Changing Our Minds

What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? By literate, I do not mean being able to simply read and write. In the 21st century, literacy is so much more than that. There is traditional text literacy, non-traditional literacy, and digital literacy. For example, being literate on Facebook means that you understand the social norms associated with that application. Commenting on someone’s status that you do not know may not be considered acceptable. Meadow Sherrill Graham and Shalla Benson state, “As text has increasingly been defined in non-print forms (eg., film, photography, websites), multiliteracies is an effort to shift conversations about literacy instruction from thinking about literacy as a static body of knowledge to thinking about literacy as a process of active critical thinking” (Benson & Meadow 93). To be literate in the 21st century means having the ability to communicate and receive oral, digital, written, and/or non-traditional text and to be able to understand and interpret what you believe its meaning, or what it is trying to communicate is.
To understand what literacy is, you must first understand what a text is, because that is what we read or view to understand what is being communicated. Traditionally, we think of text as a printed book with words, but that does not define what a text is. Sure, a text can be traditional, but it can also be things people often do not think of. Videos and pictures can be texts because they are communicating a message to its audience. Anything communicating a message can be a text. For example, if there are stickers on my laptop of dogs, one can naturally assume that I am a dog person. These stickers convey a message about who I am as a person.
With the rapid growth in technology, students today have digital affordances that previous generations did not have. With these affordances, comes a change in literacy. According to The National Center for Education Statistics, “In 2015, 94 percent of children ages 3 to 18 had a computer at home and 61 percent of children ages 3 to 18 had internet access at home” (NCFES). In 2018, those numbers have and are continuing to rise. Technology and the internet is readily available for most students in schools and at home. Smartphones have increased access to the internet for everyone. Since technology is available in schools, it can and should be used to help students gain information. For example, many schools are equipped with Google Suites, which includes Google Docs, Slides, Calendar, and Gmail. These tools can allow students to reach teachers, other students, and professionals quickly and easily. Google Classroom allows students and teachers to have information presented in an organized way that is easily acceptable. Having a calendar with assignments available online can offer easy access to keeping up with when assignments are due. Being able to understand and use these tools are a form of literacy known as Digital Literacy. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) states that “In the 21st century, a literate person possesses a wide range of abilities and competencies–in all, many new literacies. From reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms, these literacies are multiple, dynamic and malleable” (Bridge).
With digital literacy comes affinity spaces. Affinity spaces are spaces where students learn informally. They can be online or physical spaces. For example, Jen Scott Curwood took a look at The Hunger Games and online affinity spaces in her article, “The Hunger Games: Literature, Literacy, and Online Affinity Spaces”. She followed a young boy, Jack, who was a huge fan of the series. She tracked his experiences in three online portals. They were Mockingjay, Panem October, and Panemonium. Here there were blogs, podcasts, and other infromal ways of writing and communication. She came up with three principles that she believes teachers should integrate into their classrooms along with infinity spaces. They were Online affinity spaces offer multiple ways in which young people can engage with literature. Young people value text selection and multi-genre responses to literature. Media paratexts, or parallel texts, extend and enhance young adults’ experience with literature” (Curwood 422). Affinity spaces are great ways of informal learning for students. They help students enhance literacy skills and communication skills. This informal text and literacy can greatly improve how we see literature.
Every student has a different background culturally, socially, and economically. These experiences affect how a student interprets a text they are faced with. For example, a student from an upper-class family with both parents at home may read a text about a broken family differently than a student from a one-parent household would.
Texts can be multimodal, meaning that they can come from two modes of communication. For example, a video can have pictures, music, and words. This means that the video is using three mediums to communicate a message to its audience. Michèle Anstey and Geoff Bull state in “Helping Teachers to Explore Multimodal Text,” that a miultimodal text combines two or more semiotic systems. They are “linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial” (Antsey, Bull).
So, today with the expansion of technology should come the expansion of what it means to be literate. Texts are no longer just printed books. They can be anything that communicates a message. Digital literacy, affinity spaces, and multi-modal texts are tools that are now easily available and should be used when teaching literacy. Every student will have a different interpretation of texts, just like every student has a different answer to questions. This is not only okay, but it should be encouraged because it offers room for growth for both students and teachers. Literacy in the 21st century has changed from previous generations and will continue to change as improvements progress. Technology is our future and so are our students so why shouldn’t we take advantage of these tools and texts available to us to extend our minds and our students minds to improve our future?

Knowledge is like a tree. Let it grow and take root through the minds of our future generations.

References

Bridge, C.(2018). Redefining literacy in the 21st Century. Retrieved from http://www.ourkids.net/school/redefining-literacy-new-literacies-21st-century-skills-1119

Curwood, J. (2013). The Hunger Games: Literature, Literacy, and Online Affinity Spaces. Language Arts, 90(6), 417–427. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24575002

Graham, M., & Benson, S. (2010). A Springboard Rather Than a Bridge: Diving into Multimodal Literacy. The English Journal,100(2), 93–97. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25790041

National Center for Education Statistics: Fast Facts: Computer and Internet Use. (2018). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=46

Young, A. (2014, September 04). Alison’s Reflective Journal. Retrieved from http://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/alisonyoung/2014/09/05/the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian-in-practice-with-regard-to-the-convergence-of-literacies-in-the-21st-century-etl401-blog-task-2/