New Literacies Summary: Patricia D., Kelly D, Asheley, and Emily

Patricia D's Summary:

The YouTube video on Web 2.0 was profound because now I realize that we are the web because we are all communicating and collaborating on the internet. These new ways to communicate are our new literacies, and we have created a new language and set of skills and strategies. In order to function in this new form, we need to be open to new and exciting ways to connect with our friends, families, colleagues, students, and others in the world community.

The article touched on the social forces that effect literacy such as our global economy, the internet, and competition for achievement. Government policy is attempting to prepare for the challenges that we are facing in the world community, and they are raising the literacy standards in order to compete in the world economy. With all of these changes, the definition of literacy needs to be changed to include technology.

I enjoyed the section that discussed the social learning aspects of new literacies. Students can draw on their strengths to help each other with technology to research and create their projects. This will have an impact on learning theories and classroom situations. The web is a collaborative entity, and education will need to be seen as a more collaborative in nature. We need to be open to new ways of educating our students as technology changes and transforms the way we communicate in an ever changing world.

Kelly D's Summary

A good example of new literacies is our graduate class because we communicate with each other through posting, reading, and responding to one another's blog posts. Technology and new literacies are impacting literature instruction in classrooms from preschool through graduate school. We can't continue to teach reading how it's been taught in the past decade if we want our students to succeed in our technologically-advancing world. Even NCLB has an entire section devoted to technology, demanding that all students will be technologically literate by the end of the 8th grade, regardless of their race, gender, etc. It will be nearly impossible to acquire a job if you aren't computer and technologically literate--it's become a necessity to communicate.

For the most part, Kelly thinks technology is great. She can't imagine not having a computer with Internet access at my fingertips. However, after teaching 8th grade language arts, she has seen some downfalls of technology such as many of her students have become grammatically lazy. It worries her that we will have a society that doesn't know how to write properly because they rely so heavily on slang language.

Asheley's Summary:

She believes that we need to make sure that are children are prepared to interact using new technologies especially in the world today with the popularity of the internet. There is a huge gap between the wealthy and poor's access to technology. She feels that every classroom should have at least one computer with Internet access. The article mentioned that schools without technology are only "partially literate". We need to prepare our youth to have skills in "new" literacies so that they can enter the working world and be successful. There was a consensus from the blog posts that a student-center social learning environment was a good environment that was conducive students learning from each other.

Teachers need to have continuous training to keep up with the changes in technology. She is an avid reader and hopes that authentic literature never goes out of style and that children will always enjoy a really good book. I couldn't agree more with her.