Literacy Is Not Enough
21st-century Fluencies for the Digital Age
Editorial Review
It is no longer enough that we educate only to the standards of the traditional literacies. If students are to survive, let alone thrive, in the 21st-century culture of technology-driven automation, abundance, and access to global labor markets, then independent thinking and its corollary, creative thinking, hold the highest currency. To be competent and capable in the 21st century requires a completely different set of skills. These 21st-century fluencies (Solution Fluency, Information Fluency, Creativity Fluency, Media Fluency, Collaboration Fluency, and Global Digital Citizenship) are identified and explained in detail as processes that can be learned and applied by students. We go beyond the “why” we need to change and focus on the “how” to change.
Books on Related Topics
When and where have you been a part of a culture of thinking? That is, when have you been in a place where the group’s collective thinking as well as each individual’s thinking was valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the regular day-to-day experience of all group members? Over
Read and learn as James O'Hanlon and Donald Clifton describe how elementary and secondary principals, identified as outstanding, carry out their work. According to the authors, these principals resemble highly effective managers in business in their adherence to the tenets of positive psychology. While the position of principal is highly demanding,
In more than two-and-a-half million miles of travel to schools in every part of the world, we have found a growing number of change leaders. These are the people who not only implement change successfully, but also appear to thrive on it. Their colleagues are no more insightful, desperate, or well
Wisdom to Share
It is no longer enough that we educate only to the standards of the traditional literacies. If students are to survive, let alone thrive, in the 21st-century culture of technology-driven automation, abundance, and access to global labor markets, then independent thinking and its corollary, creative thinking, hold the highest currency.
To help our students make a successful transition from school to life, we must shift the responsibility of learning from the teacher, where it has traditionally been, to the learners, where it belongs. Our job as educators will be to move from demanding the compliance of our students to making ourselves progressively redundant.
The new and different paradigm of teaching and learning is that of progressive withdrawal. Our responsibility must be to ensure that our students no longer need us by the time they graduate from school. This is no different than what we do as parents.
We must address the shift in thinking patterns that is happening to the digital generation. They live and operate in a multimedia, online, multitask, random access, color graphics, video, audio, visual world.
Transforming education is about developing the full spectrum of cognitive and emotional intelligences that are increasingly required in the culture of the 21st century.
Information Fluency is the ability to unconsciously and intuitively interpret information in all formats to extract the essential knowledge, perceive its meaning and significance, and use it to complete real-world tasks.
To create or to innovate means to bring something into existence that did not exist before. Creativity is the currency of the 21st century.
Collaboration Fluency is team-working proficiency characterized by the unconscious ability to work cooperatively with both real and virtual partners to solve real and simulated problems.
You’re the most important part of a young student’s life. You’re a worthy and experienced provider of knowledge, a giver of encouragement, and a nurturer of human potential. You are called upon in an age of uncertainty to be certain, and you are facing the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced, which is the challenge of change. Take pride in knowing that you can, and will, make a difference.
We couldn't find public videos for this title. Please check back later.
