At the beginning of this class, I had many questions about what it means to be literate. I really did not have any firm idea of the definition of literacy, except to mention that it was a broad one. For example, the definition I first cited as encompassing literacy was "the ability to adequately use, produce, communicate, and interpret the written word in all of its forms." Although I think this is a fairly good definition of literacy, I now know that literacy encompasses a multitude of other areas of our lives outside of the written word. For example, from my specific New Literacies Project, I know that understanding culture is a type of literacy. Additionally, being able to adequately use technology is a form of literacy too. As confusing as it sounds then, my idea and definition of literacy has become more exact as it has broadened. Literacy is an extremely dynamic and abstract concept. My official definition, as of now, for literacy is the various ranges and strengths of abilities and understandings in any subject. I now understand literacy to be a range of abilities from the Tompkins readings, because within those pages, specifically on page 91, Tompkins discusses individual traits that characterize the different stages of literacy from emergent to proficient. Furthermore, in class discussions, especially during out first discussion of the meaning of literacy, my idea of literacy was expanded to encompass the various means of communication for people who are unable to communicate in mainstream ways, such as those with visual or audio impairments.
Finally, the last majorly impacting reading for my idea of literacy was the Culligan online article. Within this article, Culligan mentioned how today technology is continually advancing and changing. This, along with my actual work on the New Literacies project enlightened me to the dynamic nature of literacy, especially new literacies like technological literacy. I noticed the need to develop literacy in technology while I was working on my project. When you take into account all of the various vocabulary such as .jpeg, .doc, and power point, along with techniques such as uploading files, it is no wonder that technology is considered a form of literacy. On a final note, of my exploration of my New Literacy project, I noticed how literacy is not only dynamic across time, but also, across culture. As I was trying to pull resources together to define mainstream cultural literacy in the United States, I realized how many different literacies one would need to master for other subcultures, such as big city versus rural district, or ethnic district versus Caucasian.
On a similar note, during my first post about the definition of literacy, I posed a question asking if it was possible to call cultures that didn't have the written word illiterate. I now believe that those cultures have their own respective forms of literacy that they are proficient in which we would not be proficient in. For example, some of those cultures without the written word know how to effectively hunt their surrounding wildlife, herd cattle, and the culture ins and outs of trading with surrounding tribes. These are aspects of environment, cultural, and social literacy that I would be deemed as illiterate in, within these cultures. So even though some may say that these distant cultures are illiterate by our US definition of literacy, we must also be able to concede that we are illiterate in their cultural, environmental, and social literacy as well, unless we have spent some time to live among these people.
Therefore, as future educators, we must be willing not only to educate our students on the various dynamic forms of literacy, but also, we must be willing to become literate ourselves within the needs of our students. For example, one could easily argue that getting to know the personalities and interactions of the students inside and outside of the classroom is an extremely dynamic form of literacy. Teachers must become proficient in understanding their students' needs and levels of ability as soon as possible.
Additionally, as teachers are becoming more literate by getting to know their students, they must also be able to provide effective literacy instruction to diverse learners. Effective literacy instructions is one that is differentiated to suite the needs of students of differing abilities and backgrounds, while also focusing on the acquisition of literacy as outlined by Cambourne. Cambourne mentions that instruction should, among other ideas, be engaging and allow students time to employ what they have learned. Also an example of differentiating for different cultures of our students includes taking into account their "funds of knowledge," as detailed in our math section's reading of Rosebery. The article discusses taking students' prior knowledge and activating it in a meaningful way in the classroom. This includes choosing literature for the students to read that is relevant. For example, in an urban classroom, it would be highly irrelevant to choose a book such as Dick and Jane to read to the students.
In order to teach my technological literacy of the website I used in an effective way, the students would first need a foundation in reading, writing, communicating, and typing. A GLCE that I found would be important while discussing websites would be within the vocabulary section R.WS.04.07, which states “in context, determine the meaning of words and phrases including similes, metaphors, content vocabulary, and literary terms using strategies and resources including context clues, semantic feature analysis, and a thesaurus.” Therefore, a good introduction to websites, for my class, would be to create a website that includes ways for children to access vocabulary necessary to make a website or general vocabulary necessary to know from lessons. In essence, the website would be an interactive word wall for students. This way, when we progress into students making their own websites, via Google sites, later in the year, they would already be familiar with the basic vocabulary we would use to construct the website. Additionally, the students would need to work on their keyboarding proficiency in order to construct the website in a somewhat efficient time. I was surprised that I did not find a specific ELA GLEC that would cover this need to teach typing. Therefore, in order to do this, I would create a keyboarding center in my classroom, where students could play games like “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing” or “Mario Teaches Typing” to better their skills.
Along with using the website to help students create their own websites, I could also use websites throughout the year as a way for my children to find valuable resources about lessons we are doing or as a way for parents to access what is going on in the class. This would create a strong community of learners within my classroom, and simultaneously make instruction have a stronger foundation with parental involvement. Furthermore, the website I constructed, in my project, can be used to help immigrant families, and children, become accustomed to mainstream culture, and thus improve their own cultural literacy. By using websites to enhance instruction and to add another technological literacy to my students’ understanding, I would also be engaging a variety of learners on a whole new level of literacy. This would help students who learn visually and kinesthetically, because they could both see and interact with the screen. Also, it would help students from a variety of backgrounds, because it would be easy to cater the content we are learning for my own student population. Finally, it would give students the chance to employ their own reading and writing skills by not only accessing the websites I would create for my students, but also, allowing them to go to other websites that stress literacy, which we talked about in class, such as Starfall.com. I have seen this interaction with websites in my ESL placement, especially with Starfall.com, but unfortunately, I have not seen my CT use websites within my TE 402 placement. I think it would greatly benefit those students reading literacy and technological literacy especially since they have the technology available within the classroom. In conclusion, using websites throughout my curriculum, correctly, would be a way to promote effective literacy instruction to diverse learners in my classroom.
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I thought you comment about whether or not we say cultures without written word are illiterate was very interesting. To many, they probably would consider these cultures illiterate, however like you said, they know how to do many things that we do not. I think that cultures adapt to their needs, and thus, these cultures need people who can herd cattle, hunt, etc. However, in the United States, the idea of literacy is extremely important. To be a contributing citizen to society, one must be literate, because most jobs require proficiency in reading, typing, writing, etc. Therefore, I believe that literacy has different definitions for each culture, though some may be similar, when their cultures are alike.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that while some cultures may not have written word, they still have communication. Many people believe that literacy only entails reading and writing (that's what I thought at the beginning of the semester), however communication plays a huge role in literacy. Thus, we cannot say a culture is illiterate just because they do not have written word.