By: Dana Levesque

“Literacy is the ability to write in the medium in which one reads.”   Dr. Jason Ohler - Literacy in the 21st Century.

What is Digital Storytelling?   Digital Storytelling usually contains some mixture of digital images, text, recorded sound/music, narration, and/or video clips.  Many students used PhotoStory, Moviemaker a myriad of online comic strip tools and others to make their digital stories.  The tools today are more student friendly, intuitive, and expect more creativity from the user. 

The following three writing tools are examples of how far digital storytelling has come.

By: Dana Levesque
As our Inspired Writing teachers become savvier and more selective with the writing tools they choose to use.  We are seeing the power some writing tools have with their simple access and pervasive use in our schools.

Many online writing tools used to require student accounts and fees.  Now the writing tool of choice is free, more robust and easy to use.  A few tools that I have seen used in our Littleton Public Schools Inspired Writing Classrooms are:

Summary of the PD Components of the Powering Up the Writer's Workshop (EETT) Grant.

I was just looking in our aggregator (web tool that pulls together LPS teacher sites, including blogs and wiki’s) and saw this page:  https://lenskib5.wikispaces.com/message/list/Read+Alouds .  I find this fascinating on a couple of levels.  First off, 716 comments is incredible.  That in and of itself is commendable—that’s a lot of thinking, reflection, and metacognition.  Then I noticed the views—I’m not a great mathematician, but there seems to be a 1:5 ratio from posts to views.  That means kids’ work and thoughts are being reviewed at a tremendous rate.  For example, I noticed that the instructor has posted some prediction prompts from a text.  Not only are kids predicting future events, but they’re seeing each other’s predictions.  Now I suspect that they’re reading not only to find out about their own predictions, but to see if their peers’ predictions will come true.  That has to be a classroom of engaged readers. 

Last week Dan Maas and myself had the pleasure of working with the LPS K-12 Leadership team, which consists of building principals and district administrators. Their task was to revisit the TPaCK model and then evaluate the four following scenarios through that lens. Using sticky dots, they were to place the classroom described in the appropriate domain. Our team only had 30 minutes to run the exercise, which unfortunately cut down on our opportunity to debrief and  subsequent whole group discussion.  Still, we were told by many that this was a valuable framework through which to consider technology integration in their buildings. As you may know, LPS has a district-wide initiative, Inspired Writing, at each building that is connecting netbook technology with process writing in Language Arts classrooms. Our results so far have been impressive, and we’re looking to extend that demonstrated effect. 

Last night, the Edublog Awards were announced.  This is an international celebration of the best use of blogs and wikis in educational settings.  This year, LPS received 7 nominations listed in the table below. Our two award winners are:

Last week, I proudly put out Littleton’s nominations for the 2009 Edublogs awards. Well, not all of them made the “short-list” eligible for voting on, but a good number did. Please take a moment to visit these creative, thoughtful professionals’ projects to leave a congratulatory comment or two.  And, if so moved, cast your vote for them. 

However you may vote, consider the experiences that these folks are providing for their students, and the learning that they are modeling. Do these teachers embody the Colorado Performance Standards for Teachers? Do they model the NCTE’s Definition of 21^st Century Literacies?

Littleton Public School has had an amazing run of well-deserved recognition for our hard working, creative, thoughtful educators. In no particular order, Karl Fisch (AHS) was named, by ISTE, the 2009 Outstanding Leader of the Year, Steven Newell (Sandburg) was named The Apex Top Tech Teacher of the Year from Colorado’s Technology Association (along with finalist Chris Moore and Nicolette Vander Velde from East Elementary) and most recently, LPS had the great honor of have two educators awarded to the National School Board Association’s Twenty to Watch  simultaneously. These two to watch are Anne Smith (AHS) and Chris Moore (East Elementary). 

About a year ago, I was part of a group, the Technology Leader’s Forum, who was challenged to stop talking about the stuff of 21^st century education, and to start describing what the learning looks like. Since then, I’ve discovered the TPaCk framework and its emphasis on the alignment of technology, pedagogy, and curriculum. This framework has been profound in changing my thinking, and provides a glimpse of what a 21^st century classroom should look like.  Now, I pay much closer attention to the false positives that technology in the classroom can produce. A classroom equipped with an interactive whiteboard is not suddenly a 21^st century learning space if students never demonstrate their learning with it. A teacher who uses laptops/netbooks hasn’t de facto differentiated his lesson plans. And a student wiki is not necessarily an example of an essential learning, although the content in it could be.