After reading the articles for this week, I started to think about new literacies in my life. I thought back to college when I was introduced to e-mail for the first time.  Before e-mail, I never, or rarely, wrote letters to anyone because that took too much time to do.  I would much rather spend my time doing other things, than writing to my family and friends. However, once I tried e-mail, I was hooked.  It only took moments to jot down a couple of lines and send it off.  I also loved the quick response time.  As Mike Sharples explains in this week's reading, Electronic Publication: Writing for the Screen, writing e-mails are very easy to do.  If other people, including children, have similar experiences, then the literacy rate is bound to increase....or is it?   I strongly believe literacy today not only reflects one's ability to read, but also one's ability to use a computer system.
    Job interviews today are very different from job interviews years ago.  Today, you are asked about your computer knowledge, and sometimes asked to perform tasks on the computer.  I was working for a temp agency one summer and the company that needed help wanted someone with computer experience.  They did not believe my temp agency that I could handle it, so they had me come and perform some basic operations on the computer.  After I completed them corrected, I was then hired.  This is what we as educators need to prepare our students for.  As we all know, the computers and the software we are using today will be drastically different when our students enter the work force (especially my third graders).  Therefore, it is even more important to show our students ways to figure out a new program or application.  We need to create in them that desire to problem solve, so when they are faced with something new, they work through it and figure it out.
    On the plus side, I am amazed as I watch my students learn to do things on the computer.  Often, I will introduce a program and show them a few of the necessary features to make the program work.  However, after one session on the computer, they have often figured out tricks that even I have not yet discovered.  I hope that by fostering this discovery approach, the students will be willing to tackle larger tasks as they get older.
    Here is another example of computer literacy that occurred last week in my room.  My students are researching information about the last century.  One station is to look in books and encyclopedias to find answers to questions.  It is interesting to note how frustrated some kids become when looking for facts out of a book.  On the other hand, the group who is working on the computer (and looking at various web sites), needs to be pulled off when time is up.  I think a lot of this occurs because these children have grown up with looking for information on the computer.  They are very comfortable with the computer, and they need the visual stimulation the computers provides.  Looking in a book for an answer will become harder and harder for the generations of students to come, mostly because the book does not have anything moving in it.
    When I was looking for web sites that would fit for this assignment, I came across the web site, Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc.  This web site is mostly for adults who want to learn to read.  However, I noticed that they have a section for technology and literacy.  They also have realized, like us as educators, that most times you can no longer be hired for a job if you don't have computer experience.  As Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer states in her presentation:

        Definitions of literacy will expand; the scope and complexity of the skills
        required will increase exponentially as technologies change and institutions
        and marketplaces globalize.

Finally, I found an article by Lynn Arthur Steen of St. Olaf College.  I found it interesting to read in her article that she felt the new literacy was numeracy.  She feels that people need to know their numbers more than before since "an innumerate citizen today is as vulnerable as the illiterate peasant of Gutenberg's time."  She believes this started when computers opened the door to the information age, and people could get numbers and figures so easily.

Overall, I feel that we, as educators, need to make sure our students are not only literate in the basic skills of reading, writing, and speaking, but also in the technological world.  This includes being able to locate and find the information they will need to solve their problems.  The following quote explains this point:

        To be information literate an individual requires skills which enable the
        recognition of the need for information, and the ability to locate,
        evaluate and use it effectively
       Information Literacy - The Next Step: Policy Statement, University of Wallongong, 1994
 
 

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last updated 11/02/99