New Literacies

I found the discussion of researchers trying to understand the process of writing very interesting, especially that the first books about this process weren’t being published until the early 1970’s.  I guess the thing that interests me the most is that people have been writing for thousands of years…and it took researchers that long to say, “Humm…we should question these writers and see what they think about as they write so we can understand the process of writing.”  I’m glad it hasn’t taken this long for the study of “New Literacies” to get started (but again, we ARE living in Internet-time now…so everything is faster).  So recently, researchers have turned their attention to the study of “what writers of new literacies do when they write—what they think about and how they negotiate the demands of new forms and processes of writing” (Lewis, 2006, p.229).  By understanding this process, teachers and students who don’t come by it naturally can learn how to engage in new literacies.

In life, fear will often precede and follow change, and the introduction of new literacies into our schools follows the same pattern.  Bringing in laptops, cell phones, videogames, etc. is not enough to foster new literacies.  Instead, teachers and administrators must also embrace “new orientations of time, space, performance, creativity, and design” (p.235).  This is the scary part.  It’s a paradigm shift, essentially…we have to look at teaching and learning with new eyes if we are going to truly succeed in using new literacies in our classrooms.    

Should you incorporate New Literacies into your classroom?

Two statements from our reading really stood out to me in answer to this question…

“In the end, I suspect it won’t matter much if parents, educators, and other adults encourage the [New Literacy] changes or not.  As these chapters so clearly depict, young people will continue to engage in a range of new literacies during their out-of-school hours.  The question is whether we want to make school literacy more engaging for students and more meaningful to their present and future lives in a digitally mediated world” (Lewis, 2006, p.236). 

however,

“Gee (2002) has argued that leaving new literacies out of school creates yet another brand of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’  Those who have access to digital worlds outside of school will be schooled in the new epistemologies that will provide them with the capital they need for participating as engaged citizens in their social futures.  Those who don’t will not have this opportunity because these new epistemologies, as already discussed are not part of the ‘scope and sequence’ (to borrow a phrase from basal readers) or the vision of what it means to be educated.  The current obsession with testing ‘the basics’ and the narrow definition of what counts as ‘basic’ exacerbate the problem (cited in Lewis, 2006, p.236).    

I believe our students deserve an education that shifts and changes in step with the ever-changing requirements of the world in which they live.  All content areas can incorporate new literacies into their curriculum.