Post #12- Toward a Theory of New Literacies

Toward a Theory of New Literacies

This article gave great insight into how the concept and definition of literacy has changed over time, but also how we need to include it into the technological aspect and what it means to be literate on the Internet.  "New literacies change regularly as technology opens new possibilities for communication and information.  We see this happening today as people redefine literacy practices while they communicate on a chatboard associated with a website, talk to one another using a video cam, or participate in virtual reality role-playing games."  It is clear that the Internet isn't just for attaining information anymore; with Web 2.0 we are not only getting information, we can also put in our own information and change what is already posted, especially with websites like Wikipedia.  Another aspect that is quite obvious is that with the changing technologies, the literacy instruction in classrooms has also changed.  With schools incorporating different types of technology between Smart boards and other types of technology in the classroom, it is no wonder that the way we teach is changing too.  Teachers are finding different ways to teach literacy instead of the traditional, text-book ways, so their definitions of what it means to be literate are changing too.  I think we all need to take into consideration the 21st century skills that students are going to need to know, as soon technology will be everywhere.  Literacy won't just be being able to read and write anymore and comprehending what they've read; it'll be comprehending information on the Internet to use when writing research papers, how to read recipes found online, etc.  When reading through this article, I thought the following quote was very important and explains a lot about how the Internet has changed our lives, both at home and in the classroom: "The new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs include the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives.  These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to others."  It is definitely important to teach out students how to be literate in a non-technological sense because even now, technology isn't everywhere and it always isn't in either school or the home.  When students aren't exposed to technology they need to know how to be literate to comprehend a text or decode information.  When students are literate in a non-technological sense, it will be a lot easier to apply their prior knowledge about literacy and their skills and use them to navigate the Internet and different technologies.   

Post #11- Becoming Critical Consumers and Producers of Text; Teaching about language, power, and text

Becoming Critical Consumers and Producers of Text

It is quite clear there is a difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0.  Web 1.0 allows us to be mostly consumers of information, finding resources and other information online.  Web 2.0 is much more different; not only can we consume information, we can actually be "authors" of some sort.  The creation of blogs and sites where people can write reviews or comment on news articles allows us to be authors and write our opinions on whatever we like, whether it's a product we've bought, a news article that strikes a chord, or just writing down our thoughts and opinions on whatever.  I liked the teacher that used Writer's Workshop in her classroom using different types of Web 2.0 tools, from Comic Creator to blogs.  While reading the article, I definitely think that using the blogs was much more successful than using Comic Creator.  At least with the blogs, Kristin could monitor the students' work and even put in her own thoughts and feelings or postings about book she's read.  I think that was a very good idea; if students can't get a thought out or don't know what to write, having their teacher write a posting about something they've read, it would allow students to respond to the posting.  This way it keeps the classroom conversations going and enhances what they're reading about or learning about in the classroom setting.

Teaching about language, power, and text

From reading this article, I definitely think the following quote was true: "Classroom literacy practices that involve students in reading supplementary texts, reading multiple texts, reading from a resistant perspective, and producing countertexts all help develop an understanding that text is given meaning, as opposed to containing meaning (pg 487)." I think that all too often, students are hesitant to read books that make them think outside the box or aren't exactly within their comfort zone or aren't part of their interests.  This makes them more leery of reading something in school as part of an ELA class or a history class.  I liked the part of the article that discussed students reading a variety of texts that had the same theme.  This exposes different types of books to students so they can see the differences and similarities of the way the books are written while they have the same themes or topics within them.  Students are able to tell which books they like from doing this kind of reading activity.  "Reading multiple texts encourages students to understand authorship as situated activity.  Students can consider who constructed the text, when, where, why, and the values on which it was based.  By experiencing different treatments of the same topic or event, students begin to recognize that text is not "true" in any absolute sense but a rendering as portrayed by an author (pg 493)."  I think this quote was very important and basically sums up the whole article.  It is very important for students to read multiple text so they can understand different points of views, and compare and contrast books that have the same themes or similar topics.

Post #10- Exploring the Online Reading Comprehension Strategies; Research on Instruction and Assessment; Expanding the New Literacies Conversation

Exploring the Online Reading Comprehension Strategies

With so much information on the Internet and so many web sites to find it on, it's almost no wonder how important the Internet and the many resources have become for teaching and learning.  However, even though a reader may be very "book smart" and proficient in finding information in a text there are, "new types of reading strategies necessary to learn within this interactive, informationally rich, and relatively new text environment (pg 217)."  Even though a student could find important information within an informational or narrative text, using a computer and the Internet to find information is much more complex; students need to know how to navigate a search engine to search for what they need, how to scan through the sites to determine if the information is pertinent, and how to connect the information.  So, naturally, "reading comprehension becomes an important issue to study because new comprehension skills, strategies, and dispositions may be required to generate questions, and to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information on the Internet (pg 217)."  Since children and adults have more difficulty reading informational text than reading narratives, "the processes and strategies readers employ as they interact with informational texts also differ from those they employ while reading narrative texts (pg 217)."  Not only do we now have to take into account the different skills needed to evaluate and analyze the information found in informational texts, we have to employ those skills and more to analyze and decode information found on websites and search engines.  I think this is even more difficult for people to handle, because most of the information found on the Internet is more informational text than narrative, and now people need to incorporate their 21st century skills to find the information within the text and hyperlinks.  When all these skills come into play, I definitely think that readers don't forget one of the most important skills when reading: prior knowledge.  "Readers who draw on prior knowledge of a topic and prior knowledge of text structure are most able to mentally organize and remember the ideas gained from information text (pg 219)."  While the study part of the article was a little confusing, all in all I thought this article was very informative and instructional on how to incorporate the skills necessary for finding information in informational texts and how to apply it to the Internet and websites while using the 21st century skills to navigate through different sites and hypertexts to find what is needed. 

Research on Instruction and Assessment

One thing I agreed with right off the bat with this article is that "proficient readers offline are not always proficient readers online (pg 2)."  I think this could be because a lot of students aren't exposed to computers, much less the Internet, so they don't have the skills necessary to read and look for information as they're surfing the Internet.  While I knew a lot of people have Internet access, the actual statistics that were shown in the article were a little surprising to me.  A lot of classrooms and colleges use the Internet for homework and other assignments, but I had no idea that more than 90% of adolescent students in the US are using the Internet for homework (pg 3).  That showed me that a lot of schools are making the effort to be online and do more with technology, and that can be very useful and helpful for teachers and students alike.  I think a huge part of using the Internet correctly and proficiently, especially for readers, is locating information, as shown on page 4.  "Locating information online is another aspect of online reading comprehension.  It also requires new online reading comprehension skills such as using a search engine, reading search engine results, or quickly reading a web page to locate the best link to the information that is required."  When a reader doesn't know how to narrow down their searches when using a search engine, they won't get the information they're looking for, or will find out more than they need.  When teachers give out an assignment, it seems that a lot of them just assume the students know how to correctly use the Internet to find what they're looking for.  Instead of just assuming, teachers should run through a quick tutorial on how to properly locate information to help the students with their assignments. 

Expanding the New Literacies Conversation

I definitely think the Internet has become a huge highway for communication and information gathering.  Not only can we find information on a subject we're looking for, we can even put in our own information on the Internet on that subject.  While using the Internet and different literacies and technologies in the classroom is useful and effective, I think many schools are hesitant for many reasons.  For one thing, the districts don't have enough money or funding to pay for these new literacies, with many classrooms staying with textbook-based instruction.  Another reason is that the Internet can be seen as a literacy issue, especially when students don't know how to navigate the Internet to look for important information when doing an assignment.  I think that the phrase "new literacies" can be somewhat intimidating to teachers and school officials, but we need to be able to think outside the box and look into what can help our students, since many of them are exposed to new technologies outside of school and can use them quite proficiently.  Since students with cell phones are texting and emailing and surfing the Internet on these different devices, they must have some knowledge about the literacy skills needed to read the information they're receiving.  When we have students using different devices outside of class, I think teachers should learn about the skills the students use to read the information they get from their devices and enhance them in the classroom with the Internet and search engines.  This way, the students will be working on their online reading comprehension skills for when they need to use computers to do assignments for school.