21st Century Literacy
What is literacy? You answer, “To be able to read and write for school.” Someone else answers, “To know know to think and communicate with others.” A third person says, “I’m not really sure, I know it has to do with reading and writing though.” From discussions and readings from class, literacy has no concrete definition and changes from person to person. For myself, I believe literacy means that someone is able to read, write, listen, comprehend, and analyze all forms of texts.
In today’s society, technology and visuals play a huge part in our daily lives. Everyday new apps, websites, and commercials are created and put out for the world to see and use. However, technology hasn’t been around forever. The internet has been around for less than 40 years, but in that time frame technology has grown and evolved. But has our education system?
In many ways, yes, our education system has changed to help give students personal laptops and give classrooms the ability to write on a huge screen as the board. But as this infographic (below) shows, schools have technology, but since technology is constantly upgrading, the level of technology that students do have isn’t enough.
How are we supposed to prepare students for the future if we don’t even have the supplies to be able to do so? We cannot ignore that fact that we still put students into a “tracking” path based on standardized tests, and expect students to stay focused on a traditional lecture lesson, when their phones, laptops, and televisions are just screaming at them to be used. The video below goes more in depth to how our education system isn’t updating like technology does in today’s society.
From this video I was able to conclude that the American education system has had the same style and methods/ideas about education since it was first created. However, the world has changed but the education system hasn’t caught up with it yet. As educators, we need to help our students think divergently and allow them the proper way to do that. But, that will only help if the whole system gets updated and people’s view of education changed to reflect today’s world.
If technology is such a big part in our students lives, shouldn’t we be incorporating this into our view as educators in order to understand how students learn and are literate in so many different ways? I have come to realize that teachers teach the way they were taught. So if we keep teaching students the traditional way with just textbooks, paper, and lecture, then we will continue to be in this loop of never being able to expand or update our education system. However, our students today need more than just regular, traditional teaching. Students need to be engaged and learn from different sources and in different ways in order to meet the demand of Universities and today’s job market. A graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi, conducted a study to look at how using technology in a math class can affect student motivation and achievement. “In classrooms where students can use technology devices to anonymously answer/ask questions, students gain a deeper understanding of the topic. Also, such devices where students attain more information through research than what the teacher gives provides moments for higher order thinking discussions. Because of the effective usage of these devices, students’ levels of performance are increased on given assessments.”(Watson, 2015, pg. 12) Just by using technology effectively in class for answering questions and conducting research students were able to be more engaged in the lesson, which then improved their abilities on assessments that were given. There is so much information in the world, we shouldn’t be limiting students just to what is said in a text book.
Information can come in all forms. It can be traditional in nature, like a book, textbook, or verbal communication. But information can come from visuals, like graphs and tables, as well as multimodal texts such as videos, comics, and text messages, which are all forms of multimodal texts. In one classroom the teacher took his students to an actual river to discover the answer to the question, “Is the water safe to tube in?”(Edutopia, 2015). He was able to give his students some background knowledge to start their own thinking. But then students were able to conduct their own tests at the river and come to their own conclusions when talking with other groups about what they found as well. So these students were not learning about bacteria and pH levels from a textbook, but were learning by being hands on and discovering these ideas themselves. A quote from Alvermann and Wilson describes the importance to use “Different modes — such as images, gestures, written language, spoken language, and three-dimensional models — each have their own affordances, or potential uses to which they lend themselves” (Alvermann and Wilson, 2011, pg. 118). Thus, students are able to learn from so many different kinds of texts that are available in the world. They are able to learn hands on in nature, or by having a voice when creating a video, and even being able to come to their own historical beliefs when comparing differing parties political cartoons.
Being literate, in the traditional sense, using books and being able to listen to a teacher and take notes is extremely important. However, as our society has developed this growing technology based world, information can come in all forms. Therefore, in order to be literate in the 21st century, there is more than just reading, writing, and comprehending words on a page. The following video helps describe what 21st century literate is.
Thus, being literate in the 21st century has to incorporate all the information that students are being faced with each and every day through their use of technology. Therefore, teachers need to understand that a student may be struggling with a passage in a textbook, but if they watched a video on that same passage then they would be able to understand it in a heartbeat. As educators we should realize that learning and technology is advancing very quickly and we need to make sure our students are prepared for it. Hence, to be literate in the 21st century means to be able to read, write, listen, comprehend, and analyze all forms of texts, such as print text, visuals, and multimodal texts, in order to enhance critical skills and develop and enhance learning in different ways.
Sources
Alvermann, Donna E. and Wilson, Amy Alexandra(2011) ‘Comprehension Strategy Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science’, Theory into Practice, 50: 2,116–124
Edutopia. (2015, August 18). Inquiry-Based Learning in the Science Classroom. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https://youtu.be/BbqPaKTsDIU
Firn, G., Dr. (2016, February 24). Educational Technology Grants for Teachers. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from http://www.dreambox.com/blog/technology-grants-for-teachers-for-2016
Reading Rockets. (2016, June 23). Defining 21st century literacy. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https://youtu.be/byzoDZAdzmU
Robinson, K., Sir. (2010, October 14). RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U
Watson, Cononiah Latrece, “The Use of Technology in Secondary Mathematics Classrooms: The Case of One School District” (2015). Master’s Theses. 111. https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/111
