K12 Schools Must Fill Need For Digital Media Skills
There is a new urgency to teach digital media literacy as a study finds students are taking online information for granted
Conventional wisdom pegs today's teens as a digital generation completely fluent with information technology. New research from Educational Testing Service (ETS) demonstrates that teens' literacy in information and communication technology, or ICT, falls far short of what they need to succeed in college and the job market.
Teens' skills are sharp when it comes to using technology for entertainment, like downloading music or instant messaging their friends. But their abilities to access, manage, evaluate and communicate information are generally weak.
ETS developed an ICT literacy assessment and tested more than 6,300 students last fall. Only 52 percent of them correctly judged the objectivity of a Web site, and only 40 percent used multiple search terms to narrow an online search.
Districts can use the ICT assessment to identify problems in their students and gather data to establish a plan for student remediation, says Mary Ann Zaborowski, ETS executive director of product management. For example, an instructor can focus on Internet search skills if students were found to be weak in that area. Both ICT literacy and critical thinking are assessed, which are critical to student success in higher education. "If administrators aren't thinking about these skills, it's time to put them on the radar," says Zaborowski. www.ets.org/ictliteracy
Solving History Mysteries
Curious about what happened in history on a certain date? Network for Instructional TV's (NITV) Dates That Matter is a free, online tool that explores historical events from ancient history to the 1990s. Each day, the site features an event and poses a series of questions to spur discussion and build understanding. Music and visual cues add suspense and appeal for students with various learning styles. Dates that matter help upper elementary to high school students understand historical events in context, says Candace Shively, director of K12 initiatives.
Teachers can use the projector and whiteboard-ready resource for history mini-lessons, explore links and support materials for complete lessons, and build background knowledge to prepare students for standardized tests.
High school educators aiming to ramp up their coral reef lesson plans have a new resource at their fingertips. The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have partnered to produce the Coral Ecosystem SciGuides.
As part of NSTA's SciGuides offerings, the Web-based guide is designed to help teachers use the Internet in the classroom. The Coral Ecosystem SciGuides provides one-stop shopping for lesson planning, says NOAA Education Specialist Bruce Moravchik.
And it's like an online textbook, explains Stacey Rudolph, NSTA SciGuides program manager. It includes and organizes expertly vetted links related to three coral reef themes: biology, ecosystem and conservation. Teachers can tap into specific topics by searching keywords. For example, the keyword "habitat" lists and organizes numerous resources, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Icons such as "assessment," "hands-on investigation" or "in the news" fine-tune the search.
Pedagogy experts reviewed all lesson plans, classroom activities and computer simulations, ensuring all are aligned to national science standards. NSTA constantly updates the guides with new links. SciGuides is like a living resource, says Rudolph. www.sciguides.nsta.org/
Music + Math = Unprecedented Proficiency
It may be the latest evidence of the Mozart effect. Students at Weaver Elementary School in Los Alamitos, Calif., are collecting recyclables and selling T-shirts to help fund a supplementary math program.
MIND Institute's ST Music + Math program spurred a new level of math motivation that yielded phenomenal gains in math proficiency scores at the elementary school. ST, or spatial temporal, is the ability to think visually and several steps ahead in patterns and pictures.
