Once Around the Digital Palette - and Beyond

 

the digital palette of 8 different media typesTo prepare teachers to think and teach about what literacy means in the 21st century, the chapters to this point have asked for the creation of these compositions:

Interaction and Text

Still Images/Graphics

Audio

Video

Animation

Sensors & Robotics

Why?

In the last 25 years a series of rather explosive developments have changed and are still changing the nature of literacy. pie charts showing the transition to over 94% of the world data being digital by 2007As the data explosion addressed in the Knowledge Society essay of chapter 7 has shown, the quantity of stored data in the world has grown some 14,000 percent over this time period and continues to grow at 23% a year. In this same time period as shown in the graphic on the left, the quality of this data has switched from almost exclusively paper and videotape to over 94% digital information and growing (Hilbert & Lopez, 2011). Of this great quantity of digital information, the data is primarily found on the Internet and in Web pages using the types of composition that have been explored. The Net has become the mechanism for sharing and composing all types of media, what these chapters have been calling the digital palette for 21st century thinking, learning and teaching. Each of the above media threads could also be seen as its own literacy, woven into the tapestry of the new literacy. The Net has become central to the emergence of a new digital economy and the changing nature of problem solving, careers and businesses of all kinds.

Since 1994, NC teachers have been required to integrate computer technology into all content areas of the NCSCOS. Yet schools are still playing a catch up game in obtaining the computer hardware and software resources and the professional development to prepare students for these needs. In North Carolina, the Race to the Top (RttP) grant funding from the Federal Government means this will happen sooner instead of later and that North Carolina is rapidly developing a model for the nation. Those with these skills are not only prepared to lead the state, but will also find themselves pioneers in finding paths that lead a nation into harvesting from the growing data forest, a forest of information growing faster than our ability to analyze and comprehend it. The NCSCOS is also evolving into a new set of standards that require increasing digital competency and content integration, the Common Core and Essential Standards, to be fully implemented in North Carolina in 2012-2013.

Next Steps

The next step is to return to these ideas as class teams and compose team lesson plans that integrate all the compositions of the digital palette while learning more about digital literacy in the coming chapters and course meetings. Use the lesson plan templates file at the Field Experience Office site. If you need a fresh copy, copy this lesson plan template file to your Flash drive. These lesson plans and media compositions will be shared among each other at a shared course Web site. This Web site will model further ways in which the Web and Web enabled software enables us to collaborate with and learn from each other.