technologies, scientific truths, global beliefs have changed through time, why education has not changed that much? Thomas and Brown talk about this. Talk about how schools need to adapt to the non-stopping changes. And these changes are becoming faster and faster. We have experience so much changes in the last 50 years that in the last 200 years.

These two great authors are not by themselves. Sir Robinson is an amazing author and researcher that has manage to achieve great things, among them, help the peace process in Northern Ireland by creating economic and creativity strategies for the education and culture. He has worked with several government and it’s a recognized figure in education and creativity.

Sir Robinson, in his Tedx Talks (January 6, 2007) states how school is killing creativity. Schools are still in the idea of pushing the same information, the same books with out change.

Now, these ideas interlink with Code.org co-founder of Code.Org Ali Partovi. On a TEDx talk (June 14, 2017) he stated that every person learns different. That when education disruption happens in a regular class, the possibility to re-engage that student’s attention and learning moment is almost gone. Partovi supports Blended Learning and Flipped Classroom. He agrees that when using these two techniques mixed up with collaboration, better learning happens. Students understand better. There is no disruption of learning and the student can learn at his/her own pace.  The student will have the ability to stop and go back where the misunderstanding occur. Ask friends and teachers to clarify his/her understanding.

In my action plan, this fits perfectly. Through digital learning, blended learning and flipped classroom, students will be able to become critical thinkers. How? By learning at their own pace. By learning to analyze what they do not understand and seek for the answer. They will be able to develop their own criteria as to where to seek and to whom to rely. They will work in collaboration, communicate better and look for a solution. And because all of this happens online, the sense of “office/school hours” disappears. The collaboration can happen at any time and in any place: with the teacher at midday face to face, or with a student across the world in the middle of the night.

That is why during my innovation plan I want to integrate these strategies.

Online learning reaches everyone in the world

A big advocate for online learning is Amy Collier. Amy Collier is the Associate Provost for Digital Learning at Middlebury College.  This program helps to reach and teach to different communities. Amy is a strong advocate for learning through internet. She says that thanks to Internet, all information is available to anybody. Internet connects people, it helps reaching everybody around the globe. As a consequence, anybody can learn no matter where that person is and overall: free of cost.

Creating critical thinkers is my wish, my goal, my passion. I believe that critical thinkers become owners of their life, of their personal and professional journey. Therefore, they will become positive and active community members. Critical thinkers can extend their reach beyond the academics.

On her Ted talks (June 20, 2013), Amy talks about how everyone should have access to education. That everyone is worth and should be educated. She fights to have open digital learning education. The benefit of this is that not only everyone will be educated, it won’t cost the students anything and this will bring down the big inequalities around the world.

For my project, this is relevant to me, because I want my students to be able to share their learning and also to be able to solve a real problem for their community.

I used data as well.

In my research and to compliment my ideas, I also relied on EDUCAUSE. EDUCAUSE researches about education and IT. It publishes relevant data on tendencies and use of technology. Thanks to this organization, I was able to learn how these tendencies are changing and/or keeping trends. Like how teachers were starting to have more electronic devices in 2015; Or how makerspaces have been implemented in 2018.

EDUCASE is helping me to confirm that my ideas, my thoughts, my plan is going towards the  expected IT tendencies. To see and analyze that my efforts and what I want to do is matching for what is coming for tomorrow.

Lets US teacher NOT forget

As a final note, I will keep reminding myself and other teachers the following:

It is all about the kids. We are doing this for the kids.

Like Alonso Piug said about kids:

“Every kid needs to be supported, valued and challenged. This way, they will feel confident about their surroundings and will be able to learn from what they are exposed.”–Alonso Piug (Spanish to English personal translation)

Before I go, I want to finish with this quote from an amazing Spanish teacher: Jose Antonio Fernandez.

The world of a kid is marvelous. They see the world way different to us. We need to adapt to them, not make them adapt to us.

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