Alumni Connection

"Literacy, therefore, may be thought of as a moving target, continually changing its meaning depending on what society expects literate individuals to do. As societal expectations for literacy change, and as the demands on literate functions in a society change, so too must definitions of literacy change to reflect this moving target."

Welcome to the January 2006 electronic newsletter of the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center!

Powerful winds of change have blown us into the 21st Century and deposited us in a world where new technologies are rapidly transforming our cultural practices, pushing the limits of our language, and expanding the set of skills that are necessary for survival and success. In this issue, we examine how, like Dorothy and her friends from the Land of Oz, teachers and students must also acquire new literacies in order to travel safely through forests of digital dangers to the wonderful world of Ahs that new technologies make possible.

No, her name wasn't Dorothy, and she hadn't been carried off by a tornado. Nonetheless, she felt stranded in a strange, recurring dream where familiar surroundings seemed just slightly more peculiar with every passing day. The bell rang, drawing her attention to the noisy little Munchkins who were tumbling through her classroom door. Her eyes, having seen the exact same scene thousands upon thousands of times, surveyed them without really seeing them. "The name of the century may have changed," she thought to herself wryly, "but the kids sure haven't!" She had no idea just how mistaken she really was . . . .

As she walked toward the door to stand in the hallway, something in her perception shifted slightly, and she was suddenly struck by how terribly busy the students appeared as they passed. As she looked at them more intently, she noticed many had cords extending from their ears into tiny little white boxes that were clipped to their clothing. Now what could those be and why hadn't she noticed them before? Some were punching furiously at tiny little keypads, while still others were anxiously engaged in surreptitious conversations on carefully concealed cell phones that they weren't supposed to have. She caught fragments of their conversations here and there, ". . . I can't watch it because I have tennis practice when it comes on, but I download the podcast every night . . . ," ". . . did you see what she blogged about what happened to them in 6th hour yesterday? That is such a lie! . . .," ". . . yeah, he showed us his new mod at the Halo party last night, but it wasn't that great . . .," ". . . the avatars in her machinima are awesome—I'll text you the link."

Startled, it occurred to her that they were speaking a language that she didn't totally understand, and, more importantly, a language that she could no longer decipher based on her previous experience with teenage slang. Her head eventually stopped spinning, the world slowly righted itself, and the students in the halls resumed their normal pace, but, for the first time since the turn of the century, she understood that she wasn't in Kansas anymore!

So, when was the last time that you took a really good look at your students? If it has been awhile, then we cordially invite you to wander down the yellow brick road of this issue of the Alumni Connection with us. "We're off to see the Wizard," you see, and although we may not make it quite as far as the famed Emerald City, we guarantee you that you'll discover a Land or two so filled with Ahs along the way that you may hope that your ruby red slippers stay lost forever!

Cherice Montgomery, Newsletter Editor
Marcia Rosenbusch, Director, National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center
Sonmez Pamuk , Web Designer
Julio C. Rodriguez, Graphic Designer

“The important point here is about tools. Digital Natives expect to have powerful tools available to them, and they know, by teaching themselves and teaching each other, how to use them.”

Today’s students are growing up in a Land of Ahs—an information-rich world with a culture and language all its own. Do you speak digital? Take this quick Digital Natives in the Classroom Quiz to find out! (Click on the green, flashing computer screen at the right of the page to begin the quiz). If you find that your “digitese” is a little rusty, this entertaining, crash course on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants might be just what you need to help you make sense of your new world.

If you have the language down, but find yourself bewildered by the cultural customs of your Munchkins, entertain the possibility of study abroad through the immersion experience that this intriguing essay offers: The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native.

"As speed becomes essential for the effective use of the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs, it will be critical to solve the equity issues that result from children who process and communicate information at different rates. Slow readers and writers are challenged within traditional literacies; within the new literacies of the Internet these individuals will be left far behind. The gap between highly literate and literacy challenged individuals will be exacerbated by the new literacies of the Internet. Highly literate individuals will skim webpages, link to other webpages, and generally sift through large amounts of information in a short time. Individuals who read slowly and haltingly will still be evaluating the first screen of information by the time a more rapid reader has already completed the informational task."

If you spend any time with new technologies, it won’t take you long to realize that you certainly aren’t “in Kansas” anymore! But What Will Literacy Instruction Look Like in the Future? Skim this short summary of research-based predictions regarding the content and methodologies likely to be used in the literacy instruction of the future, then investigate each one more thoroughly by reading the “signs” along the yellow brick road below!

"Research by social psychologists shows that people who grow up in different cultures do not just think about different things, they actually think differently. The environment and culture in which people are raised affects and even determines many of their thought processes"

Somewhere over the rainbow . . . cultural forces are converging to shape the future of teaching and learning throughout the world. If you would like to know more about the dreams that others are daring to dream for their nations, this very brief, provocative synthesis of research will bring you up to speed on changes that are being made in literacy policies in countries around the globe.

For a more conceptual look at literacy, browse the International Literacy Explorer, which considers how and why we assess literacy, compares literacy statistics from different countries, and allows you to test your own knowledge of global literacy statistics with a 5-question quiz. The concluding comments are particularly interesting.

Every language teacher knows that just because you can understand the media or speak the language doesn’t mean that you understand the culture well enough to live in it, work it in, or contribute to it. So how culturally literate are you when it comes to the United States? This Cultural Literacy Test will help you find out!

If you are more interested in exploring the ways that the transformative power of technology and culture can be combined to fight the wicked witches of prejudice and oppression at a classroom level, take a look at A Critical Pedagogy Approach: Incorporating Technology to De/Reconstruct Culture in the Language Classroom, or consider browsing the April 2005 and May 2005 issues of the Alumni Connection, where you’ll discover lots of practical ideas for finding, evaluating, and using culturally authentic, electronic resources.

"Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use."

Just as the Scarecrow wished for a brain, the Tin Woodsman sought a heart, and the Cowardly Lion desired courage, it is likely that each of our students will find themselves in need of additional literacies in order to navigate, interact with, interpret, and represent the increasingly complex digital world that surrounds them. Click on each of the literacies listed on this page to learn more about how to recognize them when you see them, then visit 21st Century Literacies: Tools for Reading the World, where you’ll find a variety of activities, resources, and articles designed to help teachers and students develop skills in a variety of literacies.

Today's converging technologies are clearly changing the ways we work, play, live, and learn. In Literacy by Design: Why is all this technology so important anyhow? the wonderfully wise wizard, Jeff Wilhelm, offers thoughtful commentary on the products, practices, and perspectives that are shaping what it means to be educated in the digital age. For more words of wisdom, visit Project Look Sharp, where you’ll find links to 12 principles for incorporating media literacy into your curriculum along with 5 key concepts about media literacy and 6 key questions to ask about any kind of media.

Now that you’ve visited the wizard, your next stop on the yellow brick road should probably be Digital Literacy in the 21st Century, where you’ll learn how to apply the wizard’s advice in your own classroom with a brief introduction to 21st Century literacy skills; a discussion of how images, movement, sound, and text can be used to support arguments and persuade audiences; and online, interactive activities, outstanding templates, and assessment checklists (available for download as PDF files--click on the links at the top of the page to explore.)

Do you have what it takes to survive in the Digital World of Ahhs yet? Find out by taking this Media Literacy Quiz from PBS Teacher Source. Be sure to check out the links suggested in the scoring guide, where you'll find great ideas for incorporating media literacy in various curricular areas, a list of phenomenal, practical, online resources for teachers, and an annotated list of links to research on media literacy.

If your quiz score was a little lower than you expected, drop into the Media Awareness Network, an outstanding, searchable, Canadian site (available in English or in French) that contains free lessons and phenomenal activities designed to help elementary students discover how media influence their perceptions of gender, power, and stereotypes, and their susceptibility to advertising. The site also contains links to research and news articles about information privacy, online hate, media stereotyping, media violence, and Canadian media and cultural policies. The teacher page is searchable by grade level and by topic and teachers can even submit lessons. (Placing items in your "content cart" on this site simply means that you are queuing them for printing.)

You might also want to stop by Analyzing the News: Some Ideas for the French Language Classroom by Sarah Shackelford, where you can peruse an outstanding list of annotated links to online, interactive, media-related activities for elementary and secondary students, many of which are adaptable to the language classroom, and some of which are actually designed for French language learners. Spanish teachers will find the Media Literacy Kit from the Center for Media Literacy equally helpful. The kit contains free curricular materials, handouts, and color posters available for download as PDFs in English or in Spanish.

When you and your students are ready to practice your newly acquired skills in media literacy, browse The Film Library--a site containing a list of downloadable commercials from all over the world. (Use the drop-down menu at the bottom of the screen to select a country).

". . . whether or not people choose to represent their identities, these remain present in the ways that they think, act, and express themselves online"

Many of the characteristic features that make the Wizard of Oz so compelling are also shared by many forms of new media. However, in cyberspace, the line between fantasy and reality is often less clear, and our core selves may feel more protected, but are also more vulnerable. As we spend more time working and socializing online, it is increasingly important that we also develop the emotional literacy skills necessary to help us protect others and ourselves from the potential consequences of doing so. How empathic are you likely to be in your interactions with others? Take this Emotional Empathy Test to find out!

To evaluate your own emotional literacy skills, try this Emotional Intelligence Test (free abridged profile) or this Emotional Literacy Quiz. Would you like to dig a little deeper? The Psychology of Cyberspace will allow you to explore the psychological implications of living, working, and socializing in cyberspace.

“Messages are representations of the world. The reason why media messages are so powerful is that viewers and readers depend on them for their understanding of the culture. One reason why children are thought to be more vulnerable to media influences is because they have less direct real-world experience to compare with the representations provided by television and mass media.”

Every environment is filled with the possibilities its natural resources afford, as well as with potential dangers, and the Internet is no exception. It provides students with a wealth of opportunities to learn about the ecosystems of countries around the world, but also puts them within reach of new threats to their safety. How environmentally literate are your students? This Environmental Literacy Quiz will give you a chance to find out! Chile-Web.com recommended by Claudia Nole (Mentoring, Leadership, & Change, 2003) uses a combination of striking images and text to expose students to the natural beauty of Chile in your choice of German, English, or Spanish. What happens when students are careless with their trash in such environments? ¿Cuánto tiempo demora la naturaleza? is a visually intriguing page in Spanish that will give students the opportunity to explore how long different kinds of trash take to decompose. If you are interested in a bit more of a cognitive challenge, The Arts and Cultural Studies in Environmental Education is a fascinating part of a transnational project on developing environmental awareness through literature and media education that advocates teaching students to “read” their environment as cultural text.

Elementary teachers may find Sounds of the World’s Animals, more appropriate for their students. Students can see real photos and hear actual sounds of animals from around the world. Click on your target language to access a list of animals in the target language, categorized by country, that indicate how speakers of the target language (including numerous less-commonly taught languages) would make the animal sounds. For something a little more interactive, try SwitchZoo Online. Students can select a habitat, click on a path (be patient until the next screen loads), and then invent their own imaginary animals by recombining heads, bodies, and tails. The resulting creations would make a great basis for interpersonal activities such as describing an animal to a partner as s/he tries to draw it or for presentational activities like creating a podcast or writing a story about the environment’s effects on the imaginary animal. Click on the other links on the site for integrated lesson plan ideas—especially for elementary students.

While the dangers of cyberspace won’t take the form of the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) that your students create, they can still be quite vicious. If you are wondering what those digital dangers might be, go on safari with Jo Cool or Jo Fool?--a guided, interactive, “cybertour” (available in English or in French) where you will encounter 12 common deceptions that pre-teens face when they surf the Internet. (Click on the maroon links on the right-hand side of the screen to get started.) When you finish, test your internet safety and media literacy skills with the 20-question quiz. A 50-page teacher guide is also available for free download in PDF format. If you are still feeling a little uncertain about your safety in digital environments, check out CyberSmart, a K-8 site filled with lesson plans and activity sheets (organized by grade level) to help develop students' search skills, ethics, cybercitizenship skills, and cybersafety skills.

“Literacy grants power in any civilization.”

Numbers are tools. They can be used to represent information, answer questions, create persuasive messages, and tell compelling stories. New technologies are making it possible to combine numbers with other kinds of data in ways that increase their power and impact. However, understanding, interpreting, and evaluating such numbers requires a more sophisticated set of skills than were sufficient for Dorothy, who only had to count to 3 in order to get her ruby red slippers to take her home!

Storydata is an interesting site that offers data (in the form of clickable charts and graphs) that you can use to explore various facets of a number of different controversial topics at both the national and global levels. If you are interested in comparing the conditions in various continents or countries, visit the UN Cyberschoolbus: Infonation, where students can compare statistics (in English or in French) for countries around the world regarding topics such as economic conditions, energy consumption, health, infant mortality, literacy, population, safety, and technology. To fully experience the power of combining numbers with new technologies, spend some time at Understanding USA is an outstanding site filled with beautifully designed “infographics” (that can be accessed in .pdf format and printed) that provide information based on the US Census designed to help the general public answer important questions such as: “What are the human and financial costs (of war) to the citizens of the United States?” and “If the crime rate is dropping, why do Americans feel more threatened by crime?” Additional topics include: AIDS, Biodiversity, Business, Consumption and Consequences, Crime, Education, Families, Food, Foreign Trade, Global Economy, Global Trade, Homelessness, Human Rights, Immigration, International Affairs, Juvenile Crime, Literacy, Media, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Technology in the Classroom, Terrorism, Water, and many, many others. (Click on the shapes at the top of the page to access them.)

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”

The non-linear, dynamic, multisensory nature of new technologies has expanded what counts as text. These transformations are, in turn, changing not only what we “read” and how we read it, but also the ways we think, the things we imagine and create, and the tools that we need in order to do so. If, like the Scarecrow, you are wishing you had a brain with a deeper understanding of these concepts, stroll over to Reading Online and wander through the fantastic article, Reading Comprehension on the Internet: Expanding Our Understanding of Reading Comprehension to Encompass New Literacies. It thoughtfully explores new facets of reading comprehension, discusses how new technologies have altered what it means to be literate, and suggests that we must broaden our definitions of text, reading, readers, and social contexts in order to truly understand the educational implications for our changing society.

Another way to help all students be more successful with these tasks is to scaffold their engagement with text through pre-, during, and post-reading, listening, and viewing activities. Reading Strategies That Benefit All Learners is a PDF that offers 18 pages of ideas and reproducible templates designed to support reading in a second language. For something a little more comprehensive, visit Strategies That Work, a 137-page manual available as a free PDF that that is divided into elementary, middle, and high school sections and contains descriptions of many useful reading strategies, along with numerous examples of useful graphic organizers.

Although the Wicked Witch had to send flying monkeys to search for Dorothy, finding quality texts on which your students can practice these skills is as easy as clicking on this link recommended by Julie Kline ( Latin America in the Classroom Institute, 2002). It will take you to the Américas Book Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature site, where you’ll find U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The award winners and commended titles are selected for their 1) distinctive literary quality; 2) cultural contextualization; 3) exceptional integration of text, illustration and design; and 4) potential for classroom use. If you need a particular kind of book on a specific topic, you’ll enjoy using the Children's Literature Webguide--a comprehensive, searchable index of authors and illustrators on the Web. If you don’t find what you need there, try Authors & Books:Book Match--an interface that allows the user to search for books in English only, Spanish only, or in both languages, appropriate for a range of grade levels (K-8), from various genres, and about a variety of topics. The user can also specify ethnicities and types of communities.

French teachers will appreciate Doc Ladd’s thematic listing of children’s books in French and will enjoy browsing the Scholastic Book Club in French. Teachers of other languages will love Project Gutenberg, a website that contains e-books in 47 different languages that you can read and/or download for free. Scroll down toward the bottom of the page in order to search the collection by author, title, language, or type of text (audio books, movies, music, etc.).

If you aren’t quite as cowardly as the Lion and have the courage to try something a little less traditional, Go to Outer.net to see what the next generation of book clubs and reading incentives for kids will look like, or try one of the increasingly popular “zines” (pronounced zeens—an abbreviated term for an online magazine). Latinitas is a zine that produces separate editions for elementary-aged girls and for teens. The zines contain short little articles in English and in Spanish of interest to Latinas, including features on entertainment, Latin culture, school, and technology. México para Niños: News Section is a very colorful news zine for children. (Use the pull-down menu to see previous editions.) For adventures with the world’s most current events, try Newseum--an online museum that exhibits today’s front pages for over 300 newspapers from 45 countries around the world. At France 3, you can access news briefs and regional news video in French.

If, like the Tin Man, a heart is your desire, then poetry may be just what you need! Poésie Francais contains a searchable index of poems organized by theme by French authors from countries around the world. You can read or listen to them, visit other online resources, or even see statistics on the poems that are most requested! If you teach Spanish, try Poesía en español—Desde el romancero hasta el siglo XX instead, where you’ll find an extensive searchable index of poetry written by famous, Spanish-speaking authors. Do you have trouble convincing your students that poetry is important in today’s society? Take them on a virtual field trip to hospital waiting rooms in England with the interesting article Foreign Language Poems to Enter Waiting Rooms. It discusses a British initiative to put poetry in many less commonly-taught languages in hospital waiting rooms and even provides a sample selection of the poems!

“. . . effective learning experiences will be increasingly dependent on social learning strategies and the ability of a teacher to orchestrate literacy learning opportunities between and among students who know different new literacies. This will distribute knowledge about literacy throughout the classroom . . . . This social learning ability may not come naturally to all students, however, and many will need to be supported in learning how to learn about literacy from one another (Labbo, 1996; Labbo & Kuhn, 1998)"

New technologies are making it possible to shrink the world into packages small enough to fit on a key chain, while at the same time expanding students’ social circles to encompass people from all over the globe! Communication and the sharing of information, experience, and expertise is literally at students’ fingertips —and they know it ! As they integrate these technologies into their lives, new kinds of communities are emerging, new cultural norms and boundaries are solidifying, and new kinds of crime, poverty, and warfare are developing. Smartmobs.com is an intriguing site where you can explore the dynamics of some of these intriguing issues. If you’d like to know more about how the convergence of human cooperation and new technologies can be applied to education, visit Towards a Literacy of Cooperation. Explore the links on the left-hand side of the page to see how a professor at Stanford is using a wide range of social technologies like wikis, blogging, podcasting, social tagging, and video blogging (learn all about these new uses of technology in our March 2006 issue) to create a unique cybercommunity that engages students and other interested individuals in fascinating conversations that take teaching and learning to a whole new level!

Are you wondering about wikis? A wiki allows multiple authors to collaborate online to author and edit documents. To learn more, drop by What is Wiki? for a brief explanation. If you’ve ever used the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, then you’ve already seen how powerful they can be! To see one with an educational focus, trek over to The Teacher's Lounge, a wiki designed to allow teachers to share lesson plans. If you’ve worked up an appetite for collaborative authoring, you’ll love Wikibooks! This site makes it possible for people to collaboratively author textbooks and make them available to the public for free. Each wikibook also has a discussion forum attached to it where students can engage in conversation about what they are reading. To see a list of titles, scroll down toward the bottom of the screen, then explore what has been done in your language by clicking on the “Other Languages” link in the upper, right-hand corner of the screen. To try your hand at editing a wiki, go play in the “Sandbox,” a space designed to allow curious little Munchkins to try the technology without destroying anyone else’s sandcastles! If you’re wondering how this technology might work in a foreign language, click on over to Metawiki: hébergement de wiki, a collection of wikis in French. If you click on the Démonstration link on the right-hand side of the page, you can edit a test wiki by changing or deleting existing content, uploading new text and images, adding tags, etc. Click on the Edit. button in the lower-right hand corner to begin, make your changes (or upload your photos) to the box, then click on Enregistrer to submit and upload your changes.

If the communicative possibilities of these technologies excite you, you may be ready to set up your own wiki! You can do so quickly with Seedwiki. For something a little more comprehensive, try Moodle—a free, open source, easy to use course management system similar to Blackboard that allows teachers to create wiki-like environments and monitor their content, as well as to develop test banks from which random assessments can be generated. To view some Moodle screen shots, take a look at this PDF, then browse the Moodle for Language Teaching to find out more about how other language teachers are using Moodle with their students. If you want to know more about how students can use wikis as learning tools, scan this article.

Did you ever wonder how Dorothy stayed in touch with all of her friends from the Land of Oz once she returned to Kansas? We can’t say for sure, but we wouldn’t be surprised if she used E-pals—a site that allows students and teachers from countries around the world to communicate with one another in teacher-monitored exchanges. Teachers can obtain up to 35 student accounts for free. Be sure to check out the new Chinese-English Language and Learning Portal while you’re there! When you are ready for a bigger challenge, consider using social technologies as tools for Building a Virtual Community Museum with your students. The site helps teachers partner with community organizations to build virtual museums and contains a rationale, information, resources, and examples to help you get started. For times when a little face-to-face time seems necessary, consider videoconferencing to support students’ learning. Videoconferencing: Ideas for Schools, Colleges, and Libraries contains cross-disciplinary ideas and examples for teachers who want to use videoconferencing activities, along with suggestions for planning, instructional strategies, support materials, technical information, and directories to help you collaborate with others in the country of your choice.

Speaking of collaboration, have you ever wondered what it would be like to chat with the Tin Man, or a robot-like creature?! The A.L.I.C.E. Artificial Intelligence Foundation site will let you find out! To get started, click on the Chat with Alicelink in the upper, left-hand side of the screen. When the new page loads, type a question or a statement into the blank box in English and enjoy the conversation that ensues! (Although you can talk to this chatbot for free, you must pay a fee to talk with the other chatbots on the page.)

“Visual genres and mediums now dominate communication; photographs, television, film, video, the internet, cartoons, posters, t-shirts, comics, multi media presentations and computer simulations. Therefore, ‘increasingly, an argument can be mounted that a literate person in contemporary western cultures is, first and foremost, someone who is able to recognise, read, analyse and deploy a variety of visual genres and mediums"

Words are one way of communicating, but visual media provide another powerful way to create and convey meaning. Ten by Ten is an entertaining site that is sure to test your visual literacy! Look at each of the images and try to name the influential current event it represents. If you need a hint, mouse over the top of an image and then look at the word that expands on the right hand side of the screen. In order to find out more about these issues, your students may enjoy doing a search on Grokker, which will allow them to view their search results visually with a color-coded, shape-coded “map” of the “territory” in which their search term resides. Beware that the Puzzles section of the site may be addictive! If you’d like your students to engage more substantively with some of these issues, Colors Magazine may be just what you need. Each month, this bilingual magazine (subscriptions available in English and the second language of your choice) uses a combination of text and striking images (some of which may not be appropriate for classroom use) to explore a new theme such as Immigration, Race, Ecology, Shopping, Sports, Travel, War, Wealth, Smoking, Death, Time, Home, Water, Venice, Status, Monoculture, Trash, Refugees, Roma, Elderly, Future, School, Slavery, Food, Telenovelas, etc.

If your students tend to respond better to something a little less “serious,” then Comiclopedia is the resource for you! This beautiful site, searchable in Dutch, English, and French, will connect you with thousands of comics and information about comic artists from around the world (including artists from countries that speak languages besides the three mentioned above). Japanese students will love Mangarama: Digital Comic Learning System, while Spanish learners will discover interesting ideas in Comics y la Cultura de Masas. The site contains a brief essay in Spanish about the links between comics and popular culture, as well as essays that discuss how the issues raised by the article apply to comics such as Asterix, Batman, Charlie Brown, Mafalda, Spiderman, Superman. If you need Ideas for Using Comic Strips in FL Teaching, this FLTEACH posting should do the trick, or visit Gamics.com to see how students are combining comic-like formats with scenes from video games to create their own commentary! (Click on the icons on the top, right-hand side of the page to see the “gamics,” and watch for the section on machinima in our February 2006 issue where we’ll explain how students are using their computers to create shorts and full-length feature films out of their favorite videogames!)

Obviously, new forms of visual communication are sweeping across the Internet like a tornado and are scooping up many of our students in the process. Although we cannot currently predict where they’ll end up any better than Dorothy was able to predict that her house would land on top of the Wicked Witch of the West, one thing that is clear is that many students lack discernment when it comes to effectively evaluating the visual information they encounter. Wondering With and About Images offers teachers plenty of food for thought regarding the whats, whys, and hows of helping students to become more critical viewers. The easy-to-read article includes sample instructional activities that could be easily adapted by world language teachers (including one that would be particularly useful to Chinese teachers) along with links to useful, image-related resources. Visual Literacy in Classrooms will connect you with a collection of annotated links to additional thoughts and resources on the topic. If you would prefer something a little more research-based, Visual Understanding in Education summarizes research findings regarding visual understanding, learning, thinking, transfer, and technology.

Are you ready to try these ideas with students? What Do You See? provides a very simple chart that guides younger students through the beginning steps of analyzing images, while Images in Action encourages older students to "dig deeper" for the message behind each image--a great digital literacy development tool for ESL students! ESL teachers will also appreciate the online reading activities at Visual Story-telling that are specifically designed to help ESL students to consider the relationship between images and text. (Click on the links under Reading Activities in the navigation pane on the left-hand side of the screen to get started.) If you teach Japanese, you’ll find A Visual Literacy Exercise – Japanese useful. It draws on the art, culture, and geography of Japan as tools for developing visual literacy.

When your students are ready to try expressing their own thoughts with visual media, Web English Teacher: Photography will take you to an outstanding collection of annotated links to projects and assignments that could easily be adapted for use in the language classroom. If your students need something more dynamic, send them to Visual Literacy: How do I Make Meaning? This fantastic site will take them through a series of modules designed to equip them with the visual literacy skills necessary for making a short movie. Many modules contain graphic organizers, comprehension quizzes, and downloadable checklists and templates. (Be sure to have them click on the colored tabs to the right as well as the links in the navigation bar.) If you find that your students are so captivated by the movement that they forget about the content, you may want to have them take the interactive Digital Literacy: Skills for the 21st Century—Movement as Illustration Quiz to learn about the difference between using movement to focus the viewer’s attention and using movement to illustrate something.

If you’d like to create your own activities that will help students to develop their visual literacy skills, you will need pictures to do it! Here are a few resources to get you started. The Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon contains a wonderful collection of culturally authentic, license-free photos from Germany that are organized by topics typically found in a first-year German textbook. Take a few minutes to read the "About" section, as it provides nice guidelines for thinking about the use of culturally authentic images. The Japan Picture Gallery links to numerous culturally authentic photos from Japan. (Click on each of the lessons to see the photos.) The Realia Project offers a searchable database of realia from countries around the world that can be accessed online, while Pics4Learning and Open Photo are collections of photos, organized by categories such as animals, architecture, biomes, computers, education, food, geography, history, holidays, life, living spaces, nature, places, technology, and weather that can be used for free for non-commercial purposes. If you need clip art, UVic's Language Teaching Clipart Library is a searchable collection of culturally-neutral images designed to provide language teachers with clip art of basic vocabulary that can be used to create language learning materials. The clip art found in the Open Clip Art Library is available for use in your projects under the terms of the Creative Commons license. The site also allows you to upload your own submissions of original clip art that you are willing to share with others, to make requests for clip art, and to get help using Wiki files. Royalty-Free Clip Art Collection for Foreign/Second Language Instruction is a page, available in English or in Japanese, that contains a collection of simple line drawings, organized in terms of parts of speech, that is designed to be useful to language teachers. Hebrew teachers will find links to Hebrew Vocabulary Quizzes With Pictures at the bottom of the page. Finally, The Internet Picture Dictionary is a free, online, searchable dictionary of words typically taught in beginning language courses that is available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

"Learning to use the tools is not the same thing as using the tools to learn."

It is a very useful site that walks teachers through using the internet for pedagogical purposes in the second language classroom. Seeds II is a site that provides nice examples of how new technologies can be used to support meaningful activities in the elementary Spanish classroom, and 4teachers.org gives you numerous online tools for creating them. (Be sure to check out Rubistar and Trackstar while you’re there!) Now that you’re a savvy surfer, you’re probably ready to try Using PowerPoint in an Integrated Technology Lesson, a page that offers one example of how teachers might structure and scaffold student interaction with technology in order to help them work together to produce a PowerPoint presentation.

There truly is no place like home, and it is time for us to return there now. Yet, although we’re nearing the end of this yellow brick road, our journey into new literacies has just begun. In our February issue, we will explore Twenty-first Century Technologies: Tools for Transforming Language Teaching & Learning. If you have suggestions for information on this topic to share with fellow alumni, send your ideas to Cherice Montgomery at chericem@msu.edu!

"Education...has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." G.M. Trevelyan

“While teachers often complain about their students’ inability to discriminate between good, bad, true, false, useful or un-useful information, this ability is not lacking in general, but only in the domains the students don’t understand well.”

"First of all, I don't think anyone could claim to be media literate if he or she didn't understand that one of the principle functions of commercial media is not so much the provision of information or entertainment, but the segmentation and packaging of audiences for delivery and sale to advertisers... It's the audience which is the real product of the media, and not the programs." Len Masterman

So, what happens when imagination, new literacies, and global perspectives converge on Iowa? This image from a German website suggests one possible result!

Burbules, Nicholas C., & Callister, Jr., Thomas A. (2000). Watch IT: The risks and promises of information technologies for education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-9083-4.

Leu, D.J., Jr., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., & Cammack, D.W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the Internet and other information and communication technologies. In R.B. Ruddell, & N. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (5th ed., pp. 1570-1613). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Retrieved October 2005, from http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=leu/

Schirato T. & Yell, S. (1996). Communication & Cultural Literacy: An Introduction. St. Leonard: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd. In Sankey, Michael D. (2000). Considering visual literacy when designing instruction, p. 3. Retrieved May 2, 2005, from http://www.usq.edu.au/users/sankey/Resources/article0602.pdf

Spiro, Rand J., Feltovich, Paul J., Jacobson, Michael I., & Coulson, Richard L. (1991). Cognitive flexibility, constructivism, and hypertext: Random access instruction for advanced knowledge acquisition in ill-structured domains. Retrieved November 3, 2003, from http://phoenix.sce.fct.unl.pt/simposio/Rand_Spiro.htm