Notes for Session Saturday, February 11, 2012

Define: Problem-solving & real-world relevance

The crucial beginning of digital literacy is the recognition that the tools of our digital world are just tools, and the crucial task of students as learners is to become empowered to define problems, and seek their solutions, in the real world. The closer student work beomes to participation in the global community through collaboration and communication, the more engaged students become.

Projects like digital storytelling, documentary filmmaking, game creation, web design, wiki collaboration, and social networking all contain a seed of the theme I am pursuing as a curricular design "grand idea" for digital literacy: Who is telling the computer what to do? In so much of what student activity with computers involves these days, whether it's an unsophisticated "flash card on a screen" or a sophisticated slef-correcting algorythm-driven learning module, it's the computer that's telling the student what to do. No creativity, realistic problem-solving, or resourceful thinking is required of the student.

By contrast, when a team works together to turn their "old school" posterboard display on an ancient culture into a digital presentation, they will write, correct, and rewrite scripts, practice voice and notice genre, in new ways.