New Literacy Personal Reflection

The first time I heard the term "visual literacy" I truly thought it had mostly to do with using your eyes to read printed text, or something similar to that. I hadn't put too much thought into the fact that yes, eyes do play a part in visual literacy, but that is no where near the end of the road. Visual literacy encompasses so much more than that (hence the title of my web page). I had always thought about sign language in terms of a literacy, but I wasn't sure which literacy it would fall into. I now think that it is definitely a part of visual literacy, but that it also fits deeply into many other literacies. Due to this one example, I now believe that trying to put one label on any topic or concept is kind of impossible.

In regards to new techonologies. WoW. That's really all I can say. I've peeked around at some of the other projects and I am blown away by how many different technologies there are out there. Even though I have taken the CEP 416 class about education and technology and the iTECs displayed some, I am still kind of intimidated. I think one way that I can use my students' knowledge and understanding of these technologies in my class would be to have them teach me how they use it and then make some sort of a project in class for others. This would require individual time and commitment from both myself and the students. I also think it is going to take commitment from myself to continue to develop and grow with the new technologies and ever changing definitions of literacy.

The new technology I used was a web page which is a document shared via the World Wide Web on which any person with internet access can view. In my experience, it was only within the past few years that just anyone could create a web page. I typically thought that you had to pay someone with a web design degree to create such things for you. I had some experience from last semester working with web pages for two different classes. I found google to be the easiest for me to use to convey my overall messages. However, every experience I have had in creating something with a new technology has been completely different. Part of this is the purpose of using the specific tech. For instance, if I am truly trying to convey a message or if I am just trying to get acquainted with the tech. One variation from a traditional literacy was that I was able to incorporate moving images on my page, which one would not normally get if using a typical book.It allowed me to provide more images at once that did not overwhelm the viewer.

When I created this web page, it took a great deal of trial and error and accessing my prior knowledge of web pages. I had to really think about how to lay this out, and I am still not satisfied completely with it. I think that it is easy to access, although I think that the viewer has to scroll a bit too much, but I didn't want to separate it all onto different pages since the info I was giving went in a chronological order. I think I might actually play with this more this summer when I am not so pressed for time. One thing I discovered while working through the creation of the page was how much I was using my own visual literacy skills. All of the tools that google offers the page creators are in icon form for the most part, sometimes if you let your mouse hover it will show a word or two, but that still does not really tell you what the icon is going to do if you click it. I had to use what I knew of the icons and their purposes before I could put everything together. Thank goodness for "ctrl+z" or else my page would have been in a world of mess. It actually excited me when I was able to get it to do exactly what I wanted it to do. It gave me a sense of accomplishment that I hope to pass on to my students in all of their learning. I hope to also pass along the ability to take risks in exploring new things and in learning in general. If we don't take some risk and step into unknown territory then we won't really progress forward ideally.

I am not sure that my overall definition of literacy from my initial post has changed much. I said "I will define literacy as the ability to understand, create, and effectively use messages in ample contexts through various means and tools to participate fully, efficiently, and positively in the ever changing multicultural global community." I still think this is accurate, however, I now have a much clearer understanding of one form of literacy and the tools used within it. I also think that it is hard to have just one ultimate definition of literacy with its every changing and expanding nature. I think that the only thing the works, but is clearly ambiguous, would be to define literacy as 'everything.' I don't plan on using such a definition, but I wanted to illustrate how difficult it is to provide such an enormous definition.

I don't think that I can say that one thing or course of readings has brought me directly to this point in my thinking and understanding of literacy and technology. I think that by being present in this TE 402 class, both math and LA, and making the effort to keep my eyes open to the various literacies and technologies out there this semester has brought me to my new understanding as primarily defined on my web page.

For my Language Arts lesson, the students were not the ones using this new technology, I was. I see how to connect my searching on the internet with skills that they also need to develop. I had to understand which sites had trusted content and were applicable to what I was trying to do. This is not something that just develops naturally but needs to be explicitly instructed about. My lesson used a play script that I found on the internet and it took my several searches to find exactly what I was looking for. I was actually talking about this literacy project with a friend's mother who is a specialist in the Grand Rapids area who works mostly in the school libraries a few weeks ago and she shared with me the amazement she has that so many of the 8th graders that she sees on a regular basis have not idea how to use a search engine or find information on the internet. She has observed them typing in entire questions rather than just using key words.

In my current 6th grade placement, I know that some students did use internet resources on their research reports, but I was unable to observe them in this process. I wonder if their parents did it for them though rather than showing them the proper way to seek out valid information on the internet. This also made me think about the location implications on students use of technology. Each student is going to enter my classroom with a different amount of accessibility to technology and understanding of literacy and technology and it is my goal to help get them all to a similar level before they leave my classroom. I hope to give them the skills to keep learning about the technology in their own rights and not just for school purposes. I believe that the literacy and technology can be integrated into every single curriculum area and hopefully I will be able to provide this for my students and even some of my colleagues. The MDE technology GLCEs state that "Technology literacy is the ability to responsibly use appropriate technology to communicate, solve problems, and access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information to improve learning in all subject areas and to acquire lifelong knowledge and skills in the 21st century" which correlates directly with my goals.

Also, though much of our focus was on new technologies in the digital age, I still believe that I will need to provide instruction on how to use all forms of technology and literacy tools like dictionaries, tape recorders, library catalogs that use the Dewey decimal system, and so forth. Just because the students can use a digital form of technology to get to the same end, they may not always have that access and I think it is important for them to know where the technology began to understand and appreciate where we are now. Obviously, more focus would be on how to help them with the digital parts so that they may be competitive players in the future world, but I plan not to neglect the age old versions either.

I think it is important for us as educators to be well informed of every new literacy and technology and appreciate that different students will step into our classrooms with a variety of literacy and technology experience. I akin this to the way in which we respect and utilize the prior knowledge or backgrounds of our students in every other aspect, so why not technology and the various forms of literacy too? I do think it is appropriate to plan initial lesson structures using the knowledge that your students are expected to have prior to your class based on the GLCEs, but I do not think it is appropriate to plan all learning from there. I think a great teacher must get to know her students on multiple levels to provide the best education in literacy instruction and overall learning as possible.