Drew Schrader: Keeping the Literacy in 21st Century Literacy

The title of Schrader's presentation drew me in because it covers a topic that has been a concern to me since I began learning about 21st century tools and skills. I have always worried how easy it might be to put the tools before the content and ahead of good teaching practices. Schrader has those same concerns and used this presentation to give teachers concrete stategies for using online tools in a meaningful way.

He had three ideas, all geared toward high schoolers, but I can see using 2 of them with my 6th graders.

The first idea was to use a tool called Sreentoaster when demonstrating Think Alouds. Screentoaster allows you to record both the computer screen and your voice as you narrate what you are doing and the thoughts you are discussing. With the availability of online books, Schrader sees the potential for pulling up a text and demonstrating ways to access the text, ways for students to "metacognate about what they are reading." He envisions this being a tool to help increase comprehension. Students can potentially go back and watch these various presentations on how make meaning from the text, listening to their teacher's words again, reminding themselves of comprehension strategies that easily could have been forgotten after only hearing them once.

I can see how this can be used as one of many tools that help teachers help students develop the ability to comprehend a text. I like how it is not doing anything that a teacher wouldn't try to do with other tools- it is just giving us another option for how to help our students learn. The recording feature makes it really stand out for its usefulness and its ability to improve what we already do.

The second tool he described was Diigo, and he suggested using it to annotate text that you assign your students to read online. Diigo allows a user to highlight areas of text on a webpage and add sticky notes that contain extra information. He had both an article and a book that he used as examples and showed the various notes he put in the stickies. All were aimed to remind students to look for details or to point out a particular technique used by the author.

I would love to try this with my students. I am most often encouraging my students to read more and not simply scan all webpages. Maybe highlighting the headings of sections I want them to focus on would be helpful in making sure they read those entire parts. The sticky notes would help when used as reminders of what to be looking for; they might keep students on track. I can also envision them playing with just the sticky notes and ignoring the reading. I would hope that would lessen as the newness wears off.

The last tool he described was Prezi and he suggested using it for Mind Mapping. I would not be comfortable using this tool for helping my students organize their ideas. I am much more confident that this would work with high schoolers; I think using paper and pencil with my 6th graders does the job just fine. It seems a bit too sophisticated for my audience.

I appreciate Schrader's concern for content and his desire to give his audience concrete ideas that will be useful in the classroom. I also appreciate his willingness to admit that he has been guilty of putting "a neat tool ahead of good practice." It seems very easy to do, especially if you are new to the tools yourself. I like both his ideas and his reminder to always keep the learning goals in mind.

One last note- he mentioned a book titled I Read It, but I don't Get It. I missed the author's name, but Schrader described it as an essential read for teachers, especially at the high school level.