Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Inspirations



Yesterday afternoon I began a short course of ICT to support teaching and learning with a foundation degree police cohort.  As normal there are a range of confidences and competencies in the group, although I think it is mostly confidence! We began by discussing transferable skills that we have developed though use of ICT.  Interestingly enough most of the skills discussed were not ICT skills at all.  The top three were: problem solving, confidence and literacy.  We discussed literacy skills and the need to ensure that, children in particular, didn’t lose fundamental literacy skills that are in danger of extinction, such as spelling and grammar.  Something that I feel passionate about is the need to teach a broader range of writing skills though.  I think that unless we actually teach and embrace the new types of writing, such as texting, tweeting and emailing, we don’t capitalise on how useful these skills can be.  More to the point we need highlight that there is a vast difference in the way we write for these new technologies and that even within each of these there are formalities that need to be conformed to.  It isn’t enough to simply say this is the way you text or email, if you are texting or emailing your boss or your teacher, you should consider the language is different from that used if you are texting or emailing a friend.  So if it isn’t taught how do we expect students to just know?
Prior to the 21st century, literate defined a person’s ability to read and write, separating the educated from the uneducated. With the advent of a new millennium and the rapidity with which technology has changed society, the concept of literacy has assumed new meanings. Experts in the field suggest that the current generation of teenagers - sometimes referred to as the Net generation - possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multidimensional and fast-paced digital environment. For generations of adults who grew up in a world of books, traveling through cyberspace seems as treacherous and intimidating as speaking a new language. In fact, Prensky recognised “such non-IT-literate individuals as burdened with an accent - non-native speakers of a language, struggling to survive in a strange new world.”
Net_Generation.jpg
Image is from http://fall11-eng-02.wikispaces.com/
ICT is a dynamic and ever changing subject that opens up many different future pathways for students to follow and the subject content will stay with them throughout their lives.  I expect students to develop, maintain and stimulate their curiosity, interest and enjoyment in ICT, as I encourage them to have an open and enquiring mind.  I expect students to become autonomous users of ICT with associated skills to support lifelong learning.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

ICT has developed incredibly fast and I believe that this ever changing pace stimulates curiosity, It's like watching a soap on the television -can't wait to see what's going to happen next. Cracking blog content, spent hours reading them.

Unknown said...

Mandy, I definitely agree that we need to embrace the text speak and recognise that very often this is how young people communicate. I have to admit that I have very much embraced the text lingo shall we say, purely as it is a much faster way of typing the message and takes up less characters on the text. Lots of my friends however complain that it takes them ages to dissect what I have actually written! They're obviously just not down with the kids like me. Interestingly enough, my mother never has a problem understanding them and replies in a similar fashion, as she says it's very similar to writing in short-hand (she was a secretary for years!!) I think I had to draw the line however when I nearly went to write 'fone' instead of 'phone' on a Police report. It shocked me at how easily I had slipped into text speech, so yes we do have to keep our eye on it and separate the two when appropriate!

Unknown said...

Hi Mandy,
Loved the picture of the baby with the mobile phone, technology is all around us now from an early age. My 5 yr old nephew is very competent on an ipad and my sister in laws iphone! Very scary but the world is changing, in my role as school's officer i hear so many horror stories on nearly a daily basis of kids being hurt by sexting, cyberbullying or even being groomed and i see the effects it has on those kids! Not nice... it makes me want to push technology away. But i realise we have to move forward and as long as we educate and give the children the knowledge, hopefully they will continue to keep themselves safe. :)