NCTE is Beginning to Shift

(Warning: There�s some shameless self-promotion in this, but I think the content is still worth your time.)

As I wrote back in February, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is really beginning to focus on 21st century literacies. I�ll be heading off to their annual convention, Because Shift Happens: Teaching in the 21st Century, in San Antonio this weekend where I�ll be presenting with Anne Smith, Kristin Leclaire and Mike Porter. NCTE has a Ning setup for the convention, are running some sessions in an area called the New Media Gallery, and have Tech to Go Kiosks organized by Sara Kajder with some help from Bud Hunt.

The November issue of the NCTE Council Chronicle (pdf) also has several articles (The �C�s of Change� (pdf), Widening the Audience: Students Reading and Writing Online (pdf), and Reading and Writing Differently (pdf)) that focus on trying to get our heads around what 21st century skills really are, and what it might mean to be literate in the 21st century. They also have an online �extra�, More Thoughts on 21st Century Literacies.

I think all these articles are worth your time � and are worth sharing with any teacher in your building that works with literacy (which is hopefully every teacher in your building). And then encourage those teachers to get involved in the conversation. As Bud Hunt says in one of the articles,

I�ve probably learned more about teaching and learning as a result of being engaged in professional discussions online than I�ve learned in any meeting or class or directive from an administrator.

This is too important for your teachers not to be involved in this discussion.

Additions To The Fischbowl

Blogger recently added the option to subscribe to a particular comments thread via email. This makes it much easier to follow a conversation on a particular post. When you comment, there�s now an option to get all follow-up comments to that post emailed to you. While other blogging software has had this for awhile, this is a nice addition for those of us who use Blogger. (Of course, if you�re really a glutton, you can subscribe via RSS or email to all the comments on The Fischbowl.)

For the three of you who actually visit The Fischbowl web page itself, as opposed to reading it in your aggregator, I�ve also added a few features.

I added the AnswerTips feature, which allows you to double-click on any word and small bubbles of information pop up from Answers.com. If you try it out, let me know how it works for you. If you have your own blog, here�s where you get the code to enable this on your blog. If you use Firefox, you can download an extension that will allow you to do this on any web page by alt-clicking (or right-clicking and choosing from the menu that appears). If you use Windows, you can enable this in all of your applications by installing this little app. Mac users can get a dashboard widget or enable it in their apps. I think this could be a handy little tool for students as they read unfamiliar words on their computers (in addition to the reading strategies we already teach them.)

I also added to the sidebar links to the latest five posts from the blogs of the cohort 1 teachers in my staff development, the cohort 2 teachers, and from their class blogs (scroll down a little to see them all). This is in addition to the links to the blogs themselves that were already there. Since there are a lot of blogs and some of the folks aren�t particularly prolific, this allows visitors to see at a glance who�s posted lately. I�m still thinking about how to incorporate this onto our Learning Network page on our school�s website (which currently has just my shared Google Reader items on it).