Communication and human relations are at the core of the human experience. Although it's common to think of communication as primarily verbal, one must not go far into one’s day to find the incredible amount of written communication we engage in with one another. Even the concepts, teachings, and support of this course are primarily conveyed through written communication. Lankshear and Knobel (2003) refer to this in their book New Literacies:Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning, when they explain that texts are thus “part of innumerable everyday...practices” (p. 8). This idea seems pretty straightforward until one begins to look at the types of texts we encounter on every turn. Common historical texts of newspapers and paper mail have been replaced by inboxes, blogs, phone screens, and google searches (to name just a few). Information in all its abundance is freely given and freely accessed and influences not only our communications but our choices and beliefs. Thus, the ever changing nature of the texts we encounter can pose a problem because the messages may not change but the way we present them does, almost on a daily basis it seems. And this change has implications for our world personally, publically, and more specifically for the world of education.
There were two ideas that struck me the most throughout the readings. The first being how as educators we accept (and sometimes reject) such rapid change in the forms of the “texts” and the effect this has on our students. The second being how the fact that our students have grown up in this age of such rapid change and technological immersion impacts the demands from education- and how that affects us as educators. One quote from Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia in the 1600’s, spoke of his gratitude that there was “no free schools nor printing” because of the havoc learning had had on the society at large--which he thought was the cause of heresy, disobedience, and sects in the world (Leu et al., 2004, p. 1574) I thought how ridiculous this sounded when I read it but it wasn’t until I read something else seemingly unrelated that I made the connection to new literacies. I spent the weekend out of town with a friend. For entertainment we read aloud to each other historical essays about women. These were written satirically to show the changing view of women throughout the ages. One essayist from the 1800’s spoke of women’s new found rights and voice as the downfall of society and viewed the changes in gender roles that his generation was experiencing as nothing but negative. Again, this was ridiculous to hear. But then I thought about technology and the youth of today. I’ve been present for more than one discussion among educators bemoaning the downfalls of technology on the students of today and finding great distrust for and annoyance with their students’ love of technology. Personally, having just joined the technological age with my first smartphone, I have been guilty of being a naysayer and declaring those technologies as unnecessary or a waste of time. It hasn’t been until recent years that I have begun to see the great academic value of these advances and seen them as tools in literacy evolvements. Just as the Governor of the 1600’s thought books and printing were bad for society, and the essayist of the 1800’s saw the changes in women’s rights as destructive, are we at fault of viewing the technologies of today negatively because they are new, unfamiliar, and threatening to our comfort and common practices in education? And does our resistance to such possible new literacies hinder our ability to fully engage the students we teach whose comfort with these types of texts is already alive and well? As distracting and unrelated as texting, twitter, and Google can be for us as educators, properly harnessed these tools provide unlimited opportunities for learning and exploration and we will have to spend no time to convince our students that it is something they will want to do. They have already bought into technology. Sometimes I feel like they are waiting on us to catch up. One of our articles used the word “recruit” as a way to describe what we need to learn to do as educators, seeing the “interests, intentions, commitments, and purposes students bring to learning” as valid and important (New London Group, 1996, p. 72).
On the flip side of this idea that our acceptance or rejection of new literacies has an affect on our students, the fact that our students have already accepted them and are deep into the world of technology also affects us as educators. The term “lifeworlds” was used multiple times in these readings as referring to the wide variety of experiences and realities for the people we interact with each day (New London Group, 1996, p. 65). In many cases the “lifeworlds” our students come from are very different than ours. There is an already existent gap between us that there is a low probability of closing completely. Technology is one culprit of this gap and distance between lifeworlds. But unlike issues of race, gender, cultural heritage and background, technology can be learned and shared as a bridge between all these differences if we let it. But this calls on us to stand up to that challenge as educators and even reach out to our students, viewing them also as teachers. Historically the role of student and teacher has been very clearly defined and “teacher” has been valued as an almost sacred, unquestionable role belonging only to the person in the position of authority and power. With the changing pedagogies and new literacies of today we also have to question these roles. Although I am in no way advocating for a form of learning where there are no defined teachers or students and no standards by which to guide those interactions. However, I do believe that as students begin taking on more and more responsibility for accessing information, and the access is so freely given to them, we are seeing students excelling in an environment of learning that is not all dependant on a teacher pouring out knowledge and a student absorbing it. Discussion was given of “overt instruction,” which is not “direct transmission” of information but rather a scaffolding that “focus[es] the learner on important features” (Cope & Klantzis, 2000, p. 33). As we provide our students with guidance and practice, they are given the opportunity to take that knowledge and experience to any limits, only barred by their imaginations. A perfect example of this was given in one of our readings of the student who could creatively use one technology to transform another technology and uniquely craft text and a message to fit their needs- far outside of the original envisioned uses of those new literacies (Leu et al., 2004, 1592) Long gone are the days where we view students as empty buckets into which it is our job to pour learning. “Our job is not to produce docile, compliant workers” (New London Group, 1962, p. 67), but rather to encourage innovation, creativity, self sufficiency, and the skill sets to access information with which meaning can be made for the individuals and for our society at large. As educators this will also call on us to be innovative, creative, and brave as we dive in after our students to new levels of new literacies of the 21st century.
Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J. et al. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing
social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.
futures. New York: Routlege.
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2011). New literacies: Everyday practices and social learning.
Berkshire, England: Open University Press.
Leu, D. J., Kinzer, C. K., Coiro, J. L,, & Cammack, D. W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies
emerging from the internet and other information and communication technologies. In Ruddell, R. B., & Unrau, N. J. (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 1570-1613). Newark: International Reading Association, Inc.
