Finding My Focus: Literacy Skills and Virtual School English

For those of you following the blog, you know I've been studying and writing about high school English in the virtual school, as well as looking at virtual school pedagogy in general. Well, now it has come time for me to focus my work on something more specific and definitive. After a lot of reading, research and personal deliberation I have decided to focus my work on virtual school English and literacy skills: Those needed and those developed.

From here on out, my blog will mostly focus on this area. This post in particular will explain my reasoning for choosing this area and review a bit of the available knowledge and scholarship that supports it as viable. I hope you enjoy and can add your own perspective and knowledge to help better bolster and legitimize and problematize (when necessary) my musings.

As it pertains to virtual schools and the development of literacy skills, the North American Council of Online Learning (NACOL) and its document "Virtual Schools and 21st Century Skills," (2006) which was written in conjunction with the Partnership for 21st Century Schools, seek to identify and help promote skills, through virtual learning, needed for success in this new century. According to NACOL, in assessing student knowledge in the virtual school students aren't merely tested on factual knowledge rather, their knowledge and understanding is showed by "being able to analyze information, solve problems, collaborate and communicate effectively." These are the skills that many reading initiatives call for in secondary schools and try to develop in how teachers teach and in curriculum design.
Further, in virtual schools NACOL states that students often have the choice of choosing an assignment, including in English class, that best fits their skills and learning profiles. These differentiated assessment types could include podcasts, traditional essays, PowerPoints, or Web site creation. All of these things involve the kind of literacy that is valued by employers in the 21st century, but also those that are used in how knowledge and information are being shared today for entertainment and education.

Specifically, on information and communications technology (ICT) literacy, NACOL writes:

The rate at which new information becomes available today is
astounding when compared to previous decades. In order to
succeed in the 21st century, students must master the ability to
use appropriate technologies to process, analyze and present
information efficiently and effectively in school, life and work
settings. Because virtual schools require students to master
technology as part of their everyday learning, students are
able to exercise and refine their 21st century technology skills
in settings that are quite similar to those they will encounter in
the real world.
Today’s graduates must be adept with the tools of
collaboration and communication that are the reality of
a global, web-driven workplace. Online learning affords
unprecedented opportunities for students to complete their
work using applications that are common to today’s workers,
such as web-based conferencing, project management, or
digital media and communications tools.

I do have other resources that help show the correlation and significance of the relationship with virtual schools and its development of literacy skills, and I will focus on those in upcoming posts. But to address what is being said by the NACOL and Partnership for 21st Century Schools, it seems that virtual schools and the literacy skills one learns in engaging in this kind of self-directed learning involves regular use of the skills that are deemed most worthwhile by the modern workplace, and possibly institutions of higher education. That is to say that "literacy" is no longer just being able to read or write, it is being able to communicate, analyze, interpret, categorize, create, collaborate and problem solve all using certain tools and formats, most of which are digital. This goes back to a previous post of mine, noting how we cannot teach students in a way that prepares them for a world that doesn't exist anymore. Recently a classmate of mine, following that post, reminded me of a quote by John Dewey and I think it applies here: "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow." And if Dewey were still alive, perhaps he might write on in his blog on education that "If we teach how to communicate as we did in the past, then we are preparing our students' voices and ideas for descent into silent nothingness."
It's a thought anyway.

Reference:
North American Council for Online Learning & Partnership for 21st Century Schools. Virtual schools & 21st century skills. Nov. 2006 [Accessed April 2, 2008]. Available at : http://www.nacol.org/docs/NACOL_21CenturySkills.pdf