New Literacy Project

My conceptual understanding of literacy has changed very much since the beginning of this class. Before learning about all of the new literacies I thought literacy was only about reading and writing. My views began to change when we first had to find definitions of literacy and post them to the Wiki. Just looking at all of the different ideas that were presented in these definitions made me start to broaden my outlook on what literacy may encompass. My old view of literacy was a very traditional one and I think that way of looking at things is very out dated. Throughout my schooling as MSU I have heard the phrase of “21^st century learners” many times and I think comparing the traditional way of looking at literacy to all of the new literacies we discovered in this project is a very good way to understand what that phrase really means. Children are no longer just learning to read and write on paper, they are learning these skills through all different types of media and resources. I think better understanding how to use these resources to the best of their abilities is very necessary in helping out students to become literate.

I think providing effective literacy instruction to diverse learners means to be able to present the same information in many different ways in order to accommodate for whatever types of learners might be in your classroom. All children learn in different ways and as a teacher you need to be able to give the best instruction possible to all of these learners. After completing my own new literacy project I was able to see how hard this task can actually be. Once I actually started to use my new technology there were many things I did not know how to do and it took me a while to become comfortable with the program. This could be an issue when working with students in a k-8 setting. Children who were going to do a similar project to what we have just done would need to understand how research and find important information. This would be a key skill for learning more about a new literacy. To use a new technology to present the new literacy the children would need to first understand how to learn to use a new technology, this would involve going through demos, reading instructions, and playing around on the actual technology before beginning. Once they were ready to start creating their own project they would need to understand how to lay out their information in an understandable way for the reader. I think this would be very difficult for the students in my placement because whenever I have seen them in the computer lab they do not want to take the time to actually do thee research, they just want to get what they have to get done as fast as possible. I definitely think an integrated approach to learning these two things would be the best way to teach the students in my placement. I think by doing two things at once the students would be more interested in what they were doing, and they would be learning without really realizing it.