ITSC 2012: Closing Keynote

Redesigning Education: Digital Literacies and the Future of Learning  

Presented Craig Watkins ~ Speech Highlights 

• Author of The Young & the Digital, partner with the MacArthur Foundation 
• One of the questions we should as ourselves is how are students learning in the digital age?  Learning is happening in so many different places, not just in schools.
• The degree to which students are using social media/network sites are two fold: friendship driven and interest driven.
• Students will need a set of Hard and Soft Skills to be considered Digitally Literate: networking, multitasking, crowdsourcing, demonstrate technical and media skills, collect, interpret, and curate data, understand the difference between private and public profiles, digital citizenship, and multi-modal communication.

• How do we, as educators, understand how kids connect with all these different digital nodes?
• Blocking social media at school doesn't allow kids to utilize the media they like and are familiar with.  Kids don't have the same social capital that adults do; they turn to Youtube as a learning network/resource. 
  

The debates about schools and social media are a subject of great public and policy interests.  In reality, the debate has been shaped by one key fact: the almost universal decision by school administrators to block social media.  Because social media is such a big part of many students social lives, cultural identities, and informal learning networks schools actually find themselves grappling with social media everyday but often from a defensive posture -- reacting to student disputes that play out over social media or policing rather than engaging student's social media behaviors.

Education administrators block social media because they believe it threatens the personal and emotional safety of their students.  Or they believe social media is a distraction that diminishes student engagement and the quality of the learning experience.  Schools also block social media to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content.  I have often wondered what are schools really blocking when they block social media. Working in a high school this year has given me added perspective.

Read more of... "What Schools Are Really Blocking When They Block Social Media"

•  Youmedia has created a different notion of what a library can be: a place for students to hang out and "geek around."  
• The cycle for Designing Literacy: --> Discovery --> Analysis --> Strategy --> Design --> Build -->
• Mobile devices are a powerful data collection tool.  These devices are very powerful and useful to create more dynamic and robust forms of learning.
• Access to internet is a powerful indicator of being able to participate in a digital world.  When we're talking about digital equity in relations to access, we're talking about a Digital Literacy Gap.