LITERACY WITH ICT

This week we were visited by a promoter of  Literacy with ICT.  ICT stands for Information and Communication Technologies which include all sorts of electronics: digital devices, gps's, and the internet.  Literacy  with ICT is choosing and using ICT, responsibly and ethically, to support critical and creative thinking about information and about communication.  Broken into three categories of
     1) critical and creative thinking
     2) ethics and responsibility
     3) ICT literacy

It questions how students develop their literacy with ICT.  Through parent or school supports.  Who offers that support?  If schools ban the equipment and students are doing it anyway who is teaching the ethics?  If students are more capable as users than their parents can their parents teach them ethics or will they anyway?

How are students developing ICT literacy?  The presenter suggests that only schools teach it most effectively.

 The process of a learning continuum is when a student learns from the early stages to a progressively more advance stage.  This means that ICT literacy has to begin at home with toy computers, televisions, phones, and electronic games.  As the bike example beginning with the push toy for balance and step increases of independence, so to does ICT begin at home at an early age.  Many of our habits are created out of observation,  more directly children observing home procedures.  How often do parents watch television, play with blackberries, talk on the phone, sit on the computer.  Children start off watching parents and mimicking parents through toys.  V-tech has a computer toy for 18 month old children.  How loud do they play the toy?  How long does it hold the childs attention?  What happens when you take the toy away?  How children interact with relations to toys and parents begins long before they attend school.  How many children know how to work a personal game system?  Many children play video games long before they learn how to read.  Are they limiting their time?  Are they play age appropriate games?  Are parents interacting with the children and instructing them on ediquette?  This learning continuum is strongly in place long before students reach school.

To suggest that students will then take the strong, ethical advise from a educator simply because it is right is a little euphoric.  If students are used to spending 4 - 6 hours a night on electronics then they certainly are going to do it anyway no matter what the teachers say.  If they are already knowledgable about Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, are they going to quit because it is not used appropriately?  I don't think so.

Take the example of cell phones.  Everyone bans cell phones yet at least one in three students is texting in class.  Teachers are not willing to go on the limb and remove the phone or the student who are using them in class. Our own classes ban cells yet we still receive calls, text, and entertain ourselves in class with phones.  If teachers know the students have cell phones, but are not taking steps to ensure the removal of them in classrooms; are they going to tell them to use technology ethically and respectfully and have them listen?

The learning continuum started at home and Teachers can only be a stepping stone that students choose to utilize or ignore.