Since taking this class, my conceptual understanding of literacy has not changed; it has only reaffirmed what I have already learned from previous classes. The entire time I have spent in college I have learned over and over again that literacy has evolved from learning to read and write to learning how to use technology, books, writing, etc, to get information, as well as learning how to read and write in today’s standards of a fast paced technological world. I already knew that literacy represents a broad range of information and through this project I was able to actually see this spectrum in action.
My research on German culture has really allowed me to see how much garbage and crap there is on the Internet that can sway children and adults in the wrong direction, potentially misleading them on the subject at hand. The new literacies project has really allowed me to take a good look at this and really opened my eyes to this world of wrong information. Children and students are going to need to know how to stay away from websites that are misleading and they desperately need someone to show them what to look for in a website that will give them valid information. This is extremely different than more traditional “book” literacies because often time’s libraries do not carry books with misleading information. I can remember being a young child, going into the library to check out a book for a research topic, and never thinking twice if the information was wrong. With the new literacies available today, children need to be aware that websites will sometimes give faulty information.
At the beginning of the class when we were asked to make a concept map on “literacy”, nowhere on my map did I write “integrating technology”. Looking back at this, I am actually extremely surprised that I did not write it down because I use technology in every single one of my college level courses. I believe the reason technology did not cross my mind was because I was thinking back to when I learned how to read and write and what I used and what the teachers provided to us in order to learn “literacy” material. In my early elementary days, we didn’t use the same technology that is available for elementary kids today. Since the beginning of the semester I have added technology to my concept map, which I intend to use in my classroom one day to help my own students learn. They already use technology for the majority of their time outside of class, why not integrate it to help them learn.
Teachers often will only immerse their children to the “standard” technology such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint, when in reality there is so much more on the web that children can use to write papers and make presentations. Through the new literacy project I myself was able to expand my technology horizon and learn a new presentation technology, Prezi. This is an online tool that is very similar to PowerPoint. Students need to be given various options to explore other technologies when they are producing final drafts of papers, books, and presentations, and one way to do this is to introduce them to online resources, such as Prezi.
Personally I believe that a project like this, or very similar to this, would be extremely beneficial to an entire class of elementary kids anywhere between third and fifth grade. I think that at this age, children are old enough to understand how to use technology in order to get a thought across and even to use technology to teach about a certain topic. Allowing the children to explore a new technology will help them out in the future, as well as their classmates because they are also getting exposed to the technology when the students present theirs at the end of the project. I know that my fourth grade students would love a project like this when teaching the class about their Saints for their Saint project that is done at the beginning of the school year. They could use digital storytelling, Prezi, and even a collage to teach their classmates about their Saint instead of simply standing in front of the class with one or two props and reciting information back to their peers. The students already know how to read, write, speak in front of their classmates, and listen to others, this would just be one more opportunity for them to refine and practice those skills. In order to make their Saint project an entire class lesson though, I could instruct them on how to use one new technology found on the internet for free and instruct them on how to correctly use the technology to its’ full potential. That way I could make an entire lesson out of the project instead of simply saying “Find a new technology and use that to teach us about your Saint.”
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