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Blog/James Sigler
21st Century Literacy Classroom – Plan Eval
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In my previous post I updated you on how my plan for building a 21st Century Literacy Classroom was coming along. Included in the plan are the 4 cornerstones:
1. Digital Citizenship
2. Critical Reading
3. Authentic Writing
4. Global Collaboration
1. Digital Citizenship We had already learned about online safety earlier this year. Just this week, one student pointed out when we were preparing our student blogs that we should not include our first names because it would be too much personal information on the internet. He got it! 
We have talked about copyrighted music in relation to our first podcast. We talked about where you can get music that is ok to listen to on our mp3 players and when is breaks copyright law. Many of my students got their music from older brother or sister who got it from who-knows-where. We talked about how sharing copyrighted music you haven’t paid for is illegal. The record companies would be so proud of me. 
We have made a couple recordings for podcasts. I played a couple
podcasts to get a feel for how the pros do podcasting. We talked about using Creative Commons music for 
our podcast. I even played some for them some music from the Podsafe Music Network The African Queen full Stitch! The Movie movie download . Once I get the postproduction audio editing done we will talk about putting a Creative Commons license Aberdeen dvdrip
on it. By the end of the year, I think my students will be able to operate safer online, behave ethically online, and violate copyright much less frequently.
2. Critical Reading – We haven’t done much yet as far as evaluating web sites. I hope soon to get into more online research in which there will be more need to read critically. Most of our online reading has been reading student blogs. We will get to then when we are ready to start researching online. This will take time. I’ll probably use a format similar to Kathy Schrock’s with some of the fake web sites from ZSR.
Manhattan Baby film 3. Authentic Writing – We have started our authentic writing.
We began our adventure into blogging by visiting Jose Rodriquez’s Room 35 class blogs and Mark Ahlness’s class blogs and commenting. It was an adventure for all of use because commenting on Classblogmeister is a little different and commenting on Wordpress blogs. Students had trouble figuring out how to leave a comment. When they did, it ending up being, “Hi,” or “I like your blog.” Disappointing…but I guess we have to start somewhere. By now, every student has written at least three blog articles and can log in independantly to write articles. My goal is to get them writing on their own without depending on me to give them a prompt. A couple have commented independently on other student blogs. I have also shown them the Clustermaps
and Feedjit maps to our Classblogmeister blogs, our class blog, and this blog. Any comments you would be willing leave on their blogs would make a world of difference toward making their writing authentic.
4. Global Collaboration – We have made contacts across the country and across the globe. We Skype conferenced with Cathy Evanoff in Nags Head, NC, Jose Rodriguez’s class in LA, CA, and Sarah in Graz, Austria. Our contacts have been more social than academic, but we did hold a virtual Spelling Bee
with Jose’s class. We have also done a successful Flat Stanley project. It didn’t really involve technology, but we did get some digital pictures from it. The contacts are exciting, but to collaborate academically is going to take carefull planning and a clear focus on objectives.
This has been a whirlwind year so far. In addition to having new technology in our classroom and a new classroom, I have new curricula in Reading, Science, and Social Studies. This year is a lot of experimentation and figuring out how to use and manage everything. Next year, I will be able to start from the beginning of the year integrating technology into our 21st century literacy classroom. I hope to develop eventually it enough to spread this model for integrating 21st century literacy into other classrooms.
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