Defining New Literacies and Why They Matter!
In my personal life, I am a student. As a student, I am constantly supporting my learning with new literacies. For example, I am currently writing a blog for my classmates to interact with and I am often assigned videos to watch. When utilizing new literacies to complete my work as a student, I am more engaged and I have the opportunity to participate and collaborate more. When I am not completing schoolwork, I use new literacies to connect with my friends or to entertain myself. For example, I’ve recently been using an app called Strava which is like a blog for your physical activity. I struggle with being consistent with exercise, but using this tool has increased my engagement and participation. Using text and photos in a blog form helps motivate me to get a workout in. Below is an example of one of my posts if you want to check it out!
Using New Literacies in my personal life:
Before new literacies and multiliteracies were considered to best support educators and learners in regards to literacy learning, literacy was often narrowly defined in educational settings. According to Jones (2017), literacy was simply limited to the following characteristics: standard language, formalized, written in the dominant language and culture, and paper-based. Although this makes sense for the time, it’s concerning how elitist this definition is. As a result, this definition allows only a select group of educated and privileged individuals to interact with literacy, which is ultimately problematic for spaces focused on access and equity, which ideally should be every educational setting across the country. Furthermore, it’s important to note that ensuring literacy is only available in the dominant language and culture is extremely limiting to diverse learners, which in many educational settings, is a large part of the population. Luckily, scholars have realized this narrow definition is problematic in regards to inclusion and thus have broadened the definition in order to ensure the inclusion of diverse learners.
The more expansive ideas of new literacies address the issue of limited equity and access by expanding the definition of literacy and thus mitigating these hurtful ideals. This then ensures all individuals have a chance to learn and demonstrate their knowledge and skills through participation in collaborative activities. Jones (2017) states, “Based on the new belief in literacy, the New Literacies are more “participatory, collaborative, and distributed” in nature, comparing to the “published, individuated, author-sentric, and expert-dominated” forms of conventional literacies (p. 17). This quote demonstrates how expanding the ideas of new literacies decreases equity and access issues. Now, formally written, page-bound, official literacy samples written only in the dominant language and culture are a thing of the past and rightfully so! People can now access literacy in different languages, modes of representation, contexts, and more, which ultimately benefits all, thus confirming that new literacies and multiliteracies matter.
References
Beecher, C. (2023). What is literacy? Multiple perspectives on literacy, Iowa State University Digital Press, https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/teachingearlyliteracy/chapter/what-is-literacy-multiple-perspectives-on-literacy/
NCTE. (2019). Definition of literacy in a digital age, National Council of Teachers of English, https://ncte.org/statement/nctes-definition-literacy-digital-age/
Sang, Y. (2017). Expanded territories of “Literacy”: New literacies and multiliteracies, Journal of
Hi--it is true that our digital lives can foster community (I think we used to think of the digital as isolating) and collaboration. Do you find that families have become more engaged since using Google Classroom? I suspect in my daughter's class, at least, that it has not changed who participates more in their children's learning. I can imagine scenarios where Google Classroom benefits students who need help remembering assignments (if their parents are also checking GC), but I also wish that my child was writing her assignments down by hand everyday. I am old-fashioned ( I guess), but I still appreciate a diversity of modes, and get nervous when I only have information one way.
ReplyDeleteIndeed “Don’t worry you can do it. Digital literacy is your friend.”. However, teachers simply cannot do it alone. Technology is developing at an exponential rate like never before, and we have to keep up with it. I think educators are actually in a very difficult situation because education is the field where new literacies apply the most. It seems we have to keep up with this exponential progress of technology by ourselves, and we are not offered much support. Moreover, it is sometimes frustrating and time taking if we can't understand some aspects of future technology. So, does technology really save our time?
ReplyDeleteThe article states that "today's schools are filled with digitally savvy children who have grown up with technology and the internet of things." However, "a discrepancy exists when considering students' digital fluency compared with their digital literacy."
The key question is: How will we proceed with this exponential process if there is already so much discrepancy, where educators need to learn fluency from students, and students need to learn digital literacy from them?
Hi
ReplyDeleteLiteracy can be defined as we know it as having the ability to read and write effectively, it reflects a set of skills over time that shows that we have the ability to comprehend what we are reading and writing. It is indeed a crucial aspect in our lives as it allows us to communicate and exist in society. I agree that educators need to make literacy more accessible and engaging. as a preschool educator myself I have students who are three years old and reading but are they really comprehending what they are reading and I have to students who can retell most details of a story read to them and I have some who are clueless after a story time and go off on a tangent when asked details of a story. I too have noticed that doing a picture walk or watching a video can help those who are not at the point of comprehending spoken words, I allow them to tell me what they think is happening in the picture which helps them comprehend as we go along. I am learning to navigate this digital era, I am not tech savvy and have faced many struggles but I will get it eventually because as an educator in todays world new literacies and new media will allow me to become skillful and better able to navigate the changing landscape of communication and understanding.