CCSS+Connection

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) includes the following statement:

"To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas; to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems; and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today's curriculum. In like fashion, research and media skills and understandings are embedded throughout the Standards rather than treated in a separate section."

As the CCSS' indicate, students “need to be able to use technology strategically when creating, refining, and collaborating on writing. They have to become adept at gathering information, evaluating sources, and citing material accurately, reporting findings from their research and analysis of sources in a clear and cogent manner” (NGA, 2010, p. 41). Embedded within the writing strand is the importance of technology and digital literacy as a means of deepening teachers’ and students’ understanding of composing and writing effectively in the 21st century and beyond, especially in relation to the CCSS’s call for writing across formats, structures, modes, and multiple genres (NGA, 2010, pp. 35, 41 & 60).

This mindset—leveraging digital composition and presentation tools to support ELA content area learning—allows for teaching and learning in complex and effective ways that will help students focus their use of technology to meet the targets of the CCSS and represent well the “vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century” (p. 3). In effect, we need teachers and students to be leaders in writing today and in composing and shaping the future.

- Carl A. Young, updated January, 2014