After my first blogging experience last year, I am onto a new one this semester. My new class, Twenty-First-Century Literacies, will be exploring the new literacies in today's education and how they play a role in elementary curriculum. Although my current knowledge on literacies is limited, and I am not sure how to integrate them into the curriculum, I am looking forward to the content of this course and how it can help me become a better educator in the future.
During our first lecture, I have learned many new concepts and ideas that will be the foundation to my multiple literacies knowledge. After learning the definition of multiple literacies, I thought of it as an extension of 21st century education; something that is modern to today's education. My interpretation of the definitions were that it is a process and set of skills that students need to better function in a changing society, and giving students the tools to work in the present. I realize that this is an important skill for students to have as with this knowledge, they can be critical of the world.
Some new types of literacies include:
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I think that multiple literacies have arose because how we make sense of the world today has changed drastically from 100 years ago to even 10 years ago. Since the world has changed, new literacies have been introduced to accommodate this change. Literacies are changing based on society and the values that we want students to embody. I think that personalization, technology and multiple literacies go hand in hand as they all influence each other and are working together to create a better type of education for our students. Students must be able to do more than traditional literacy (reading and writing) in order to function and succeed in today's society, and introducing them to multiple literacies in young grades can equip them to do this.
Even though there are new literacies to accommodate our changing world, and they are adapted in the curriculum, I believe that we still need to go a step further to using these literacies and knowledge to reform education rather than simply integrating them into the curriculum.
I think the biggest piece of information that I learned this week was how other countries around the world are taking multiple literacies and using them to change their education. For example, with regards to technological literacy, Korea is changing to online textbooks so that their students can study anywhere. Under the umbrella of mental health literacy and environmental literacy, students in the United States are allowed to create their own schedules based on interests and performance. Australian students are having education formed online to accommodate everyone which incorporates media literacy, environmental literacy, and technological literacy. I think that these examples are fascinating and demonstrate how literacies should be used to inform how education should change. Overall, I think that multiple literacies are an important concept to learn about and I am looking forward to learn how to integrate them in my future classroom.
