Section 2: Supporting Principles

This section discusses the seven principles embedded in literacy with ICT Across the Curriculum.

Inquiry: students develop questions to guide their learning, research sources of information, synthesize new ideas, and share evidence of their understanding, all while reflecting on their learning.
o Plan and question
o Gather and make sense
o Produce to show understanding
o Communicate
o Reflect
Constructivist Learning: learning depends on making connections between new information and previous experiences, to be integrated with what is already known and then applied to new situations. Understanding is much more than remembering new information. Marzano’s framework for teaching and learning
o Developing positive attitudes and perceptions
o Acquiring knowledge and skills
o Extending and refining knowledge
o Using knowledge meaningfully
o Developing productive habits of mind
Higher-Level Critical and Creative Thinking: Deeper learning occurs when students apply higher-level critical and creative thinking to invent, discover, and create. This includes distinguishing fact from opinion and interpretation, evaluating information and ideas, identifying perspectives and bias, and considering the consequences of decisions and actions. Students make new ideas and form new patterns or ways of thinking as they continue their learning.

Reaching Deeper Understanding: Students need to learn how to decide whether or not to use, when and how to use ICT to help meet their learning goals. The use of ICT can:
• extend students’ access to worldwide educational resources and primary sources
• deepen students’ understandings by making abstract concepts visible
• assist students in organizing, analyzing, and transforming information as they think critically to construct personal knowledge
• extend students’ means and dimensions of creative expression
• promote students’ collaborative and reflective learning
• motivate students to synthesize their knowledge into unique multidimensional products
• enable students to communicate with authentic audiences to show understanding
• allow students to transfer their knowledge to unfamiliar contexts
• enhance students’ engagement with learning

Gradual Release of Responsibility: Teachers provide a learning environment in which all students can gradually take on responsibility for their own learning. Pearson and Gallagher’s “Gradually Release of Responsibility Model of Explicit Instruction:
• Modelling: Teachers model learning behaviours such as building criteria, self assessment, seeking feedback, making adjustments, goal setting, and reflection.
• Sharing: Teachers share exemplars of quality work and teach students to identify quality samples of their own work.
• Guiding: Students and teachers assume joint responsibility through guided practice.
• Independent: Students practise, demonstrate, and apply learning behaviours that help them become self-directed learners.

Digital Citizenship: The responsible, ethical and safe use of ICT by students as members of society and citizens of global community. Four ideas that encompass digital citizenship:
1. Ethics and responsibility
2. Social implications
3. Collaboration
4. Motivation and confidence

Multiple Literacies for the 21st Century: The conference board of Canada has compiled a list of skills that will be required as today’s students graduate and enter the workforce:
• Managing Data: identifying what needs to be measured or calculated, estimating and verifying, and observing and recording primary data using appropriate technology
• Managing Information: locating, collecting, assessing, analyzing, and applying knowledge from various disciplines and electronic sources
• Communicating Ideas: reading a variety of media formats, writing and speaking clearly, and communicating using a range of technologies (Conference Board of
Canada)