NetSmart covers five new types of literacy: Attention, Crap Detection, Participation. Collaboration, Network Smarts. In it, Howard Rheingold gives specific aspects of these literacies and how they should we should improve upon these skills.
This means that we as educators need to recognize our own literacies and work to improve them. Even more, it means that we need to consciously teach these literacies just as we would with written literacy and numeric literacy.
One thing that interested me was how much the skills under Attention overlapped with some of the specific skills I do already teach my students. Every week we practice “Concentration” as a skill that can be improved by playing a game that focuses on ignoring distractions outside of our control. We, as a school, have also incorporated Mindfulness into our curriculum and have had coaches come in to talk about Attention and noticing things in the world around us.
I’ve actually made some intentional changes to my own participation after reading this book. I’ve played a game with a rather small community for quite a while now. Like most games, they have forums where players discuss game elements but also other things going on in life. After reading, I made a concerted effort to participate in the forums for that game posting in various sections at least a few times a week.
For collaboration, we have our large end of year project the Global Awareness Technology Project. I plan to include several mini-lessons that focus on how to work with group members and target shared goals over personal interests.