New Literacies

When confronted with the ideas of literacy many people have their go to definition of what that means... so if you add the word "new" what or how do you now define literacy?
I have over the course of the past 20 years been slowly introduced into the educational system... that is to say... when my son first began kindergarten I like most parents started to get involved in school organizations like PTA and met with teachers during parent teacher conferences. Because I can be a little opinionated (I'm sure an understatement according to some) i soon became involved in the Local School Improvement Council (LSIC) and because my son was diagnosed with a Learning Disability (LD) I soon found myself on the Special Education Advising Council (which later became the SPED Steering Committee), which all led to a 4-year term on the County Board of Education. It was not long after that term that I really began to think about education differently... and nearly 13 years after it began I found my self in a college classroom in pursuit of an education degree. The goal of earning a degree was realized so the natural progression was to earn a Master's... A bit unsure of what I exactly wanted in a Master's led me down a road where if I didn't know exactly where I was going it would at least be comforting in going with people I already knew. The people I knew came by way of professors I had undergrad classes and were teaching Master's classes... it was a connection to a passage I read in my 75-hr clinical class and book assigned by a professor, Dr. Lindstrom, called Digital and Media Literacy, by Renee Hobbs, that I began to really understand my new working definition of literacy. Along that 13 year journey, when I did Not have formal education credentials, many of my ideas and opinions about education were dismissed by those in education or those possessing degrees. Not in an open or derogatory fashion, but dismissed none the less, as well as many times being told about how sites like wikipedia was ruining research paper writing.  And how texting and removing required handwriting classes was ruining the generation's of today ability to write properly. Which all turns out to be more about the ability to recognize and support new literacies than this or that ruining education... because many of these past educators only see things the way they were taught to see them... and when they became the "power class" they condemn what they do Not understand. A willingness to recognize and seeking to understand new literacies as new generations add to their own understandings and interactions with the world in which they live is what I would call... "wisdom at work!" I include this TedTalk by John McWhorter as an example of understanding New Literacies



Connecting learning to practice!