Literacy Practice in Schools in the 21st Century
Literacy in the 21st century does not only involve writing and reading competency, but also involves technological mastery. Employers require students to effectively engage in a technologically advanced world to more effectively bring products and services to consumers. Some educators are making the Internet a part of their discussions on rhetoric as well as traditional texts.
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Increased Reciprocal Communication
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Technology provides more opportunities for students to collaborate with each other, so literacy will not only involve writing alone but combining ideas with others. Students will likely communicate with others across the globe, including various individuals from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. This will require a heightened sensitivity to the ways in which other cultures respond to information.
Analyzing Multimedia
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Not only must students analyze text, but they must also analyze multimedia such as images, sound and video. With text, students must understand how the appearance of print effects the understanding of ideas.
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Efficient Research
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While most students use the Internet frequently, they often need help effectively locating information, since not all of the best sources are easily accessed by popular search engines. Also, students need greater critical evaluation skills to assess various sources and determine if these sources are reliable.
Writing Changes
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Technological changes have lead to changes in how most individuals in society write. For example, writing has become more concise on the Web to help make content easier to skim. Students must understand the various choices that they can make when writing, and educators must develop new criteria for assessing writing to accommodate new expectations.
Critical Thinking
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Students engage in literacy practices outside of the classroom. For example, some students might own a blog and communicate with peers regularly. Educators can attempt to harness these literacy activities by asking students to think critically about the decisions that they make when publishing a blog or performing other forms of online written communication.
Choosing Communication Medium
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Communication mediums come with different benefits and drawbacks. Students must think about the ways in which different forms of communication impact the audience so that they can use the most effective channels of communication to deliver a message. For example, a message that depends on voice tone, such as a very sarcastic commentary on a current event, might be better delivered through an audio podcast, since the sarcastic tone is better heard in spoken language than in written language.
Adaptability
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Technology changes constantly and some forms of technology become obsolete or less popular. For example, some new technology might eventually replace the wiki as an ideal collaborative tool. Since educators can never predict which mediums of literacy will become obsolete, they must focus more on the underlying principals of literacy in technology.
Student Expertise
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Students come to the classroom with different literacies depending on the activities that they're engaged in outside of school. For example, some students might have more experience with social networking than other students. Students can teach each other about technologies that the instructor may not have mastered.
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References
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