Literacy Is Not Enough: 21st-Century Fluencies for the Digital Age

It is no longer enough that we educate only to the standards of the traditional literacies. If students are to survive, let alone thrive, in the 21st-century culture of technology-driven automation, abundance, and access to global labor markets, then independent thinking and its corollary, creative thinking, hold the highest currency. To be competent and capable in the 21st century requires a completely different set of skills. These 21st-century fluencies (Solution Fluency, Information Fluency, Creativity Fluency, Media Fluency, Collaboration Fluency, and Global Digital Citizenship) are identified and explained in detail in this book as processes that can be learned and applied by students. Literacy Is Not Enough goes beyond “why” education needs to change and focuses on “how” to change by identifying the 21st-century learning environment and detailing the process for developing scenarios and unit plans that address traditional curriculum, including Common Core standards, while cultivating these essential 21st-century fluencies. Also included are tools for evaluating these fluencies at the individual or class level, tools for evaluating how effective a lesson plan is in developing these fluencies in a classroom setting, and samples of complete unit plans as well as the templates for their development.