One thing that really hit me was your idea of ‘text.’ When I hear the word text, I think of words on paper. From your presentation, and discussions in my graduate Literacy class, I can really see that literacy and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined with each other. It is important to see that ‘text’ really does include print, photos, videos, music, animations, spreadsheets, graphs, etc. As technology continues to advance, new forms of text come into play. Our students are required to sort through and comprehend much more text than students in the 20th century.

Once teachers come to the complete realization that their students are facing such an overwhelming amount of information, both in and out of the classroom, we can truly begin to educate them. Our goal is to help our students become functional and productive members of society. Like you said, “We need our students to be creative and innovative.” How will this happen if we do not teach them to be?!

In our middle schools, “core” classes are English, Social Studies, Math and Science. Part of me can’t help but wonder when schools will step back and see something like “information literacy” as a “core” subject. Because, again, things are not what they used to be. I really think, at an early age, our students should have a class that teaches them how to read/interact with the internet. They need to be able to evaluate text for currency, validity, and reliability and then respond appropriately.

Until this becomes a reality, we, as teachers, need to continue to incorporate these skills into our own classrooms. Yes… even me… a math teacher…. needs to incorporate literacy into my classroom. On a daily basis, I encourage my students to interact with math. You don’t just read a problem or story and get an answer. Students need to question what they are reading, and pull appropriate strategies to help them comprehend the situation- whatever it may be. The same is true with other subjects, and with just leisurely surfing the internet. We need to make sure our students leave us with a full tool box of strategies that will lead them through the vast information they will encounter in the “real world.”

history of literacy

new literature

Educon

I have been trying to find someone to confirm my feeling that reading electronic text is very different from reading paper text. Do you have any specific resources for dealing with this?

I can’t wait to pass this on to the higher-ups.