Our daughter graduates this month from a Douglas County High School. We were asking her whether she would like a Mac or PC laptop as she moves on to college. She shared that she's never used a Mac. How could this be? How could a graduate of Douglas County schools not have been using them for years? She would have been in an elementary school just six years ago.
That got me thinking about how far we've come over the last six years integrating technology into learning experiences in our school. I asked around today at an administrators meeting, inquiring how many computers different schools have in the hands of learners. At Renaissance, students are using technology every day, in every grade. This isn't the case in other schools.
Two-thirds of the people on the planet have a cell phone. 80% of children under five use the internet weekly. The world's volume of information will soon be doubling every few hours. It's inevitable that the change would come to our children's education. Students at Renaissance are using digital tools to: read, write, multi-author, to content find and research, to analyze and present via multi-media, connect globally, produce performance assessments, create, and synthesize information.
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To be literate in the 21st Century is radically different than what it meant to be literate when I was graduating from high school.
Here's what some of the experts have to say about being literate in the 21st Century:
"Literacy means being able to consume and produce the media forms of the day.
Fluency is the ability to practice literacy at advanced levels required for sophisticated communication within social and workplace environments." Jason Ohler
"The 21st Century world is media saturated, technologically dependent, and globally connected." NCSS Position Statement on Media Literacy.
"We live in a multimedia age where the majority of information people receive comes less often from print sources and more typically from highly constructed visual images, complex sound arrangements, and multi media formats." NCSS Position Statement on Media Literacy
"Today, literacy means more than being able to read a newspaper, a menu at a diner, or the latest mystery novel. Many teachers -- and students -- believe it also means being intellectually, culturally, and electronically nimble: navigating the Internet with intelligence, making complicated decisions about an HMO, understanding the veiled messages in an advertisement, being familiar with the different cultures represented in your child's grade school class. In the workplace, it means not only understanding written and spoken English, but possibly, also being fluent in various computer languages, knowing how to research and solve complex problems, and being able to pursue multiple tasks at the same time." NPR
With the budget reductions we've experienced over the last few years there have been no dollars to finance the growing need to put digital tools into the hands of learners. This need has fallen to the efforts of fund raising in schools. Over the last three years, we've used most of our fundraising dollars for this purpose.
We now have a COW cart (computers on wheels) that contains a class set of lap tops and/or Ipads for each grade level. It isn't perfect because this means that grade level teaching teams have to coordinate their plans so that they each have access to computers when they need them. However, there probably isn't a day when a student isn't using them. Each classroom now has an enhanced sound system for improved listening and learning; greater participation and confidence; and increased productivity.
On March 16th we will have our second school fundraiser - Life Is Art. We will use a majority of the dollars raised for what we fondly refer to as our 'technology rejuvenation fund'. These dollars will be allocated to the repair and replacement of the technology we have and to continue to increase the opportunities for students to use digital tools for learning.
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| A student shares a performance assessment with her parents and teacher. |
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| A Crew Skyping with an Expert Speaker during a Learning Expedition. |
I'm proud that the students at Renaissance are engaged in 21st Century learning opportunities. I'm proud that our teachers have embraced the challenge of making shifts to figure out how to use technology meaningfully for teaching and to enhance learning.
So what was the whole point of this blog post? To say thank you. Without the financial support of our community our students wouldn't be on their way to being literate in the 21st Century.
If your child's education has only been at Renaissance you may not be aware that students in other schools are not using digital tools for learning in the way we do at Renaissance. What we have, and what we are doing is not the norm. It is through the partnership of the school and parent efforts, that we are able to provide our students with a foundation to be literate in the 21st Century.
Ms. Deborah
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