Monday, March 18, 2013

New Literacy Project Blog Post



                 


My conceptual understanding on literacy has changed drastically since the beginning of class. I had heard people use the phrase “I am technologically illiterate”, yet I never applied anything but the ability to comprehend what one reads to my definition of literacy. Now I have a much different understanding and definition of literacy and it is more broadly defined in terms of the skills one needs to function successfully in society.
My research with emotional literacy highly influenced this change of understanding because it has nothing to do with written work yet can significantly impact ones success in life and interaction with society at large. That is, low emotional literacy would make it hard to perform well in an interview or to be able to work successfully with colleagues. Low emotional literacy could also make it difficult to maintain friendships. Both of these things are essential to functionality in society.
 My digital literacy advanced this new understanding and fluid and working definition because I realize that students needs navigation skills across many different digital platforms to be able to generalize what to do when faced with a new digital interface. This is an important aspect of literacy because in almost every job you are required to be able to use and navigate digital technologies. By teaching various digital technologies


            My research on new literacy’s definitely as influenced by understanding of how to instruct diverse learners in their literacy development. Now that I have the understanding that literacy involved a variety on skills that assists one in functioning in society, I realize there is much more to teach than strictly reading comprehension.



            Diverse learners would have to learn digital literacy in different ways yet it is important that they are digitally literate because of the importance this literacy hold in society. ELL students would need help navigating pages written in English. Visually impaired students would need to use tools that make these websites more accessible, such as voice over which is provided on most Mac devices. Hearing impaired students would need video tutorials across many different digital platforms so that they can begin to generalize the concepts (just like any students, but only the video tutorials would be different). There are many different ways we need to consider making these digital literacies accessible to all learners.



             Emotional literacy instruction would also vary across different diverse learners. For example, ELL students may come from cultures where different visual cues in relating to people mean different things. This is where cultural and emotional literacy collide and it would require explicit instruction and dialogue to make sure that these students were able to understand these differences and to pick up appropriately on these visual cues so that they are better able to function in American society.

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