21st Century
BBC: Essential Lingo for 36 European Languages
An essential component to a 21st Century education is global awareness and a connection to other countries and languages. Today’s Site of the Day offers resources to help users begin conversing in 36 European languages.
From Albanian, to Icelandic or Ukrainian, begin your understanding by consulting this short list of essential words and phrases. Learn to say “hello,” “goodbye,” “thank you,” “my name is,” “I’m sorry,” “welcome,” and “I need help,” as well as other helpful sayings. Be sure to explore the various learning modes for mastering these phrases. You can read the words, hear the expressions, download them to an MP3 player, or print them out!
- Click here to login to netTrekker and access the Site of the Day.
Login to netTrekker before midnight (eastern) today to access the netTrekker Site of the Day and add it to your “My Portfolio” for easy future reference. After midnight, the new Site of the Day will go up and you’ll have to look for today’s site using netTrekker’s search tool. Need help with My Portfolio? Easy, handy instructions can be found here.
Not yet a netTrekker subscriber? Visit www.nettrekker.com and click on the Free Trial link at the top right of the page for 14 days of complimentary access to netTrekker.
Are you 21st Century Literate?
Amanda has done a wonderful job sharing all about the 21st Century Channel and a bit about netTrekker’s d.i.’s involvement in the 21st Century initiative. It’s my turn to tell you about the ICT Literacy component, my favorite section of the 21st Century Channel.
ICT Literacy Skills are synonymous with Digital Literacy
ICT. What do those three letters stand for? No peeking at Amanda’s last post. Here are some of the answers I’ve been given in the past: Instructive Computer Tasks, Information Computer Technology, and Instruction for Computer Teaching. While all of those are components of ICT Literacy, it actually means Information and Communication Technology. It’s also commonly referred to as digital literacy, since it is the ability to use the technology available to accomplish given tasks, demonstrating skills and knowledge. Students, and teachers, are able to find the information they need, analyze the appropriate materials, and even evaluate which media is the right one for the given task.
With netTrekker d.i., many think that the task of finding the information has been customized a little too much, but in truth it hasn’t. If you were a doctor, pharmacist or a lawyer you would use a specialized search engine or database to research your information for your field in order to save time. netTrekker d.i. is similar in that all the resources are geared to be the most appropriate for education. You still have to use your digital literacy skills to determine which ones are the most effective and will help you accomplish your goals.
Onward with the great features of ICT. To start with, it is a great place for you to learn more about the tools and processes involved in the variety of digital medias. When I was a student, our resources included magazines, journals, newspapers, encyclopedias, and other books. Today our students have all of those, plus podcasts, blogs, vlogs, digital video and digital images. Instead of just writing a paper, students can create digital stories, their own podcasts or blogs, use other Web 2.0 tools to share information, and other digital presentations. If you want to learn more about these medias and the tools involved in creating them, check out the ICT Literacy Component.
My favorite section though goes beyond learning about the tools and how to use them. I like the 21st Century Integration Models, which are lessons for teaching the 21st Century Skills. The ones from www.nettrekker.com were written by teachers for netTrekker. For these lessons they took a traditional lesson plan and added a technology-rich components to make the lessons 21st Century ready. Other lessons include those from Apple Learning Interchange, State Departments of Education, and other great 21st Century sites. Many of the lessons were written by teachers just like you!
Head on over to the netTrekker Village and share just how digital literate you are in one of the discussion boards.
I’m 21 C R U?
This weekend at the Palm Beach County Technology Conference and the Forsyth County Digital Schoolhouse Conference I asked a question during my session, “What does it mean to be a 21st Century Learner?” I asked for the participants in the workshops to describe the learner, their skills and their tools. Here are a few of their answers:
A 21st Century Learner has good communication and collaboration skills, globally and regionally informed, able to share, self-starters and multi-taskers. 21st Century learners have the skills to think critically, use technology, be creative in their thinking, and also to be innovative in their thinking. Tools for a 21st Century learner include cell phones, iPod, computers, interactive white boards, video conferencing, digital cameras and anything else technology related.
But what about netTrekker d.i. itself? Is it 21st Century? I have often had teachers ask me that, and I want to share with you my reasons for it being a loud resounding YES on tools for 21st Century.
1. Our students are not just English speaking students. We have students from various countries in our classrooms, and hopefully students who are learning other languages in our schools. netTrekker d.i. has resources in 15 different languages, easily discovered with our refinement menu or advanced searches.
2. Unfortunately not all of our students are on the same reading levels, and so we have to be able to find resources to fit their needs. With the readability levels in netTrekker d.i. you can easily find resources for your mixed ability level classrooms.
3. Again, not all of our students are on the same reading levels, and we have some great tools to help them with reading. My personal favorite is the Read Aloud tool. You can have a student, like my child, who is a non-reader suddenly enabled with this tool. This helps leveling the playing field and enables all students to be a self-starter.
4. By being able to refine your search to find games and interactive media, you are able to easily find the sites that encourage innovative, creative, and critical thinking. Learning does not have to be flat with sites that are straight information. 21st Century learning can be (and should be) engaging, especially with netTrekker d.i.
5. Let’s go back to our students from all over the world or studying a variety of languages and include our students without the greatest vocabulary skills. If they come across a word they don’t know, what do they do? Most of the time they either ignore it or give up right? Well if they use the Dictionary Hot Key, they can click on the word and get the definition. And if needed, they can have the word translated to another language. Those who are studying a foreign language and are trying to read a website in that language can also translate an unknown word to English. Becoming comfortable with other languages sure does help with communication.
So there you have it, my first five (of ten) reasons on why netTrekker d.i. is a 21st Century tool and should be used in schools everywhere. netTrekker d.i. is a time-saver by only finding resources aligned to state standards that are appropriate for education, with built in tools, refinement menu and other features that help our 21st Century learners find the resources they need for learning without losing valuable time trying to weed out the erroneous information.
Template Test Drive
How’s the folder coming along? Shaping up pretty nicely? Which websites did you add to your portfolio?
Today’s tip is how to use the Templates in the My Portfolio. Next to the ADD WEBSITE button is another button that says ADD TEMPLATE. netTrekker d.i. has two templates available. These templates allow you to add details to your portfolio which comes in handy when dealing with research or project based learning.
The first one is a Digital Literacy Template. This template has five questions a student should ask themselves before they decide to use a website for research. What a great practice for 21st Century Literacy! Now with each template, you must add a title. The description is optional, but is a great place to add directions. With the Digital Literacy Template the five questions are already in place, but there is space for you to add more details. For example, the first piece of information a student should question is the author or creator’s level of authority. What does this mean? The space below gives you a place to put prompts or more details for the students, such as “what level of educational degree do they hold? Are they an enthusiast, hobbyist, or do they work in the field?” Or you could tell the students to look for a biography of the creator and tips on what to investigate.
The second template is a USER DEFINED TEMPLATE. This is a blank page for you to add your own content. You must add the title, but the rest of the information is up to you. I like to use this page to write the project directions, to create a Web Hunt or WebQuest, or to list the printed material you want students to use in the project. The possibilities are endless! Here is a PDF of the template I used for the science fair project. Another possibility for the blank template is for students to collect and save their research notes. They don’t have to keep track of the paper and pen or remember where they put their file. All of the details they need for that project are contained in one space.
The template is not a worksheet, but rather a digital reference or guide for the students. It can be printed off if needed.
Share with us how you use the templates by leaving a comment below. If have one that is extraordinary, send it to Danielle at dabernethy@nettrekker.com. She’ll share them on the blog for others to use.
Email Notifications
Educator Blog Roll
- Backroom Educational Technology by Michelle Morely
- Cliotech, by Jennifer Dorman
- Educational Technology by Palm Beach
- etechplace: Henrico’s FETC Blog
- Geeky Momma, by Lee Kolbert
- Moving at the Speed of Creativity, by Wes Fryer
- NCS-Tech! by Kevin Jarrett
- Randomly Speaking, by John Lien
- Southgate Technology Blog
- Teach 42 Blog by Steve Dembo
- Teach the Civil War with Technology by Jim Beeghley
- Tinkerings, by Tim Childers