1) Your Conceptual Understanding
When I began this class my understanding of literacy revolved around the ability to read and write. I did have a technology component to my literacy definition. I understood that reading and writing was different on paper versus the web and I thought it was important to teach students about these differences. To help students to learn and develop their literacy skills I believe they have experience writing and reading in many different forms. Students should write on paper but also have an online component, such as a blog to share with their classmates and teachers. Students should also spend time reading different times of text; like books, poems, newspapers, and magazines. In addition, students should learn about how reading on the web is different from reading text on a page. They need to have experience with ads, links, and the interactive aspects of online texts.
Although I understood that there was an online component of literacy my understanding stopped there. From working on this project and interacting with peers’ projects my definition of literacy has expanded to include cultural, emotional, environmental, numeracy, social, visual, political, and geo literacy. I think when most people define literacy it does not include these many different aspects. Instead I think their definitions look similar to my original understanding of literacy. Even if people are literate in one or more of these different aspects I do not think they are aware of it. I believe I have developed my visual literacy but before exploring others’ projects I would have never been able to tell someone else that I was visually literate. Many teachers may be including certain aspects of these different types of literacy into their teaching without even knowing it. Therefore many of us have somewhat or fully developed different literacies without being able to define our skills.
Through exploring and interacting with my own new technology and my peers’ I was able to learn about the many different literacies in a fun and quick manner. I learned that “cultural literacy is the knowledge of history, contributions, and perspectives of different cultural groups, including one's own group, necessary for understanding multiple forms of media,” from Lindsey, Hope, and Dan. I now know that emotional literacy is the ability to recognize, understand, deal with, and express our emotions because of Lauren’s project. I learned that environmental literacy has five components from Sam; awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and action. My own research and project development taught me that numeracy is more than just numbers. It involves the understanding and ability to reason with different mathematical concepts and processes. Lorraine, Lauren, and Jaymie taught me that social literacy involves social skills in social settings to help people communicate and be part of a community. I learned that visual literacy is the ability to understand the meaning and message being portrayed in a visual text from Jessica and Kaitlynn. Finally, I now understand geo literacy to be “the relationship between human (political, cultural, and economic) systems and their interactions with and impact on our environment (water, plant, and animal ecosystems) from Caroline. This project allowed me to learn about many different literacies without having to search and search the internet. The many different groups created interesting projects using all new technologies to me to transfer knowledge about a certain literacy.
This project also developed my digital literacy. I learned a lot about using one new type of technology, Prezi, while getting a glimpse into many other types of technology I could use in my classroom or have my students explore during their learning. Creating a project in a technology I have never used before gave me more confidence in my ability to figure out the internet and in my digital literacy knowledge. I have always consider myself not very skilled when it comes to technology but on this project I learned to navigate Prezi and created a very cool project with little time and no assistance from a Prezi expert. In addition, I navigated many other projects that used technologies I had zero experience with. I learned about the set up of these different technologies all by myself and did not worry about not having anyone to call to help me play around on the sites. The project taught me a lot about literacy and technology while also increasing my online confidence.
2) Classroom Implications
Providing effective literacy instruction no longer just includes reading and writing in the classroom. Teachers need to take some responsibility in teaching their students about the wide variety of literacy skills they will need in the world. Even to just teaching reading and writing must now include paper and online components. Students need to learn how to write and communicate effectively on paper and online. Teachers should offer students to practice their writing in these different forms in such ways as class blogs, pen pals, email, and pencil and paper. In addition, teachers need to take the time to teach students how reading on paper differs from reading online. Just as students must learn the differences and how to read narrative and informational texts, there are differences to how we read online. There are links, videos, and images that are intertwined between text. These interactive components of online text are meant to be used by readers to meet their needs. Students must be able to decipher what is relevant information along with what should be ignored, such as ads. Along with teaching literacy with technology teachers must include literacy learning beyond reading and writing. Teachers need to create activities to develop their students’ cultural, emotional, environmental, numeracy, social, visual, political, and geo literacy. Finally, teachers need to incorporate all of these literacies into all of the subjects, not just language arts. By doing so, teachers will prevent their students from believing that literacy is something that only relates to reading and writing.
To be able to develop their digital literacy student need to know about the internet. They need to understand the safety implications of publishing on the internet and learn about what it means that anyone can put anything on the internet. Teachers need to spend time teaching their students how to search on the internet and how to decipher reliable from unreliable sources of information. Students need to be taught about ads on the internet, links, and videos. It is important that they develop the ability to stay on task and be able to pick out relevant information from such an expansive source of information. If students are learning and creating projects with a new technology they have never used before it is important that they have time to explore and experiment with its different features. The teacher may need to spend time developing their visual literacy of the new technology so that students understand what different symbols and icons mean within the site. Younger students will need more support than older students, and they may need the teacher to walk them through how to create different projects step by step. For older students the teacher should be there for assistance but the students should be given more freedom and flexibility to create individual projects. Teachers need to be aware of the concerns and problems that come up while using the new technologies and take the time to trouble shoot them with the entire class so that everyone expands their digital literacy, not just one student. Support is need for all students when using the internet, but it is needed to a higher degree among younger students.
There are also certain things students need to know and be able to do to develop their numeracy literacy. Students need mathematical know-how, or knowing and understanding the mathematical ideas of their math problems. To develop these skills they need to be taught the mathematical skills and concepts appropriate for their age. The teacher should offer support to their students, provide authentic learning experiences, and incorporate the new math concepts into other subjects. Students also need contextual know-how, or understanding the contextual features and how they relate to the math problem. Teachers can support this know-how in their students by providing context in as many problems as possible and varying the context so that students can see how these changes impact the math problem. By providing a context as often as possible, students will not think of math problems in isolation. Instead, students will see problems as having a context that must be considered to successfully complete the problem. Finally, students need strategic know-how, or having problem solving strategies readily available to use to help them solve the problem. Students need to be able to pick which strategy would be most beneficial for the problem then successfully implement this strategy. Teacher should support students by teaching them many different strategies, offering them many opportunities to practice with the strategies, and the ability to share new strategies with their peers. Along with teachers providing support to their students to help them develop their numeracy literacy parents can provide support to their children. Parents know their children better than any teacher and can offer one on one interaction that most teachers cannot provide for their students in a classroom of twenty or more students. While parents can provide a lot of support for their children it is important that they keep in mind that to stay positive, wrong answers can be beneficial, there are multiple ways to solve a problem, and it’s okay to use a calculator.
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