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The New Literacy
September 22, 2009
Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr., from Life’s Little Instruction Book
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr., from Life’s Little Instruction Book
- Technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it — and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.
- Young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text.
- Students are remarkably adept at assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across.
- Students defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them writing is about persuading and organizing and debating. They are least enthusiastic about in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor.
- The brevity of online texting and twittering teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision.
The Beginnings Workshop book, Literacy, has 18 articles on literacy and multilingual education written by foremost authorities such as Judith Schickedanz, Joan Lombardi, Celia Genishi, Anne Haas Dyson, Frances Wardle, Holly Elissa Bruno, Cecelia Alvarado, Louise Derman-Sparks, and Margie Carter.ExchangeEveryDay
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Comments (7)
Displaying All 7 CommentsTurkey
wery nice thanx
Australia
I am an Early Childhood Educator who likes to keep up to date with the latest resource around the world.
love-n-care preschool
davie, fl, United States
YES THE CHILDREN ARE DOING A TON OF WRITING AND TECHNOLOGY LIKE TEXTING HELPS LEARN HOW TO SPELL WORDS. THERE IS A DOWN SIDE TO ALL OF THE TEXTING AND SO CALLED TECHNOLOGY TOO.
THERE IS A LOT LESS LANGUAGE THAN EVER; BECAUSE IT IS EASIER TO TEXT SO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH THINGS OR SPEAK FACE TO FACE WITH A PERSON. TEXTING THEY DO NOT EVEN SPELL WORDS-JUST LETTERS. WHAT KIND OF WRITING IS THAT? WHAT GOOD IS WRITING IF YOU CAN HIDE BEHIND TECHNOLOGY AND NOT BE ABLE TO SPEAK FACE TO FACE IN PUBLIC? IT CAN CAUSE OTHER ISSUES PSYCHOLOGICALLY & WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR FINGERS WHEN YOU GET OLD FROM ALL THAT TECHNOLOGY?
Canada
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United States
This link works better to find the Wired article:http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson
OR, United States
The problems I see with all of this on-line chatting, texting, and bloging is that our children, mine included, are losing valuable social skills. They are no longer seeing these people or communicating other than texting or on-line.
Yet another problem I see is that with my 18 year old and probally others out there, he can not spell. This is due to spell check and other methods on-line and word processors. Teachers no longer have spelling test or correct grammer errors. It's a lost art writing a simple letter or writing an essay.
Well technology moves on and our children drift further away. What is all of this screen time doing to their brains. I'm sure it is not good.
New Mexico State Univ.
Las Cruces, NM, United States
As college instructor, I am finding that the constant texting and twittering does not help students in my online courses. I have a hard time relaying the importance of using appropriate punctuation, grammar, and spelling in their writing in class. This seems to get worse ever semester. Right now, the level of writing has gotten to the point where I am considering adding a unit on writing, grammar, and general online etiquette at the beginning of each course.
This generation may write more and my students do not write well.
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