Learning and Literacy by Games

James Paul Gee is one of the renowned scholars and authors in the field of New Literacies Studies. Most of Gee's work over the last few years focused on the study and analysis of digital and video games. His book " What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" is a culmination of his work in this field.

In this book, Gee analyses some popular games such as first-person shooter games, fantasy role-playing games, real-time strategy games, and simulation games and draws out a set of learning principles that are embedded within these games and which make them  more engaging, challenging, and ultimately fun to play. Comparing the kind of learning that takes place in these gaming affinity spaces to the one that take place in school environments, Gee found out that the "levels of textual and cognitive interaction in traditional schooling are decidedly wanting" (Kalantzis & Cope,  "Literacies" ).

Gee contends that gaming affinity spaces where gamers get to virtually meet and discuss the content of their games, help each other solve game-related problems, these spaces are multimodal sites of literacy in which students navigate narratives as powerful as any in the literary canon." They do this as character, as players, as actors in the narrative. They negotiate text and image."

Upon the analysis of several video games , Gee sketched out some of the main benefits these games have for learning and literacy. The table below taken from Literacies(a book I am reading this week) features some of them.

Post Source : http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/05/the-benefits-of-games-on-learning-and.html

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Pillars of Digital Literacy

Essential Elements of Digital Literacy

• Cultural – Look at the context in which the literacy is situated
• Cognitive – How do we think when we are using a device (vs when we are not)?
• Constructive – We should aim to use technology in a constructive (vs a passive) way
• Communicative – We should be using technology to enhance our communications
• Confident – You need to be confident to jump in feet first and explore/use/master/learn technology
• Creative – Using technology in the classroom requires some creativity and risk taking – don’t stick to the basics when you can test out a new idea or use for technology
• Critical – You need the ability to look at the technologies you’re using (and what you’re using them for) with a critical eye
• Civic- We should be using the technologies available to us for greater good (which can be widely defined)

Post Source : http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/05/the-8-pillars-of-digital-literacies.html

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Learning Trends

Blended learning can tick a lot of boxes for a lot of different teachers who teach in potentially quite different scenarios. From 1:1 classrooms and schools with plenty of iPads to BYOD classes filled with different types (and amounts) of technology, blended learning can help nearly every teacher make learning more personalized and more interesting for their students.  Implementing a blended learning program in your classroom can be a great way to put the technology tools you have – whatever they may be – to use. The handy infographic below takes a look at 10 blended learning trends that are showing up in today’s classrooms. Keep reading to learn more!

10 Blended Learning Trends

1. The student-centered learning experience – focus on the students rather than on the teacher offers a more inquiry driven and experiential learning experience
2. Soaring numbers of digital learners – the number of students participating in classroom-only education is shrinking (albeit slowly) while the number of students participating in some type of online learning is steadily growing (despite making up a much smaller percentage of students)
3. Building higher order thinking skills – students are required to look at information more critically rather than just trying to memorize what is presented to them in class
4. Realizing benefits for both teachers and students – this approach benefits not only the students, but teachers too!
5. A framework for data-driven decision making in education – a blended approach offers more data and information for teachers, administrators, and parents to make more informed decisions
6. A personalized learning approach – by a lean, blended and interactive approach
7. Productive gamification – bringing students to deeper learning
8. The mobile world is where learners live now – more so for personal than school use
9. Students have personal access to mobile devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops and digital reading devices trump desktops
10. The need for more broadband – 72% of schools in the US lack the broadband access they need to support digital learning

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/blended_learning_trends/

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State Of Girls’ Education

Ensuring access to quality education for girls is always a story, if you live in the education realm like we do. For many, though, especially if you live in a first world country with easy access to education, equal education for both sexes usually isn’t an issue at the forefront of our minds. Lately though, with the big story of the girls kidnapped from their school in Nigeria, brings the issue into the eye of the global media. The girls were kidnapped while at school by Boko Haram, the terrorist group whose name means “western education is forbidden”. While this is obviously an extreme example of education disparities between genders and different areas of the world, access to education – especially for girls, and especially in STEM subjects in ALL locations – is an ongoing issue in global education. 

The handy infographic below takes a look at girls’ education in 2013 – and tracks some of the progress that has been made since about 1990. Keep reading to learn more.

An Update On Girls’ Education

• The gap between boys and girls literacy has closed since 1990
• As of 2013, the global literacy rate for females 15-24 was 87%
• In 1990, that number was 79%
• For males, those numbers are 92% (2013) and 88% (1990)
• The largest gender discrepancies are found in Sub-saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa
• Girls have nearly caught up to boys in primary enrollment – a marked change since 1990
• Sub-saharan Africa and South Asia are the main areas where large discrepancies still exist
• Eritrea has the lowest % of girls enrolled in primary school, followed by Mali, Nigeria, and Pakistan
• Secondary enrollment still suffers compared with primary enrollment, but is now nearly equal to that of males – the current rates are 49% for girls and 54% for boys
• There are nearly 31 million out of school primary aged girls
• There are nearly 34 million of secondary age
• Nigeria, Pakistan, and Ethiopia are home to about 1/3 of the world’s out of school girls
• Worldwide, more females are enrolled in higher education than males, though the reverse is true in low and middle income countries

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/girls-education/

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Geo-literacy Explained For Teachers

Geo literacy is an important concept that is not squarely addressed in our teaching curricula. We are mostly concerned with preparing our kids for future job markets and in so doing we deprive them of the understanding pivotal for their future decision making. Whether  making decisions about where to live or what precautions to take for natural hazards, our kids need to learn how to be able to use geographic reasoning and geographic understanding to better connect with their environment.

source: snapshot from natgeographic video

I am sharing with you these two wonderful videos from National Geographic Education to help you better  instruct your kids about the concept of geo-literacy. Below are some of the notes I highlighted from it:

What is Geo-literacy ?

It is preparation for decision making in the 21st century. It is all about helping people make decisions that they need to make to involve understanding and reading about their world.

Read Full Article Here....

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How Literacy Is Changing In Schools Around The World

By Katie Lepi

There are so many children around the world who don’t have access quality education. Either they lack schooling altogether, or what they do have access to is insufficient to help them gain the basic skills needed for success in today global society. We’re not even talking about digital literacy here, which continues to gain importance in its own right, but just the basic ability to read and write. If you can’t read or write,  your chances of being able to find and maintain sufficient employment are quite poor. Getting students in school – particularly girls – is a huge focus of many organizations, but there are also many that focus on increasing global literacy.

Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches, is a book from the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Education and Skills. The book discusses some of the many organizations and programs that focus on increasing literacy. Teach.com and the Global Agenda Council have teamed up to create the handy infographic below to highlight some of the key initiatives of these organizations. Keep reading to learn more about these organizations and what they do!

Boosting Global Literacy

These are just some of the organizations that are working to increase literacy around the globe. Maybe you’ve heard of some of them, maybe others will be new to you, but what they’re doing is so important. Take a few moments to check them out.

Pratham

Focuses on students in (mostly rural) India, where less than half of the children in grade 5 can read a grade 2 text. Pratham is an NGO that started in 2005, and is available to more than 700,000 children in about 15,000 villages.

UNESCO’s LAMP Program

LAMP is an acronym for Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Program. The program assesses the quality of literacy on a continuum of age groups in Afghanistan, India, El Salvador, Jordan, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Palestine, Paraguay and Vietnam. LAMP encourages the participating countries to evaluate their citizen’s literacy to help determine what may be necessary to improve it.

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and PlanetRead

In India, this non-profit – academic partnership leverages the popularity of Bollywood, music, and subtitling technology to bring mass literacy exposure to citizens. Subtitles on mainstream television makes literacy exposure unavoidable and automatic. The regular reading practice helps those who don’t otherwise have formal education.

Questscope

In Jordan, this program is a collaboration between Dr. Curt Rhodes and the Jordanian Ministry of Education. It is a non formal education program offering school dropouts alternative pathways to vocational programs to help them gain skills and sufficient employment to sustain themselves.

Yoza

In South Africa, Yoza launched in 2009 with an aim to use mobile smartphone technology as a way to bring literacy to wider audiences. While 51% of households don’t own any books and only 7% of schools have a library, 100% of the population has access to smartphones, making them a logical medium for widespread literacy exposure.

Tostan

In 8 countries in West Africa, this non formal education program employs social networking and community involvement to spur meaningful social change. It reaches adolescents and adults with little access to formal education and is led by individuals with the same ethnic and language background as those they are working with.

BBC Janala

The Bangladeshi government and the UK’s Department for International Development run this joint collaboration to reach 24 million English language learners via a multi-platform, self-directed learning initiative for those with little or no English language background. It aims to break down any cultural, financial and psychological barriers to learning English while making it fun.

Post Source: http://www.edudemic.com/increasing-world-literacy-infographic/

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