Defining New Literacies and Why They Matter:
New literacy practices are something that is a consistent practice in my daily personal life as well as my professional life. When I was in elementary and middle school, we always had to read textbooks and then answer questions on a worksheet or a separate piece of paper to turn in. As I went through high school, I was allowed to use iPads to read instead of having a physical book. The same for writing a paper in high school, I was able to use speech-to-text to write papers. My students now do not write papers anymore. Students are now typing their papers or doing speech-to-text to complete an assignment.
New Literacy extends beyond the conventional view of literacy as printed and written texts, and includes meaning-making practices using digital technologies (e.g., video games, weblogs, mobile texts, etc.), and explores the changes of beliefs towards literacy in the process of practices(Sang,2017). As an elementary school teacher, I rely heavily on digital reading platforms to allow students who are struggling with reading comprehension to have the opportunity to have books read to them. I also have students whose English is their second language. I can select collections that are in their primary language and have them still be able to read what the rest of the class is reading. It makes differentiating much easier for teachers and students to have access to these, so students can all be on the same page and involved in the lesson.
Problems I see in my own school are that we progress monitor students, and all students take the New York State exam in both math and English language arts. We have a wide variety of socioeconomic students in our school who do not have the means to buy up-to-date books and rely on their children checking books from our school library. It is not fair to students whose English is their secondary language. Beecher states, “Creating a community and working together requires a degree of trust and familiarity that can be difficult to build when there is physical distance between the participants” (Beecher,2023). Overall, new literacy has been a major benefit to us in education, allowing students to connect with new ideas all around the world. As well as for translating readings into the students' primary language. New literacies are a major benefit and tool for everyone in so many ways.
References:
Beecher, C. (2023). Chapter 1. What is Literacy? Multiple Perspectives on Literacy. Iastate.pressbooks.pub. https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/teachingearlyliteracy/chapter/what-is-literacy-multiple-perspectives-on-literacy/
Sang, Y. (2017). Expanded Territories of “Literacy”: New Literacies and Multiliteracies.. Journal of Education and Practice, 8(8), 16–19.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteThank you for highlighting the inequity of NYS tests. A few times now, I have brought up regents exams and how they are not a true measure of a students ability to learn or reproduce learned content. I agree that times are changing fast and that what we see now is different that it was even 5 years ago. Thank you for your post!
Hi Joe,
ReplyDeleteI remember when one of my teachers would sign out the Chromebook cart for our class to use and how exciting it was. Before the Chromebook cart, we went to the computer lab. Now, all of my students have a Chromebook. The Chromebook is great as there are many awesome resources students can use, especially in science where some concepts are challenging to bring into the classroom due to their scale, such as space!
However, I do feel that the Chromebooks have negatives as well. First, students heavily rely on them. Some of my students have shared that they only do work on their Chromebooks in some of their classes. I know that this year, the AP Exams were given online. One of my students told me that some students experienced their Chromebook randomly shutting down or glitching in the middle of the test, which resulted in their progress not being saved. I can't imagine the stress that this would cause. Additionally, I personally feel as though I don't do as well when tests are online. I wonder how many students feel the same way.