How Are New Technologies Changing Literacy?

As I thought about this reading on "new literacies" & how technology is impacting education, my 1st thought was this graduate class: the majority of our class is done online thru our blogs. We communicate with each other thru posting, reading & responding to one anothers blog posts. Would this same method of instruction & communicating have been used 10, even 5 years ago? That's proof right there of how big a role technology is playing on society- as educators, we have to keep up to date with the rapid changing technological growth. Technology & new literacies are impacting literature instruction in classrooms from preschool through graduate school.

Quoting the "Toward a Theory of New Literacies" article, "Traditional definitions of literacy and literacy instruction will be insufficient if we seek to provide students with the futures they deserve." (pg 1571). As scary as this sounds to me, it's so true! We can't continue to teach reading instruction how it's been taught the past decade if we want our students to succeed in our technologically advancing world. We have to update our practices to fit with society & how people have come to communicate- via the Internet, for example.

Language Arts curriculums are going to need to broaden & include objectives such as knowing how to locate useful information on the Internet, how to evaluate search engine results, how to correctly draft an email message. Also, comprehension takes on a deeper meaning now that the Internet is included. Basically, comprehension has always meant being able to construct meaning from text. It now includes being technologically savvy.

An interesting fact I read in the article that I didn't know before is that 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. While I'm not a fan of NCLB, I do agree with this goal. I'm predicting that in a few years, it will be nearly impossible to acquire a job if you aren't computer & technologically literate- it's become a necessity to communicate.

Another point I found very true is that in some instances, students may actually be more literate than the teacher, in terms of technology. As rapid as these advances are, children seem to pick up on it much quicker than most adults do. Therefore, I think its ESSENTIAL that districts provide professional development on technology and new literacies so teachers can be up-to-date as much as possible.

For the most part, I think technology is great. I can't imagine not having a computer with Internet access at my fingertips. My mom constantly reminds me of "the good old days" when she had to use the old fashioned encyclopedias to do research papers & that I shouldn't take the Internet for granted! However, after teaching 8th grade language arts, I see some downfalls of technology, too. Many of my students have become grammatically lazy, not capitalizing the beginning of a sentence, not using punctuation, etc. I could be wrong, but I blame text messaging & instant messenger. Slang & "quick" improper language is used with this technology, which is fine. What's not fine is that language translating over to their school work. It worries me that it becomes so natural for these kids to write this way.....we can't have a society that doesn't know how to write properly because they rely so heavily on slang language.

If we can find a happy medium, and if educators can get the proper updates they need, technology will serve as an excellent tool in educating our youth.