What are the critical literacy skills of today and tomorrow?

After reading New times, new literacies. (Education Queensland, 2004) I believe there are three top questions/ issues that educators need to address:
1. Define which are the critical literacy skills that are essential for the 21st century learners and explore ways of how they could be integrated effectively within the current curriculum.

2. Craft strategies to effectively address the diversity and disparity of literacy levels in an ever changing and increasingly diverse culturally and socially global community of learners.

3. There is an emerging technological literacy become increasingly important to master. This literacy is about the ability to understand and effectively use emerging and converging technologies in different situations and contexts and solve effectively problems. The burning question is: How we address that critical iteracy in the current curriculum if it is not present amongst the educators themselves?

The questions raised in the article were mainly around the literacy practices that students engage in which are very important to be aware of and understand. Of equal importance I believe is also knowing and understanding the literacy practices that educators engage with to be able to offer them with training and development opportunities that will effectively address lower level or lacking literacies that they need to develop or improve on in order to be able to be support their learners in developing such literacies themselves .

Presentation Files

The power point presentations from the symposia are avaliable from the AKO Site (http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/communities/e-learning-education-and-training).

Please let me know if you have issues obtaining the files.

John

Hamilton Symposia

The last Symposia was held in Hamilton on Thursday and was well attended. It was great to be part of the lively discussions and to hear of the exciting developments planned.

West Coast Symposium

Richard and Sue had a great time on the West Coast (Including Whitebait Fritters and Monteiths :)) Thnak you Barbara for pulling this together. You did a great job

Southland Symposia

Terry and Sue had a great time at Invercargill and really enjoyed the active engagement of all participants.

Thank you Teri for all your efforts on this

John

Northland Symposia

The Northland symposia has just been held and participant feedback was very positive.

Thank you to Vasi and her team for all the efforts, really enjoyed the day

Covering the distance

Haast and back again. Absolutely beautful weather.
Satelitte connections work one way really well, the download speed exceeds all exectations, but upload is slwerthan the normal dal-up so the school cannot take part in video-conferencng.
The cell phone coverage for the area the school is in was supposed to come through June-July this year but nothing as yet.
This is not about technology fashions and playing with it, it is about sending and recieving information for education and communication.
The gap here is some of the in between technology, better send and recieve equipment, better linkages between the provider and the customer, better routers and modems.  The children are waiting, the adults are waiting and want this ability as well. It would make my job so much easier.

Welcome Librarians

It is great to see so many librarians joining this network. Since they are a fundamental cog in successful eLearning activities please encourage other librarians to join us (link http://e-learning.crowdvine.com/) their contributions are invaluable.

Distance how far is too far

I am going to Haast tomorrow, five hours drive there, I will be looking at cell phone range and coverage, broadband range and coverage and reliability, weather plays a big part here. No kidding I hear you say!
I will take my laptop and pre-paid modem and as my cell also plugs into my computer, it will be interesting to see which does what the best.
I will return....! Saturday.
The QR code I posted has not worked since I di it. Obviously  it contains too much information in wide a variety. Does this mean we have to develop something similar to texting?

Counting Down

It is only 11 days till the first of the symposia are held. Time for the last push for registrations? If you are attending one of the symposia please feel free to join our Crowd Vine site at http://e-learning.crowdvine.com/ 

Squidoo Space

Squidoo allows participants to create a "lens" to focus participant interest on a particular topic. I have juts created one for "Phenomenological Scapes". This "binding" of information, from numerous sources, around a specif topic has some appeal. Link http://www.squidoo.com/scapes

Get Involved

An underlying concept of the symposia is the creation and maintenance of a "community" focused on e-learning in education and training facilitated by the use of ICT tools.

In building and maintatining a community for the duration of the symposia a number of technologies (including this blog) are being used. To ensure the success of these technologies we must be conscious:

1. Participants will not engage in an “empty networks” so we need to advertise the spaces and encourage engagement from all participants. This is best done personally through e-mails.

2. We need to “model” behaviours (i.e. be active) and others will follow our lead.

3. If at first we do not succeed, (we do not get engagement) we must invite again.

The spaces are

1. Crowd Vine: (http://e-learning.crowdvine.com)

2.  AKO e-learning in industry community: (http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/communities/e-learning-education-and-training)

3. Mobile: (http://winksite.mobi/ctjfc/Symposia/)

Going Mobile

A key objective of the symposia is to raise awareness of the ICT tools individuals and groups can use to create communities.
One of the "tools" we want to demonstrate are based on mobile technologies. A mobile site for the symposia has been created using "Winksite". To access from your mobile phone you can "snap" the QR code provided above or access this link http://winksite.mobi/ctjfc/Symposia

What is a QR Code? (Wikipedia Link)

What do you think of these technologies?

Schedule Confirmed

The schedule for the four Symposia in e-Learning in education and training have now been confirmed.

October 19th : Whangarei: Northtec

Facilitator: Vasi Doncheva : e-Mail vdoncheva@northtec.ac.nz

October 20th : Invercargill: Southern Institute of technology

Facilitator: Teri Mcclelland : e-Mail teri.mcclelland@sit.ac.nz

October 21st : Greymouth: Literacy Westland

Facilitator: Barbara Duckett : e-Mail litwest@xtra.co.nz

October 22nd : Hamilton: Waikato Institute of Technology

Facilitator: John Clayton: e-Mail john.clayton@wintec.ac.nz



Each symposium will consist of all full day of activities. Panel discussions, workshops and invited showcase presentations of e-learning in action from practitioners in the region will be highlights of each symposium.

Crowd Vine Site

A social networking site using "Crowd Vine" has been created for all participants of the four symposia on "e-Learning in tertiary education and training: Evaluating effective practice, regional perceptions and potential strategies for development". To join this network follow this link Link: http://e-learning.crowdvine.com/

Welcome

In the current educational environment, being aware of effective processes, procedures and plans to improve student employability and workforce readiness is seen as central to improving individual, organisational and national performance and global competitiveness. In this context, e-learning is rapidly becoming an innovative platform for new teaching strategies and learning techniques aimed at improving workforce capability.

Four New Zealand regional centres (Whangarei, Greymouth, Invercargill and Hamilton) have a greed to hold symposia on effective practice in the use of ICT and e-learning applications in vocational education and training. These are to be held in October 2009. The focus of these symposia will be on examples of regional, national and international best practice in the use of e-learning in increasing student readiness for employment with a special focus on issues faced by organisations in regional locations

These regional symposia will

· Feature a key note presentation by Dr Sue Bennett Associate Professor of Education at Wollongong University in Australia and a recognised expert practitioner in the field

· Provide opportunities to showcase regional e-learning initiatives in vocational education and training.

· Explore frameworks and models designed to iteratively improve the e-learning capability of individual organisations.

In each centre, the one day symposium will be supplemented with practical workshops. Although these workshops will be focused on e-learning design and e-learning capability they will be tailored to meet the specific needs of the host region.