Embed Visuals into Teaching and Learning- Part 2

In another post, Embedding Visuals Into Teaching and Learning, I looked at ways to support our students’ ability to navigate a media rich world and “read and write” in that world. I shared how teachers could easily and quickly create visuals, that supported a question they wanted students to explore, break up long and monotone passages of text, review a concept discussed abstractly or make a real life connection.

Wonderopolis is a fascinating site with great visual prompts for you to “hook” students into inquiry and further research.

There are over 800 visual prompts from many many categories to choose from and even the option to submit your own “wonder to be included”. (This could be a great activity for your students to prepare submissions)

Each prompt has a video, vocabulary words, further resources and a Did you Know section. Try it out… this is a great way (something for all grade levels) to promote visual literacy, reflective writing and inquiry.

The second  site, I wanted to recommend is Visual Writing Prompts, which have been categorized by subjects:

• Arts and Humanities
• English / Language Arts
• Math
• Science
• Social Studies
• Technology

and by type:

• Creative Writing
• Descriptive / Expository Writing
• Dialogue
• Fictional Narrative / Short Story
• Functional Writing
• Personal Narrative
• Personal Reflection
• Persuasive Writing
• Poetry
• Quote Reflection

The site is a wonderful inspiration of how to bring in visuals to “spicen” up or jump start students’ interest.
Jon Spencer, one of the creators  shares important considerations in a post Ten Thoughts About Photo Prompts.

Don’t stop by just reading about these two sites, take the next step and include visual prompts in your class… or if you already have.. take the next step and SHARE and REFLECT transparently. We need more examples from the classroom!

Skilled, LIterate & Fluent in the Digital World

I have been intrigued with the relationship of being skilled, literate and fluent in the Digital World for a while. We are focusing at school to look through the lens of fluency using technology as tools (e.g. using the iPad as the device and apps as the tool to achieve fluency), not as the end. I am wondering if the word “fluency” in the digital world, sparks the same thoughts or activates the background definition in other educators? I have heard others in the edubloggersphere use the word “workflow” instead of “fluency”.

Workflow is defined by Wikipedia as:

The sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.

The world “workflow” c-o-u-l-d work, but still does not sound right. What about a LEARNflow? The goal in education is for our students to learn, to become life long learners and do do so unconsciously, smoothly and [as] effortlessly [as possible]… I am still mulling over the semantics here… Your input is appreciated…

fluency- workflow?- learnflow?

Looking back at my train of thought, I started by looking at the flow between the skills needed to become literate in order to move on to become fluent.

Then I moved along the lines of remembering what it felt like to NOT be fluent in a language. Words like cumbersome, painstaking, tedious, with effort and drudgingly come to mind. What feels so effortless to the fluent, is broken down in so many steps for the beginner… vocabulary words, grammar rules, exceptions, idioms…

Most monolingual people might relate how it feels to TRY to learn another language, but they cannot relate to the feeling of being fluent in that other language. Most people might find a way to understand the analogy though when looking back at learning or teaching someone else how to drive a car. So many steps, from looking around you, to keeping your distance from other cars, observing and “feeling” the speed of the vehicle, breaking, shifting, merging, side & back mirrors, etc. As “fluent” drivers we don’t have to think about each step, it just happens naturally as opposed to the novice driver.

Sports also allow for a good analogy by comparing the learning of skills, to knowing how to perform them and practice until  movements become unconscious and seem effortless.

Moving back from analogies to what being fluent in a digital world means, I stumbled across a post by Christian Briggs titled  “The Difference Between Digital Literacy and Digital Fluency“. He pointed out:

Note that a literate person is perfectly capable of using the tools. They know how to use them and what to do with them, but the outcome is less likely to match their intention. It is not until that person reaches a level of fluency, however, that they are comfortable with when to use the tools to achieve the desired outcome, and even why the tools they are using are likely to have the desired outcome at all.

Ian Jukes and Andrew Churches even wrote an entire book titled “Literacy is NOT enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age“. A presentation by Alec Couros titled Towards Digital Fluency, inspired me to visualize the following “flow” of what digital fluency [currently] looks like to me.

The following is the slide deck that puts my train of thought together and documents my understanding of  being skilled, literate and fluent in the digital world at this moment in time.

Further Amplification… Other Languages…

“Amplification” in education is a concept, I am deeply committed to. In a recent post, Upgrade & Amplification Exercise and Checklist, I try to break down the process of amplification and make it more transparent for educators. What I did not explicitly include  was the component of another language to amplify one’s work, learning opportunities, reach, voice and ability to reach a global audience.

Last October, I published the post Sharing- Creative Commons- Collaboration- Amplification, which in turn refers to

 It’s All About Sharing and Collaborating, a post I wrote about a Russian educator who had translated material from Langwitches into his language in order to SHARE the content with his colleagues who spoke no English.  Alec Couros, told the Amazing Story of Openness and his diagram of the Networked Teacher as it has been translated into many languages now.

It am tremendously honored, when my work gets AMPLIFIED into other languages, reaching educators, I would not have reached otherwise. Dico Krommenhoek  contacted me a few days ago via Twitter. I was thrilled to give permission, without hesitation, when he asked to translate the iPad App Evaluation checklist into Dutch. It gives me a sense of COLLABORATION across time, space and language, when I can “teach” via my work and materials without ever speaking the same language or meeting these teachers face to face.

This is a beauty of CREATIVE COMMONS and an amazing story of openness (as Alec Couros puts it).

Since then I have received several requests and permission  to amplify into other languages. I would like to share the work of the educators who took the time to amplify into their language.  This is how collaboration and amplification looks like

Marlon offered to translate the  iPad App Evaluation for the Classroom into Chinese (pdf)

Carrie Antoniazzi, as a conseillère pédagogique” with a french school board in British Colombia, Canada, translated and adapted the Are u Ready 4 Twitter into French  (pdf) for her teachers.