Articles/Video Review

The blog post "The Journey from Digital Literacy to Digital Fluency" directly relates to one of my goals in my previous post.  The author speaks of the difference between the two.  While learning how to be more digitally fluent she continues to use her teaching strategies while adding in technology practices.  Using a Personal Learning Network will connect educators together and learn from one another.  When learning new things from other professionals you can go back a reflect on your own methods.  If something does not seem to be working that well a digitally fluent personal can work to make it better.  "Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning" was the most interesting read to me out of the four post that I watched or read.  The author described 8 ways to develop a philosophy or mindset of teaching.  To be flexible sounds a lot like differentiation.  Allowing students to learn and practice using their unique styles would be a hard task to incorporate, but I agree that they will grasp the concept better when given that freedom.  They will be proactive learners, asking questions, and able to develop their own set of essential questions.  Simply learning facts or repetitive information does not mean they will remember it in the long run.  Information needs to be applied in an intriguing and engaging way.   The article describes how students participated better by being able to use social media.  As long as it gets them involved and active then social media is a very useful tool.  Even though we live in a technology society I do think that textbooks should not fall by the wayside.  Textbooks and technology can be used interchangeably in a classroom.  "Praiseworthy failure" is a new term to me, but I agree that failure is important in the learning process.  No one comes out on top from the beginning.  You have to embrace the trial and error concept in the learning process to be successful.  As information is thrown at us constantly it can be difficult to manage.  "My daily info-wrangling routine" explains well the steps to take to adequately do this.  If you have ever researched anything on the internet it can be a daunting task.  You can use different outlets to gather your information - RSS feeds, twitter, facebook, podcasts, printed material (magazines, books, newpapers).  This author mentions reflecting on the information gathered just like the author talked about with digital fluency.  Reflection is important as an educator.  This allows us to change, adjust, and tweek our teaching strategies and lessons.  Sharing what we know and what we would like to know connects so many people and ideas together.  Many hands make light work and we live in a day and age where working together with people all over the world is fairly easy.  "Infowhelm and Information Fluency" video hits the nail on the head when it comes to today's world.  We are constantly being bombarded with information that our minds cannot possible store it all.  So where do we put it then?  We cannot be experts in any one subject because of the information overload.  This video and the blog post "The Journey from Digital Literacy to Digital Fluency" both make this very clear.  Things are constantly being added and changed so that we cannot keep up.  This video also points out finding reliable sources to gather our information and allowing students to learn in a manner that does not just require memorization and repeating it, but to come up with those thought provoking sentences such as essential questions and then applying them.  I feel like all four resources that I have read and watched mostly say the same things.  Some elaborate more than others.  The video summarizes in a eye pleasing way what the other three post are trying to say.