Tuesday Morning Keynote IT Summit - David Warlick - Redefining Literacy

My notes from the presentation:

David used Prezi.com to make his presentation. Definitely something I'm going to check out for making future presentations.

Backchannel at: http://davidwarlick.com/knitter

Teacher must be a master learner and practice these skills in front of its students. Share something you learned in the last 24 hours.

Handout of the presentation: http://davidwarlick.com/handouts

Second Life Office: http://davidwarlick.com/sl/

Second Life allows us to create a library without constraints.

David is a result of a "perfect education" who performed repetitive tasks, in straight rows. Preparing a workforce who would work in a career for 30 years and then retire.

The telephone has changed the way we do things. It is now an example of redundancy where technology has changed to not require it anymore. Print newspapers are migrating to the web because they are too expensive to print anymore.

We are spending too much time teaching children on how to use paper. It is important to teach them how to manipulate digital information.

Webcams & Skype are breaking down the walls and allowing people to participate even when they can't travel or afford to go to a workshop, conference or class.

Conclusion: We need to stop integrating technology to teach how to use tools, but we need to teach literacy to be able to process and understand information landscape of the future. We need to be able to ask questions and be skeptical of any information that is provided to us. We need to question where it comes from. We need to develop critical thinking skills.

We need to be "digital detectives" and backtrack to see where our information has come from. Collect digital clues to see the source of the website. example: http://martinluthrking.org/ is really published by a white supremacy group called Storm Front. We were brought up in a generation where teachers gave us information and we could trust it because they knew the source. Digital information is different because we don't always know the source.

Exposing what's True!

• find
• critically evaluate
• organize
• apply

How to understand numbers: Library of Links from Landmark tools on http://landmark-project.com/, click on raw data. Demonstration of how to understand numbers using spreadsheets like Excel.

Writing: audience is wider by the way that final product is presented. Video is very powerful and shared with the world on the web. To whom are we communicating?

Expressing ideas in different ways: schools who don't prepare students for their future are sweatshops preparing students for our pasts.

We must include ownership of information in our definition of literacy... respect of ownnership, accuracy and infrastructure.

Definition of Contemporary Literacy:

• exposing what's true
• employing the information
• expressing ideas compellingly
• using information ethically.
  

Sharing of a website: We're Not Afraid.com a website made by a student the day after the London bombing. Anyone could post photos.

For a great concept map of his presentation, see it in Warlick's Conference notes.