Chern New Literacy Blog

New Literacy Entry Blog

Christine Chern

            Before the project, I was only familiar with the traditional reading and writing literacy. After I read through the different definitions and activities involved with each literacy, I realized that there are many more literacy than I know. Even though I have not heard of the terms, such as geo-literacy and emotional literacy, I am not a stranger to these types of literacy at all. Throughout the years in school, I have had experience with learning about all of the literacy, but not so much with digital literacy. After exploring the different technologies, I realized that a lot of literacy can be taught together across several subject areas. For example, visual literacy may seem appropriate in art or language arts at first impression. However, it can be used with maps, symbols, visual aids, and so forth in math, social studies, English, and even science classes. 

            I enjoyed learning about Weebly and how I can use it to make it accessible for students. It has a variety of features, where I can include descriptions with the pictures, embed videos from YouTube or clips that my classmate or I made, add links, and create blogs for students to comment on. These features not only allow students and me to become more digitally literate, they also give us the chance to be involved and engaged in the target literacy with the technology (visual literacy in Weebly). With the incorporation of traditional literacy with visual literacy, it will be a lot more time-consuming and less interactive. While traditional literacy is more text-based, digital literacy allows a variety kinds of features and technology to be incorporated, which can be fun, engaging, and motivating.

The usage of technology helps enhance student learning. Because there are so many free to low cost resources available on the internet, lesson plans can be implemented to fit more diverse students’ needs. For instance, students who struggle with reading literacy may find success in pairing up with visual literacy, because the visual aspect will help them understand and become more comfortable with reading. This is the reason why we have a video paired up with written text about what visual literacy is in our Weebly website. 

The digital literacy may be effective or problematic for students. Like I mentioned, digital literacy is useful, because there are many resources available, where students can explore the topic and become more involved and engaged with videos, pictures, surveys/questionnaires, and posting comments. However, the social literacy aspect may also be an issue if the students have become dependent on technology-based communication. Thus, it is essential that the instructor incorporates both traditional and digital literacy for students to be literate in all types of communications as well (face-to-face, blogging, etc.). Students should never become skilled in one type of literacy and lose the fluency in other types of literacy. It is more ideal that teacher equip students to become knowledgeable and fluent in different areas of literacy in a variety of ways, whether digital and/or traditional. 

Furthermore, for students to become digitally literate, they first have to have a computer to be able to practice and explore the technology. However, not all of the students can afford a computer. Thus, not many of them will know the basic computing skills either. To assist students, teachers can provide computer lessons and computer time for students to become fluent in using technology before implementing digital literacy in the lesson. Similarly, visual literacy may not be “natural” for students without exposure or experience. Because visual literacy can be used for all subjects, it really depends on what the goal or objective of the lesson is. On the one hand, if visual aid is taught to younger students, they might simply need observation skills. They can play games, like finding the difference (posted in Weebly). On the other hand, the teacher can teach visual aids for students to use in an English class. Before teaching it, students will need to develop some kind of communication skills (verbal, written, gestural, etc.). They will then be able to write and express their thoughts (communication) well.