"If all our children learn to do is read, they will not be literate." David Warlick
Has the definition of literacy changed? React to Warlick's quote with your thinking about "the new literacy."
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17 years ago
12 comments:
Children need to put the information they read to use in order to be literate.
Children need to react to what they
read through conversations with others.
I believe that Warlick is making an analogy to the fact that if children/people learn to type and click, they are not truly proficient users of technology.
While reading is important, children need to learn to apply, practice, synthesize, and evaluate the information that they have read.
Children need to learn to observe, analyze, interpret, and access more than just written text.
In today's world literate includes not only being able to read but being able to use/access information from computers etc. Learning methods to access information from technology needs to be included with the traditional learning to read.
To be truly literate, one must be able to iterate. Our students must be able to use the information that they read: to think, speak and write about it. I think that is what literacy has always been about.
I guess the term literacy has taken on a broader meaning to include the ability to access information about particular topics. Prior to this age of technology, finding information was going to the library and reading books about whatever subject your were interested in. Today you need to access that information in lots of different forms, so you need to be able to use the technology to access that information. For me that is often a stumbling block because I do not always have the knowledge to use the technology.
This sounds like a restatement of "Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read."
The act of decoding and reading words is only one skill that is needed to be literate.
There certainly is a new way of approaching literacy with students. Literacy has always been more than just "reading." It involves writing, listening, speaking...skills that can still be addressed with new information literacy via blogging,and other avenues in which students understand and are willing to take the risk with. The definition hasn't changed, the process has.
I agree with David, although literacy has always included not just reading, but writing, speaking and listening. The "new literacy" seems to be another language in which a person can communicate; read, write, listen or speak...
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