New Literacies Reflection

For the New Literacies Exploration, I choose to explore emotional literacy and Blurb, which is an online book making company. To create your own book, you download Blurb’s free book making software -- BookSmart – to your computer. This software includes many different books sizes, themes, page layouts, and fonts. Once your book is finished, you publish it to the Blurb website, where you and others can order hard copies of the book.

I do not think that there can be one all-encompassing definition of literacy. Literacy is not a small, constant, single concept. Literacy includes a wide range of abilities and concepts, and it is complex and constantly changing, particularly now as our society is experiencing so many changes in technology. Before beginning this exploration, my definition of literacy would have been the ability to use reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills to construct and convey meaning, to interact with people, and to participate fully in one’s society and environment. While I still think that this definition of literacy is “good,” I now see that the skills and participation I had in mind before was more about reading and writing print. I failed to realize just how much we do with multiple medias these days. I also think that I left out some important verbs in my definition, which Erin includes in hers – viewing, creating, and communicating. To participate fully in U.S. society, one must not only be able to read and write print, but be able to use the internet, computers, photographs, and other digital media to view, create, and communicate meaning. I truly began to realize this during the class in which one of the itecs came in and we had the opportunity to explore the new technologies. I was astounded by how many new technologies are actually out there, and how so many of them can be used to develop literacy in the classroom. When I was younger, I would never have imagined using digital storytelling, podcasting, or blogging to construct and convey meaning, nor did I realize that the skills associated with these technologies would be considered part of literacy. However, this exploration of new literacies and new technologies, particularly using Blurb, has shown me just how much more vast, rich, and complex literacy actually is.

I think providing “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners needs to be broken up into two parts. The first part, providing effective literacy instruction, means that we must have a wholistic view and approach to teaching literacy. We must understand that literacy is so much more than reading and writing – it encompasses all the things I mentioned above, and probably more! It is not enough to teach reading and writing, but we must incorporate all aspects of literacy into our instruction. I realize that this may be practically impossible – every day I feel like I learn something new about literacy, so to say that we must teach all aspects of literacy is exhausting and overwhelming. That said, I think we must strive to include as many aspects of literacy as we can into our literacy instruction in order for it to be effective. Now, to address the second part of that statement: to diverse learners. Effective literacy instruction will not look the same for every student – we will have students with special learning needs, students who are English language learners, gifted students, and students from different cultures and family backgrounds. Every child will bring a unique schema to our classrooms, and we must be ready to activate and use that schema to teach literacy. Our instruction cannot be effective for just one student, it must be effective for all of them, and the only way we can be sure of this is to truly know our students. We must know where they come from, what they know, how they learn, think, feel, and interact with people. We must adapt and differentiate instruction, design units, plan lessons, and give work that is appropriate for each of our students. In terms of using new technologies in literacy instruction, we must be prepared to teach students how to use these technologies effectively and appropriately. Not all of our students will be comfortable with or have the necessary skills to type, use computers to compose books, or have their voices recorded. We need to be able to activate prior knowledge and provide students with the background knowledge necessary to use technologies, such as Blurb. I had a hard time using it at first, and I would say that I am fairly computer literate. Using a technology like Blurb with elementary school students would require much explicit instruction and scaffolding. In terms of knowledge and capacities, to use Blurb students must be familiar with computers and computer layouts, such as graphic boxes and text boxes, and using different font sizes and styles. Students need to be able to type, organize their thoughts into “pages,” use computer layouts, and access digital photographs. In terms of commitments, students must be willing to learn something new, because chances are most students will not have used Blurb before. They must be willing to take risks, because trying something new is always risky. Students should be excited about their own writing and the fact that they get to create books for publication – I think that is pretty exciting, and I’m sure students will, too. Blurb is not the easiest tool to use, and it is far too time-consuming to use on a daily or even a weekly basis. However, I do think it has a place in the classroom. I plan to structure writing time using the Writer’s Workshop approach, and I think that Blurb could fit in well with this type of instruction. Students could use Blurb to publish the writing and illustrations they create. Students could type of their stories and scan in their drawings, take photographs and upload them to the computer, or use a website like flickr.com to get photographs to illustrate their books. Books could be printed and published – students and their families could purchase copies for themselves, or teachers could purchase copies to put in the classroom library. Since Blurb does have a page minimum for printing books (20 pages), it could also be a great way to publish books that have been created as a class. Books could then be put on display in the classroom and students could read and enjoy them throughout the year. Overall, I think Blurb is a fun and exciting tool for publishing books and engaging students in literacy, and it can fit into many language arts curriculums with appropriate instruction and scaffolding.