Week 6 - Comparative Essays.

        
  The first article entitled,  Middle School Science Teachers’ Confidence and Pedagogical 
Practice of New Literacies discussed largely just how important it is for teachers in incorporate ICTs into the classroom, on a regular basis. Teachers already know the importance of this yet there is a huge disparity in what they know and what is being practiced with regards to new literacies and HOW this must be accomplished. 

The National Science Teachers Association, said the following, " prepare students’ abilities to do scientific inquiry by facilitating students to (1) ask questions that can be answered through scientific investigations, (2) collect evidence needed to answer a variety of questions, (3) inter-pret and analyze data through appropriate tools, (4) draw conclusions to create explanations based on evidence, and (5) communicate and defend results to their peers and others.

The research found that the teachers surveyed did posses both knowledge and skill in executing there new literacies in the classroom but need to master advanced ICT skills and this is where they were lacking. 

The second article entitled, Using social networking sites to  facilitate teaching and learning in the classroom. This articled matched a few themes discussed in the first article about incorporating more ICT in the classroom but this article spoke about pulling in more social networking sites in the process. The article mentioned about using site like Edmodo which is like Facebook in a sense but richer, educational and safer version. 

The commonality found in both articles was that the teachers play a major role in getting new literacies off the ground, so to speak. And since middle schoolers love social networking and are good at it, it would be advantageous for teachers to harp on this and bring it into the classroom. With proper netiquette, new literacies can be trasnformed and become a steady part of the curriculum.  
 


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