I read with great interest two items: Technology Literacy and Sustained Tinkering Time and 88 Generalizations about Free Voluntary Reading. Both posts make the case that…that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing…
The Free Voluntary Reading is a handout by Dr. Stephen Krashen. It summarizes the research and benefits to literacy of Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), also called Free Voluntary Reading (FVR). You give kids books, and time to read them, and they read. Dr. Krashen is an activist for giving students more access to books, more time to read, and less coercion to do so. His credentials are impressive: professor emeritus at USC, a linguist and expert on literacy, language acquisition and reading. He’s in the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame.
The other item is a blog post by Sylvia of Generation Yes, a for-profit company that doesn’t seem to have yet declared what they are going to do. They make the point that computers in education have the greatest power if you give the student the time, the space, and the environment to use them.Â
As Sylvia puts it: It struck me as I looked at this list that it’s a lot like what I believe about children and computers: that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing literacy and fluency with computers. My vision includes a teacher or mentor modeling passion, collaboration, interest in the subject, and offering experiences that challenge students without coercion, tricks, or rankings. If I had to come up with a catchy acronym, I’d call it Sustained Tinkering Time (SST).
Sounds to me like they’re discovering the concept of unschooling….
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