New Literacies

When I was in school we spent hours upon hours learning how to make our cursive letters look like the examples in front of us.  I remember students asking the teachers why it was so important for our handwriting to look the same.  They would usually answer with something about our handwriting needed to be legible.  Little did they know that my generation would proceed to turn our work in with word processors, laser printers, and later Google docs.  Who knows what the next generation is capable of?

I was recently in a curriculum meeting where the decision was made to no longer teach handwriting to third graders.  They would now concentrate on key boarding skills.  The students of today will be focusing on 21st Century skills.  I am on board with this decisions.  However, I won't get into the skills that might be lost when we no longer teach handwriting.    

I wanted to share an excerpt from a book I am reading.  I found it to be very pertinent for technology, reading, and writing in the 21st Century.  It comes from Content Area Reading Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum by Richard T. Vacca, Jo Anne L. Vacca, and Maryann Mraz. http://www.amazon.com/Content-Area-Reading-Literacy-Curriculum/dp/0205410316 

"Being a literate person in today's society involves more than being able to construct meaning from a printed text.  A literate person needs to be able to "read" and "write" and learn with texts that have multimodal elements such as print, graphic design, audio, video, and nonstop interaction.  In a twenty-first-century, media-driven society, a teacher needs to have at least a basic mastery of reading and writing using modes of communication that were previously left to the art, music, theater, and film teacher.  Reading and writing aren't just about print anymore, as we move from a page-dominated literacy to a screen-dominated literacy."

To be a relevant teacher, you have to stay relevant.  It is a never ending journey of knowledge and we need to model this for our students today so there tomorrow can be brighter and successful.