Digital Natives

Todays public school students are tech savvy. They blog, instant message friends and strangers, share music, post movies, and advertise themselves on Myspace. In fact 96 percent of students having internet access engage in social networking technologies (see the National School Boards Association report at http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf). The Report also found that 50 percent of students having online access at home discuss education topics online, including their homework and selecting a college . Yet district administrators (roughly 71 percent) believe that social networking has little educational value for schools. Administrators further doubt that social networking technologies can have a postive impact on reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. It appears that students have more online time at home than in school. Who is preparing students to deal with the content and skills needed to effectively use online environments.

Consider the fact that our young people's tech abilites can be raw. They are digital natives. Students have research skills enabling them to readily find infomation on the internet. But to what extent do they reflect on data, statements, "facts", and visuals? Public schools may not be offering appropriate opportunites for students to become literate in Twenty-first multiliteracy skills. For example, it seems 25 seventh-grade "high level" readers accepted as fact an attempt to "save" the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Can an octopus live in a tree? Absolutely! Read about the plight of the P.NW.T.O. at www.zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.

It seems public schools have much work ahead to infuse the curriculum with multiliteracy skills, especially critical evaluation, innovation, and creativity.

Some programs are researching the new literacies and their use in schools and others are developing multiliteracy programs.
1. New Literacies Research Lab - University of Connecticut
http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/ .....researching a model for use in teaching multiliteracy
2. Partnership for 21st Century Skills - Monroe P.S., Conn.
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ ...an advocacy group helping schools include multiliteracy skills into the curriculum
3. A teacher institute on the new literacies - Scarsdale P.S., N.Y.
http://www.scarsdaleschools.k12.ny.us/ .....new literacies training for teachers in one school district

Refer to the article "The New Literacies" at this location:(http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1292&pf=1) for more information about students, schools, multiliteracy, and the projects noted above.