Literacy in the 21st Century
The term, literacy, can often be difficult to define. It’s often been used as a word that’s associated with being able to read and write. What most people seem to do is correlate these abilities with writing on notebook paper with a pen or pencil or opening up a textbook or some other book for leisure and being able to comprehend what the author is trying to say. In today’s era, however, literacy has expanded and has breached far beyond simply reading books and writing on paper. The growth of technology has played a key role into the expansion of literacy by the many opportunities it gives the world by presenting thousands of texts every day. Being literate in the 21st century is being able to interpret and comprehend various texts such as various visuals, audios, and affinity spaces in order to gain knowledge and apply it to the modern real world.
Kids, teenagers, and adults are constantly on devices at any point of every given day. Whether it’s phones, iPads, laptops, or other tablets, people are always on them. Though many argue that spending hours at a time on specific devices isn’t good for one mentally or socially, there are actually some benefits to using technological devices. People often associate reading with opening up a book and sitting down and flipping through it’s pages hours at a time, but what many don’t realize is that we’re constantly reading all the time. Being on tablets requires a lot of reading every day. Just like when reading a regular book, people are learning new information all the time just by spending time on their phones. It could be something simple as finding out your great aunt’s birthday is today by receiving a notification on Facebook or reading an article about hairbrushes from a link on Instagram. No matter how pointless the information might seem that individuals are getting, people are still receiving knowledge about various things. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people are getting more intelligent the longer they stay on their devices, but rather proves that literacy is being able to comprehend and interpret the things presented to people on their devices. According to the Center for Media Literacy, media today provides limitless sources for individuals to view and acquire any skill by comprehending whichever text they are looking at (2018, p. 1). This includes watching videos, listening to audio recordings, and looking at pictures. If one is able to learn, comprehend, and interpret any text (which can easily be a moving visual) one can find themselves obtaining literacy.
In “Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones” by Julie Warner, the author explains various ways on how a young adult can link their identity to something like commercial discourses. The author explains, “As youth actively engage with, rework, and appropriate ideological messages in texts, particularly within processes that are characterized by their rapidity (curation, microblogging, or social photosharing) this need for critical literacies become apparent” (Warner, 2017, p. 153). Not only does Warner describe how young adults and kids communicate with things such as memes and other sources of comedy, she makes it clear that it’s almost necessary for youth culture to understand these things because it helps their critical comprehension and has become a norm for communication. If one did not understand something that is related to a meme, one could find themselves unable to understand other things that’s been developed in specific cultures.
The rise of affinity spaces has also increased in today’s society which include Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Social media is something people use daily in order to share their thoughts and express themselves. It’s also a way for young people to relate to other young people. For example, in the article, “The Hunger Games: Literature, Literacy, and Online Affinity Spaces” the author, Jen Scott Curwood states, “Young adults on the affinity space Mockingly.net offered a number of possible activities that teachers could use in conjunction with this trilogy” (Curwood, 2013, p. 423). Teens who shared similar interests in the best selling trilogy had found a place where they could express their love for Suzanne Collins’ books but also learn a great deal about theme, characters, and plot by expressing interpretations of the text with each other. This also allowed students to inform teachers how they could better learn in the classroom by giving examples of what they could do to understand literary devices in the books. Despite teachers often viewing affinity spaces as a negative thing to bring into the classroom since they pertain mainly to social media, Curwood’s article proves the benefits of having these spaces by allowing kids to express themselves and share thoughts with one another, which allowed them to learn new perspectives directed toward the young adult trilogy. Kolleen Bouchane, a a poverty and development policy and advocacy expert, argues that finances are incredibly low in terms of giving money to schools and therefore could be another result why students don’t have technology in the classroom (2017, p. 1). Technology is becoming a necessity and teachers and administrators should be working toward putting technology more in the classroom to help students become more modern day literate.
It can be argued that literacy in the 21st century can be relatively more easy to comprehend and obtain due to how much media is provided today that can help various people learn in a multitude of ways. A woman associated with Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania named Keri Straub discusses in her article about how the school emphasizes how important literacy is in the classroom and the many different ways that low income students can use it in order to obtain key knowledge (2018, p. 1). The school therefore raises money in support of 21st century literacy tools in order to better there students by surrounding them with their culture so they can also learn the necessary skills that society has to offer and keep them up to date so that they may be literate in their culture.
References
Bouchane, K. (2018). What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century?. [online] Aljazeera.com. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/literate-21st-century-170110100302791.html.
Curwood, J. (2013). The Hunger Games: Literature, literary, and online affinity spaces. National Council of English Teachers, 90(6), 417–427.
Medialit.org. (2018). [online] Available at: http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/literacy-21st-century-hope-and-promise.
Straub, K. (2018). Reading Programs for All Grade Levels Emphasize Importance of 21st Century Literacy Skills. [online] PRWeb. Available at: https://www.prweb.com/releases/reading_programs_for_all_grade_levels_emphasize_importance_of_21st_century_literacy_skills/prweb15771926.htm.
Warner, J. (2017). Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies, vol. 79, 107–127.
