Reflection EDUC 6712

New literacy skills need to be included in the curriculum to prepare 21st century learners for diverse forms of communication. New literacy is changing rapidly and educators need to be able to address the ever changing landscape of literacy in our classroom. Students are now required to question and evaluate information for accuracy. They need to be able to conduct searches for information that will be used to answer questions that have been generated. Once students have researched various pieces of information, they must then synthesize information to make sense of all sources and combine them into an understandable idea (Hartman, 2009). The final component in the new literacy is to communicate the new synthesized information (Hartman, 2009).

The knowledge and experienced gained from this course that will influence my teaching practice is implementation of inquiry based projects that will provide students with rich learning experiences. The students will learn to develop questions to guide their inquiry. They will begin to search for information using different multiple search engines and strategies that will produces relevant information for their topic. Next they will incorporate strategies that will enable them to make judgments based on the ABC’s of evaluating a website which will be modeled by the teacher (Phillips, 2009).

One professional development goal that I will pursue which will build upon my learning in this course is to develop my technology skills. I will address the need to elevate technology skills that will address the needs of 21st century learners. The steps that I will take to accomplish this goal are working with administration and staff to plan the technology the district needs to implement 21st century strategies. The next step will be to introduce and model one digital tool each month in the classroom. Then the students will begin to use these technological tools to complete their projects. The field of technology is rapidly changing and as educators we need to adapt and change the way we educate our students (Warlick, 2009). Therefore, I will participate in workshops, seminars and blog feeds that discuss integrating technology across the curriculum.

References
Hartman, D. (2009). New literacies. (Laureate Educational, Inc., DVD, 2009 release).
Phillips, B. (2009). A teacher's perspective: Evaluating information online. (Laureate Educational, Inc., DVD, 2009 release).
Warlick, D. (2009). Skills for the future. (Laureate Educational, Inc., DVD, 2009 release).