From the desk of Mr. Walters

It's the big day. Your students have been working on these projects for weeks. Some groups, going the traditional route have prepared a Power Point presentation. Some have made a VoiceThread or Animoto . A few brave groups have used Weebly , Blogger , or Wix to create a whole web site. Rubrics in hand, the day begins. Your hard work has paid off... mostly. Your students are proud of their work. The content has unusual depth. The students have met the expectations outlined on your rubric. Still... something is wrong. The projects are... well... they're ugly. You have this sick feeling knowing that they're out there on the web, pointing back at your class. This feeling makes you feel a little guilty. After all, "ugly" is very subjective, and they're only kids, kids who have worked very hard. What a shallow and superficial person you must be! Maybe you're just out of touch. Maybe cobalt blue text (in Jokerman font) on a black background with red and neon...

WOW... This gives us a lot to think about in education. Any ideas on moving forward incorporating this knowledge into practice? Comments welcome...

The following is an excerpt from an academic paper I’ve been working on, hence the rather formal citations etc. As a teacher of technology, I am very interested in the “new literacies” related to information management, often referred to as Information Literacy, Media Literacy, Digital Literacy, and Network Literacy. I recently read Judy Salpeter's article, “ Make Students Info Literate ” in the May 22, 2008 issue of “Techlearning” magazine. In the article, Salpeter succinctly makes several points that I've been trying to make with colleagues for the last four years.