Preparing Students for the 21st Century

I enjoyed reading this article and learned a lot about how to incorporate new literacies involving technology into the classroom.  I'm excited to explore the various methods the article talked about (Internet Workshop, Internet Project, WebQuest, Internet Inquiry). I believe all of the methods would be great to try to incorporate into our curriculum, but realize timing and available computers will also need to be considered.  When reading through the various methods, I can also see that some can be implemented pretty easily, while others will need a little more instruction on how to go about them--including lessons on locating information, evaluating it, and communicating it with others.

An idea that I have for my own classroom is the start out with the Internet workshop. In fifth grade, we have our NESA science testing, which is cumulative and covers all of the content students have learned in previous grades.  As teachers, we are always coming up with ideas of how to review this information with students.  Given the internet workshop, I was thinking about looking up various web sites that have to do with the science topics we are reviewing, such as life cycles, food chains, solar system, rock and minerals, etc.  I could then make jump codes for these sites and have students visit them. I can either have a worksheet made up prior that has questions they need to find as they visit these websites, or I could have it be more open ended and have students write down what they think are the important ideas to take away from the websites.  Since the NESA test has a lot of vocabulary, having students look up definitions on these websites and/or drawing a picture to go along with it will aid their understanding.  This is not something I have tried yet, but I will be looking into it!