What is your current thinking about teaching "new literacies" as part of your ELA instruction?
What exactly are "new literacies"? Well new literacies are all of our traditional forms of literacy, plus information literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, network literacy, and digital literacy. I believe that yes traditional literacy is important, but so are these "new literacies". They are our future and it is important that out students know how to use them. We want to set our students up for success and by teaching them all of these new literacies, we will.
What obstacles to you see for teaching "new literacies" in the classroom?
There are obstacles with everything we do in life, teaching is no different. Some of the biggest obstacles I see with teaching these "new literacies" are funding and how the parents feel. These "new literacies" are all involved with some sort of electronic device. What happens if a child does not have access to this technology? What if the school does not have the funding to supply all of the students with a device? Our students already spend a good majority of their day in front of a device. What is their parents do not want them to have the extra screen time at school? These are all obstacles that we need to keep in mind when going forward with our "new literacies".
I agree with you about how the new literacies are just as important as the old ones and we have to find a good balance for using them in the classroom! Parents are a whole new ball game and personally one of the things I am most scared of when it comes to teaching. We will have parents that all feel different ways and we all only want the best for the students so we have to work together to find a good balance.
ReplyDeleteI find it very interesting that you mentioned funding as an obstacle. I think that this is a very relative obstacle that many districts struggle with in many ways but especially when attempting to implement new literacies and technology. But this being said I also think it is something that we FUTURE educators often forget as we aren't there yet but it needs to be on our minds!
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