While reading the chapter on
new literacies, the words that kept popping into my head was "out with the old
and in with the new" and just how different people are from one another. In
terms of the primary and secondary discourses, each person has a different
discourse from another person. We are all unique and learn in different ways.
As educators, that is an area that we need to work on. All students do not
learn in the same way and each student brings their own story to the classroom.
I like that we are all different, it provides a unique challenge for the
teacher. Technology is now causing us to be even more flexible and open to
change in the classroom. The change from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 in a matter of
years is amazing. Yet, why are we surprised about technological changes
anymore. This is what we have become accustomed with in our lifetime. I enjoyed
the quote, "The significance of the new technical stuff has mainly to do
with how it enables people to build and participate in literacy practices that
involve different kinds of values, sensibilities, norms and procedures and so
on from those that characterize conventional literacies." We
must be receptive to these new ideas and not get stuck in a pattern or routine.
I like that technical “stuff” is providing new literacy practices that can be implemented
in an everyday classroom and breaks the chains of the past linear set of instruction.
I agree that we must be receptive to these new ideas about literacy andI certainly agree about not getting stuck in a routine but could we be trying to change too much too quickly? I know our era of students is becoming more and more technology advanced but could it be too much?
ReplyDeleteI think another important point between old and new is that neither is really independent of the other. Sure, Twitter and Facebook are new platforms, but you still need some good old fashioned print literacy to understand them. There are new affordances of what you can do with language, images, links, etc. but there is still a thread of comprehensibility running through texts (sometimes easier to see, sometimes very difficult).
ReplyDeleteI think we need to attend to these changes to some degree, to stay relevant and also prepare students for this world. How much we need to extend ourselves is a big question. Technology and literacy seems to be changing exponentially fast. Can schools ever keep up? Who can?