“The information literate student validates understanding and interpretation of the information through discourse with other individuals, subject-area experts, and/or practitioners.”
–ALA

I’ve been working through some ideas for a piece about Weblogs and wikis and all these new tools and their impact on “literacy.” In a nutshell, the Internet has changed the requirements of what it means to be literate. While just about everything we used to teach with was a finished, edited text, the Web now provides us with a gazillion unedited texts, which means it’s no longer enough just to be able to read; we have to read critically. And now that the Internet is a read AND write technology, part of our literacy has to include skills to communicate and collaborate with a much larger, less contrived audience. Finally, since there will no doubt be an ever-growing body of information out there to deal with, we need to be literate in managing information what we find relevant and meaningful.

In my travels this morning, I landed on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education put up by the American Library Association. It gives some pretty in depth definitions of information literacy, and lists 23 performance indicators for information literate students. What struck me is how many of them can be addressed by blogging:

Stuart Glogoff of the University of Arizona sent along this link to Alaskablog, a really beautiful and effective class Weblog project that was done this spring. It was done by one of his former students who he had taught using, you guessed it, Weblogs. Very cool!

Alaskablog is created to foster conversations between students, theater arts, and the community.

At Alaskablog 8th grade students at Colony Middle School will engage in conversations with Valley Performing Arts cast and crew to discover the timeless nature of Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men. Throughout our conversations we will be considering the question:

“Does Lenny Small have a place in our twenty-first century?”

In addition, Stuart has some great blogging links at his Learning and Technologies Center. Worth noting is the list of “community building” Weblogs that has some great ideas for using the technology to connect cultures and ideas.

Following Pat’s lead, one of our teachers is blogging her visit to China. She seems to be experiencing some connection outages, but just the fact that a) she was inspired to set up this Weblog before she left and b) that we’ve officially gone global is enough to make this a good day.

Today I spent the day with a student who will be coming to the US as an exchange student, and her parents. Her family is clear evidence of the economic opportunities now available to the Chinese (primarily those who are educated and live in an urban area).. They own two cars and just purchased a 3-story house which they will move into this winter. Anyway, we had a great day with them, grocery shopping (in a place that looked a lot like a super Walmart), made steamed dumplings, visited some older homes in Shanghai, and saw the man-made beach in Shanghai (even though they are on the coast, they don’t have any sandy beaches, so they made one).

BTW, first response to my all staff e-mail pointing to the site: “Now THAT is neat!”
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(via JD Lasica)
From yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News comes this addition to the teenage blogging craze series of articles that have been coming out lately. Some interesting tidbits that may (or may not) help shed some light on how to use blogs with kids:

Many teens say blogging is an outlet they wouldn’t have otherwise. Nearly all invite strangers in — but parents are discouraged from crashing on the scene. Many say their parents are unaware of their blogs.

And:

But teens say they’re drawn to sites like Xanga that encourage broad feedback, which sometimes exudes the feel of group therapy.

And:

What’s consistent throughout is the search for validation. Though most say they write entries for themselves, it’s a disappointment if no one responds. One Evergreen student recently posted a message pleading for feedback. “it makes me sad that no one leaves me comments. . . . i write like these huge entries . . . about so much stuff . . . and no one even says anything in return. and i go to all of your xangas or whatevers and ALWAYS leave a comment.”

I wonder whether teens who see blogs as a personal diary genre will accept it as a tool for teaching and learning. Then again, I’m sure the tool is going to evolve pretty quickly while the blog might just stay the blog.

And for another cool way to use Furl, since the Merc-News requires a login (yuck) here’s my Furled version of the story for your no hassle reading pleasure. Enjoy!

(Note: Never one to hide my mistakes, I guess I can’t link to my Furl archive…so unfortunately you’ll have to go to the Merc News to register to get at it. Darn.)