Week 5: Sep. 24th New Learner Roles: Expectations, Issues, Dilemmas, and Resolutions

Today, we continue Bonk’s Bingo game. Dr. Bonk has lots of ideas and tactics to arouse learners’ interests. After five weeks o the fifth week in his class, I realized how various pedagogical tactics could be used in college classrooms. By playing the bingo game, we know a lot of online instructors and have gained some clues for future research. Among all of the instructors, I am interested in following areas from a few people:

After Bonk Bingo, we went to Computer Lab to explore students’ readiness checklists about how it would change with the Web2.0, and look for some resources or screening mechanisms. Someone’s checklist really impressed me because of his or her innovation in creating well-organized and logical synthesis. This brainstorm of ideas to New Web2.0 readiness checklist is also prepared for the next week topic- Neo Millennial and Web2.0 Learners.

Again, I did not notice of the 8th note on the Week 5 Agenda sheet. After I had the experiences of missing some indications on the sheet twice over, I knew I should pay more attention on those words now. I put my thinking about the digital learning skills of 21st century.

1. Sharing
2. Creativity
3. Risk taking
4. Curiosity
5. Exploring and grasping resources effectively
6. Decision making and accountability
7. Adaptability
8. Interactive communication
9. Interpersonal skill
10. Plan and management skill
11. Self-direction

Some of the above ideas were founded in the below source:
http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/skills/skills.htm
This URL is rich in information. After visiting this website, I realize that 21st digital learning skill- information literacy is indeed an issue we should care about and it has been cared about for a long time.

Also, I have some thoughts about information literacy based on the Tidbit Dr. Bonk provides us this week. I think that the trying to measure students’ "information literacy" by New ETS exam is valuable. Basically, next generation of students in digital learning age are tech-savvy, but they usually don’t know how to identify those information useful or useless. Nowadays, the focus on information literacy is "not so much that I have to learn everything there is to learn, but now I need to learn how to find what I need to know." However, just like what has been stated on the website, “while everyone agrees it's important to have, it also is difficult to measure.”

I’m interested in how did they measure in particular. As a foreigner who experienced the reform of TOEFL held by ETS, I know there must some excellent findings about the shortage of original Computer Based Test. Those who work for ETS try to design a new version of Internet Based Test with sort of changes in content such as the “speaking part” that try to solve the problem of international students’ inability to speak up. It also condenses the “grammar part” into listening, speaking, reading and writing parts. It does not only react the trends to take online technology into consideration but also mean that literacy does matter.
Before looking at the findings in information literacy, let’s see what seven core skills in that test are. They are defining, accessing, managing, integrating, evaluating, creating and communicating information. The result presents like what I think, students don’t know how to evaluate tons of resources and make their choices.
Sometimes they absorb information without thinking before. As a result, teaching students how to evaluate tend to be more important than before.

Reference:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/02/02/new_ets_exam_tries_to_measure_students_information_literacy/