What does it Mean to be Literate in the 21st Century?
When we look around us, there is technology absolutely everywhere. People can do more now on a small device called a cellphone than we ever imagined just 20 years ago. Educators and students have access to an incredible amount of resources and platforms to help us learn, read, and understand various about some of the most fascinating or some most meaningless information. It is totally up to us what we do with the technology. This day in age, there are children glued to their cellphones and it would be a shame if we did not use that to our advantage as educators. As intimidating as it might be, we must understand that students are different than they used to be and that means they learn better in different ways than they used to. The definition of “literate” has changed and it is time for us to change alongside it. Literate no longer means your basic reading and writing, but it means transforming all sorts of texts and platforms to our understanding along with the traditional reading and writing.
Yes, the definition has in fact changed, but what exactly does that look like and how do attain it? For one thing, a successful and literate classroom is digitally literate. “Sure, reading and writing are still very much at the heart of digital literacy. But given the new and ever-changing ways we use technology to receive and communicate information, digital literacy also encompasses a broader range of skills — everything from reading on a Kindle to gauging the validity of a website or creating and sharing YouTube videos” (Heiten, 2016). Heiten expresses the differences here between just reading articles online or typing papers and being digitally literate. With all of the databases that we have access to, we also have access to a ridiculous amount of sources and we must know how to utilize and interpret them. Students need to attain an awareness of who writes the sources and what the author’s intention may be for someone to read it. By addressing this information, students can identify the point of view and get a sense of perspective. They will see that there are biases and that just because something is published and stated by a well-known author or journalist, that does not mean it is 100% true. They will also be able to differentiate between reliable sources and ones that come from the average person sharing their opinions on Wikipedia or wherever. It is important for students to understand that history is written by the victors and different people have different agendas that they want people to believe and develop. Not only do students need to learn how to evaluate and analyze their resources, but they also need to know how to use them.
“If our children are to be able to navigate their lives through this multi-media culture, they need to be fluent in “reading” and “writing” the language of images and sounds just as we also teach them to “read” and “write” the language of printed communications” (CML). This quote describes the importance nowadays of creating a classroom with effective technology and how we, as teachers, need to be the ones that help students become more accustomed to technology use. If students cannot work with technology that they will be using for the rest of their life, then are they really prepared for the real world? Diversity of technology has shown itself to be a very effective teaching method as it appeals to numerous senses and helps students to be more engaged often times. Videos and other sorts of creative media methods are typically a lot more entertaining for the students and the students are used to technology at this point. As seen in Warner chapter four, twitter is used as a platform for students to help voice their opinion and be part of the discussion. It is cool interactive way for students to learn as they are forced to evaluate and analyze a scenario so that they may give their own spin on it. As we saw with Alvermann and Wilson, multimodality and a variety of texts helps students to learn better whether it is with images, gestures, dialogue, writing, models, etc… A variety of associated texts ultimately are very effective for students to take in a better understanding.
A multi-modal approach shows that many forms of teaching are involved in meaning-making and the language aspect of it really is not essential to students learning, even though that is what we have believed about literacy for a very long time (Albers & Harste, 2007). We saw with the videos of the classroom experiments that actually going to the river to collect data was a super helpful event for students. Students examined scientific data and evaluated how it was utilized in the field of science and that helped them to understand how certain things work. Actually reading and writing normal print was not essential to their learning process. I believe that if we want to be effective teachers, we must absorb what the changing times have to offer and adjust to the changes rather than turning away in fear. We must face the facts that the more modes of instruction that a student has, the higher chance they have to take it in. It also is better at reaching more students as each student learns in different ways and some appeal to one method while another may appeal to a different one. As the definition of literate changes, we must conform to the changes and help prepare students for a world that is very different than the world we grew up learning in.
Resources:
Albers, P., & Harste, J.C. (2007). The arts, new literacies, and multimodality. English Journal, 40(1), 6–20.
Alvermann, Donna E. and Wilson. Amy Alexandra (2011). “Comprehension Strategy Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science”, Theory Into Practice, 50: 2, 116–124.
CML. (2018). Literacy for the 21st Century: The Hope and the Promise. Retrieved from www.medialit.org.
Heiten, L. (2016, November 8). What is Digital Literacy?. Retrieved from www.edweek.org.
