It can't be said too often: we get better at using words, whether hearing, speaking, reading, or writing, under one condition and only one-when we use those words to say something we want to say, to people we want to say it to, for purposes that are our own.
Hat tip: Zac Chase, http://twitter.com/#!/MrChase/status/134415331358806017
there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
Somewhere, around 4000 BC, humans learned to write. Egyptian hieroglyphs go back to about 3200 BC, alphabetical writing to 1000 BC. According to scholars like Jack Goody, the invention of writing was the most important technological breakthrough in the history of humanity. It transformed mankind’s relation to the past and opened a way for the emergence of the book as a force in history.
The history of books led to a second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era. By the third century AD, the codex—that is, books with pages that you turn as opposed to scrolls that you roll—became crucial to the spread of Christianity. It transformed the experience of reading: the page emerged as a unit of perception, and readers were able to leaf through a clearly articulated text, one that eventually included differentiated words (that is, words separated by spaces), paragraphs, and chapters, along with tables of contents, indexes, and other reader’s aids.
The codex, in turn, was transformed by the invention of printing with movable type in the 1450s. To be sure, the Chinese developed movable type around 1045 and the Koreans used metal characters rather than wooden blocks around 1230. But Gutenberg’s invention, unlike those of the Far East, spread like wildfire, bringing the book within the reach of ever-widening circles of readers. The technology of printing did not change for nearly four centuries, but the reading public grew larger and larger, thanks to improvements in literacy, education, and access to the printed word. Pamphlets and newspapers, printed by steam-driven presses on paper made from wood pulp rather than rags, extended the process of democratization so that a mass reading public came into existence during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Advertisement
The fourth great change, electronic communication, took place yesterday, or the day before, depending on how you measure it. The Internet dates from 1974, at least as a term. It developed from ARPANET, which went back to 1969, and from earlier experiments in communication among networks of computers. The Web began as a means of communication among physicists in 1981. Web sites and search engines became common in the mid-1990s. And from that point everyone knows the succession of brand names that have made electronic communication an everyday experience: Web browsers such as Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Safari, and search engines such as Yahoo and Google, the latter founded in 1998.
When strung out in this manner, the pace of change seems breathtaking: from writing to the codex, 4,300 years; from the codex to movable type, 1,150 years; from movable type to the Internet, 524 years; from the Internet to search engines, nineteen years; from search engines to Google’s algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years; and who knows what is just around the corner or coming out the pipeline?
new media literacy skills are expanding our definitions of literacy but must be cultivated from the foundation of traditional literacy. While traditional literacy is foundational, it is no longer solely sufficient. As media scholar Henry Jenkins has said: "Traditionally we wouldn't consider someone literate if they could read but not write. And today we shouldn't consider someone literate if they can consume but not produce media."
The literacy of the future rests on the ability to decode and construct meaning from one's constantly evolving environment -- whether it's coded orally, in text, images, simulations, or the biosphere itself. Therefore we must be adaptive to our social, economic and political landscape. Those of us living in this digital age are required to learn, unlearn and learn again and again.
Navigating times of great change is never an easy affair. But the results can be historic. In this regard, Abraham Lincoln provides wise council. Before signing the Emancipation Proclamation President Lincoln sent a message to Congress in which he said, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."
Being literate in a real world sense means being able to both "read and write" narrative in the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. Just being able to read them is not enough.
Via David Jakes at http://vimeo.com/8285771
Contemporary Literacy — Don’t think about how technology has advanced. We might get further by thinking about how information has changed: what it looks like, what we look at to view it, how we find it, where we find it, what we can do with it, and how we communicate it. Contemporary Literacy & Teaching — What does the new information landscape mean to us in our jobs, and how might we use it to improve and grow in jobs? How do I utilize my own new literacies to create and maintain my own ongoing professional development, to cultivate my own personal learning network? Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience • Hacking the ‘Native’ Information Experience — What are the qualities of our students outside-the-classroom information experiences? How do they use information to work, play, converse, and learn? What do those actions look like outside the classroom, and what might they look like inside?
A new study has shown that educational videos and interactive games can have a positive impact on preschooler literacy when incorporated into the curriculum in a classroom setting.
According to the study, released today, children from low-income families whose teachers incorporated digital media (videos, games) in the classroom as part of the Ready to Learn program came out more prepared for kindergarten in terms of literacy skills than those who were not exposed to such a program.
The new study, Summative Evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative, was conducted by Education Development Center and SRI International on behalf of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). It focused on economically disadvantaged children in schools participating in Ready to Learn programs in New York and San Francisco. Ready to Learn is an initiative funded in part by the United States Department of Education and is operated by CPB, PBS, and the Ready to Learn Partnership. It's designed to help improve literacy in students aged 2 to 8 using a variety of media tools and curriculum resources.
