New Literacies and Web 2.0: Where Do We Go from Here?

For our blog conversation this week, Alix, Joe, and I discussed some of the major points of Leu et al (2007) and also addressed some of Richardson’s (2010) points from chapter 10 via Skype. Disappointingly, our video chat on Skype would not work with the three of us on at once, so we decided to just do a conference call about the readings.

 After reading the Leu et al article, I noticed (as well as Alix and Joe) that the number of people who regularly use the internet is increasing rapidly across the globe and that it is even more useful in the workplace and at school now than ever before. The fact that the research on reading comprehension online is at such an early stage is a difficult pill to swallow because our own teaching hinges on our abilities to effectively integrate and demonstrate how new literacies can be used.

            We also discussed the four characteristics of a new literacies perspective, and how they each create both difficulties and opportunities in the classroom. I was very vocal about the second principle that new literacies are “central to full civic, economic, and personal participation in a global community,” (Leu et al, 2007, p. 7) because as a social studies teacher one of my most challenging yet rewarding tasks is preparing students to be future responsible citizens of  a democracy. Alix and Joe agreed that this in particular is quite difficult, and mentioned how much harder it can be while working in an urban environment, as Alix currently is, where a much higher percentage of students do not have the amount of access to the internet as students in suburban schools.

Another aspect of this article we discussed briefly was the five major functions of online reading comprehension and how they do cross over with ‘traditional literacy’. But the role that communication plays in new literacies is becoming ever more important and complex, as online communication, as we now know, takes many different forms that not all of us are familiar with. We agreed that as the years continue, our students will continue to gain new literacies literacy at a faster pace and will ultimately force us as teachers to integrate at a much higher level the online literacies that our students hold into our classrooms on a daily basis. As said in the Leu et al article, “In the past, instruction has been based on the assumption that teacher s were always more literate than students. This assumption is no longer true,” (p. 14).

In regard to the Richardson (2010) chapters, we found strong correlations between what the Leu et al (2007) article was discussing and Richardson’s “Big Shifts” in chapter 10. We discussed his words that, “For more than a hundred years we have defined being literate as being able to read and write. And although those core abilities are still central to learning, they are no longer enough to ensure understanding” (p. 148). We all agreed with this statement, and that change is more constant in our lives now than ever in terms of education and technology. Will the skills that we and our students possess with the Web 2.0 be relevant 20 or 30 years down the road? This is a question I thought of after our discussion so I pose it to anyone who reads this post.