A big drawback to “attending” the K12 Online Conference, now at the half-way point, is fitting all the wonderful presentations they’re offering into the normal daily routine.
At a standard conference, I’d be out of town, immersing myself in the sessions, hallway discussions, and mealtime idea exchanges, while ignoring meetings, email, and the rest. (Well, ignoring most of it.)
Catching up this weekend with K12 Online, one of the best of the many good presentations posted so far is Global Literate by Clarence Fisher, a teacher from Snow Lake, Manitoba, Canada.
His message is that literacy has evolved through out history and is still evolving today. For our students, literacy can take many different forms.
They must be able to work not only with text, but also hypertext, images, audio, video, animation. Often more than one of these media must be addressed in the same “document”.
Clarence also emphasizes the need for students to be not only savvy consumers of media but also informed and literate producers.
Not just for one teacher or one small group of peers. They must work as if they are communicating with the world. Because they are… or should be.
The podcast (audio only or with slides) is well worth 40 minutes of your time. Pass it along to someone who still believes that literacy only applies to reading text.