Bit By Bit

Reflection on:
“Globally Literate”
By Clarene Fisher

This workshop really brings home the idea that Literacy has changed drastically due to the Web. Literacy has been evolving since the beginning of time, but there are new skills that have to be explicitly taught. Students can no longer be treated as only consumers of information, but as evaluators and even producers who create and interact with information. We can no longer think of literacy as handling only text, but other multimedia as well.

I really appreciated this vodcast as it had me thinking a lot about how dependent the students are in my lab when presented with new web pages. They are constantly asking me to help them navigate information and I’ve been working hard at encouraging them to try something— be it clicking on a button, or asking a friend, or searching for words that are on the page. Information on the web can be overwhelming. Fisher makes the case that we need to give more time for students to practice and learn how to handle, understand, and manage information in these new formats.

I especially like the quote that “It’s not about searching, but about finding.” I need to spend more time with students in helping them to develop skills to not only evaluate the search results they come up with, but also how to manage search engines and other tools to narrow those searches… to better manage the flood of results.

“Simply reading and understanding a text is no longer enough.” Students need skills in a variety of tools, with a variety of media. Text is only one “flavor”.

Global Literacy lessons can start as early as Kindergarten. Here are two great lessons from Cybersmart to start with the very young:

• Good Sites
• Find the Ad

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