Philadelphia council 4 9-11

• 1. Teaching Reading in a Digital World
  Philadelphia Reading Council
  Eric C. MacDonald, Ed.D.
  Benchmark School
  April 9, 2011
  

2. I Need My Teacher to Learn
3. Every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of time until 2003.
Eric Schmidt
CEO, Google
4. Exactly How Much Are Times A-Changin? (Newsweek.com)
5. Exactly How Much Are Times A-Changin? (Newsweek.com)
6. World Internet Usage
7. Todays Students
93% of teens are online
89% of teens say the Internet and other digital media/devices make their lives easier
94% of 12-17 year olds use the Internet for research
78% feel it helps with school work
Teen Internet use grew 45% between 2000 and 2005.
(Hitlin & Rainie, 2005; Lenhart, Simon, & Graziamo, 2001)
8. Todays Students
93% of teens surveyed use the Internet for social interaction
39% showcase artistic creations
33% work on web pages or blogs for others
28% have created their own blog or online journal
27% have their own web page
55% have created a profile on MySpace, Facebook or other social networking site
(Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, Smith, 2007)
9. Students Online
Students spend an average of:
27 hours online at home
15 minutes at school
(Miners & Pascopella, 2007)
10. Infowhelm
Are you feeling overwhelmed with information?
11. Brain Freeze (Newsweek.com)
Newsweek Headline:
I Cant Think! The Twitterization of our culture has revolutionized our lives, but with an unintended consequence our overloaded brains freeze when we have to make decisions.
12. Brain Freeze Consequences
Oxford English Dictionary
information fatigue
Added in 2009
But as information finds more ways to reach us, more often, more insistently than ever before, another consequence is becoming alarmingly clear: trying to drink from a firehose of information has harmful cognitive effects. And nowhere are those effects more worrying, than in our ability to make smart, creative, successful decisions. (30)
13. Brain Freeze Too Much Information!
It is possible to have too much information
With more information we actually make worse decisions.
We tend to give more weight to recent information, even if it is not salient.
How do we help our students (and ourselves) manage information to think smart?
14. Brain Freeze Think Time
We need time to think
Our unconscious (think gut feeling) makes an important contribution to good decision-making.
If emotions are shut out of the decision-making process, were likely to overthink a decision, and that has been shown to produce worse outcomes on even the simplest tasks. (33)
15. Brain Freeze Step Away
Experts advise dealing with emails and texts in batches, rather than in real time; that should let your unconscious decision-making system kick in. Avoid the trap of thinking that a decision requiring you to assess a lot of complex information is best made methodically and consciously; you will do better, and regret less if you let your unconscious turn it over by removing yourself from the influx. Set priorities; if a choice turns on only a few criteria, focus consciously on those. (33)
16. Brain Freeze - Strategies
We can become more organized in how we access, organize and assess information.
We can be more strategic in our approach to information-rich tasks.
We can emphasize the importance of prioritizing, synthesizing, and even time-management as important 21st century strategies.
17. Brain Freeze Classroom Implications
Metacognition
Critical Thinking
Strategic Reading
Print Text
Digital Text
18. The Internet & Reading
The Internet is a reading comprehension issue, not a technology issue.
- Don Leu
19. As a field we have been very slow to adopt technology.

• Michael Kamil, Stanford University