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Tools ≠ Literacy

Everyone has an opinion. As a person heavily invested in the promotion of learning supported by technology, I encounter volumes of opinions on what is “most appropriate” and what we should be doing to change Education as we know it today. I’d like to say that my own opinion is influenced by many people and experiences. Today I came across a conference keynote description written by David Warlick that seems to have more clearly elucidated my own thoughts on the matter than any other piece I have read, or written my own self. In talking about technology’s effect on education, he says: OHS Students

The true effect on instruction today is not in the tools we use, but in our definition of literacy, what the 3Rs evolve into when information is increasingly networked, digital, and abundant. The information and communication technologies that we are using are critical, but only in so much as how useless my schooling would have been without pencil and paper.
We will also take the conversation to the teacher — what does practicing contemporary literacy look like as a professional practice. I will start my keynote by making the point that teachers should be and should be seen as being master learners — and being a master learner today means being a master of today’s networked, digital, and abundant information landscape, a network learner.

…The true effect on instruction today is not in the tools we use, but in our definition of literacy, what the 3Rs evolve into when information is increasingly networked, digital, and abundant. The information and communication technologies that we are using are critical, but only in so much as how useless my schooling would have been without pencil and paper.

We will also take the conversation to the teacher — what does practicing contemporary literacy look like as a professional practice. I will start my keynote by making the point that teachers should be and should be seen as being master learners — and being a master learner today means being a master of today’s networked, digital, and abundant information landscape, a network learner.

-David Warlick

Yep. There you have it.

Photo via Micheal Peterson, O’Neil, NE
http://www.flickr.com/photos/petesfamily/
CC BY 2.0

Posted in My Thoughts, Quotes.