Promoting Literacy in a 21st Century World

  

Promoting literacy in the 21^st Century world through technology allows educators to teach good literacy skills that enable the students to decipher and evaluate, written works but also visual images, graphics, and video. Literacy is no longer confined to written words only.

Educators will face the challenge of creating lessons which develop inquiry based learning, critical thinking and good analysis and comprehension of information obtained while integrating technology into their curriculum. Teachers will need to engage in their own inquiry based learning to learn and use the vast array of tools available on the Internet while taking risk with, what for some educators will be unfamiliar domain.

Educators will have to re-think how they teach literacy for it now encompasses digital media as well.  They must encourage collaboration in learning by engaging their students in the read, write and collaborative aspects of the web.  Students will develop a curiosity about all that is available on the web and become risk takers as they come to be empowered by the knowledge that they have obtained.

Producing learners who are proficient in 21^st Century skills requires a change in the way in which students learn. Educators must engage learners in higher order thinking skills and inventive thinking. Creative people developed the tools available on the web and these great tools encourage creativity, communication, and collaboration by all who use them.

Educators must re-think how they teach as they embrace the social aspects of web 2.0 and it myriad of applications. The way people learn is changing dramatically we as educators must embrace this change and teach our students how to navigate through these new waters and realize that learning is and always has been a social thing. If you think back to early learning it was knowledge told by storytellers and elders of a tribe or community, it wasn’t as isolated as it has become.  Think of the web, as a social network of caring teachers who want to pass on what they have learned to the world, be not afraid of it, and embrace it.