21st Century Thinking-My Blog Visits

So, I've been busy learning lots through blogs and more. So much good thinking out there.  I just thought I'd share some of the interesting things I found while exploring issues related to 21st Century Literacy.  

A brilliant new piece by Kathleen Blake Yancey--A Report from NCTE on Writing in the 21st  Century.  The report was just posted and has already gotten lots of buzz.  It is a great document that gives many many reasons for supporting 21st Century Writing. A great report to share with colleagues, parents, politicians, etc.

Lots of great stuff going on in preparation for the Parkway Film Festival.  The district is hosting a film festival for all interested K-12 students. Their site has great clips describing the process and event. I was most excited about the student samples.  There are several samples that show the variety of things students can create. I can see using these to share with my students as samples of good projects.

I am learning so much from all of the TED talks that are posted on their site.  I recently discovered the site so I am catching up. One of my favorites is the talk by Ken Robinson "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" I am anxious to get his new book which I learned about here.

Loved this article about a 9 year old boy who created a program for the iPhone. A very cool program, that I am pretty sure I will need to buy.  

Connectivism Revisited is a great post about all of these tools and the way they connect us and our thinking.  So much changing in the way we are able to do things in such a short time.

If you spend any time watching Youtube, you have most likely seen a recent video called "David at the Dentist".  A very cute clip of a young boy, taken by his father, on his way home from the dentist.  But the reality of putting something out there and having people play with it is changing.  Alec Couros shares several remixes of the original as well as his thoughts. Wonder what this means for David.  Wonder how he is responding to all of the remixes. You just never know where things will go when you put them out there. Or what they will become.  This is a great example of that.

The idea of remixing is pretty interesting to me.  Lots of creative thinking and fun.  Play at its best!

Abby at Authentic Leaner shares a great story about one of her students  and their thinking about The Apple Store.

In his post "Passionate Voices", Ryan Bretag shares a discussion he had with students around 2 questions

What does it mean to be well educated in the 21st Century 

and

What should teaching and learning look like in the 21st Century to help develop said person?

Ryan reflects by saying one of my favorite lines of the month, "Days like this remind me that to continue creating the types of learners that will be successful, we must think past yesterday and beyond today by leveraging the voices of students! "

Barbara Barreda has a great post on LeaderTalk called "How Do We Help Stakeholders Move Beyond Window Dressings?"  She asks, "How do we create an understanding among the stakeholders in the educational community that effective technology integration is not measured by the amount of time students are using computers but rather by the framework and context of learning?"

Angela Stockman shares the story of her own children who skipped school to be part of the Special Olympics World Games Global Youth Summit.  She reflects on what they accomplished and in turn asks some very hard questions about schools.  She says, "I’ve heard plenty of excuses, but in the end, if each of us were stranded on an island with a class of one hundred kids and nothing in the way of resources, I’ve gotta believe we could still do a good job of making meaningful learning happen. So the fact that most of us are provided plenty more than that and accomplish less than what we should makes it hard for me to put the blame on NCLB, class sizes, limited funding, big bad administrators, or unsupportive parents...It's time we stopped pointing fingers and start pitching in.