New Literacies

New technology is changing literacy in so many ways that it is almost too overwhelming to think about. After reading the article, it is clear that with the the introduction of the Internet and other information and communication technologies, the world has been forever changed. In the article, it stated that students entering school now will have a completely different experience in the beginning of their school career than by the end of it. This article has a copyright of 2004, and I started my undergraduate studies in 2002, and I must say that so many new technologies were introduced to me during my undergraduate experience. I can remember still using a disposable camera instead of digital, listening to Cd's before I was able to download music from the Internet, and reading the paper instead of looking news up online. By my sophomore year, I was introduced to Direct Connect (a place to download music), digital cameras, mp3 players, among other things. Only a year ago I was introduced to Wikipedia and ever since, I use it to find information on almost anything. I feel that during my few years in school, my ability to maneuver these various technologies has greatly increased and in addition, the improvement and innovations that are being made and that have been made, have come at a increasingly rapid pace.

In terms of the effects that the Internet and other ICT's have had on literacy, I think there are many. I feel that, for one, there has been a whole new sector added to literacy. I mean by this that being literate is just as much being able to use the computer as it is being able to read and write. In order to fully function in society these days, a person needs to know how to email and go to various websites. A person needs to be able to go onto the Internet and extract necessary information for a project, whether it be a project for school or for work. Cyber space really is an entirely different world that requires constant visitation. In addition, the article discusses how students and people need to be taught how to "critically evaluate that information, sorting out accurate information from inaccurate information...(on the) Internet where anyone may publish anything". I think this is an extremely vital skill that must be taught to everyone, especially young students. Growing up, I really believed that anything I read in a text book or newspaper was factual. While I now know that that might not have always been the case, I feel that the Internet poses a much larger problem to young students today than I ever had to deal with, in terms of deciphering which information is truthful. Students must be taught to be skeptical of what they read and see on the Internet.

Also, the article states, "We need to support the development of effective collaboration and communication skills using new communication technologies if we wish to prepare our children for their futures in a world where these skills are so important." I definitely agree with this statement. Being able to communicate with these new technologies definitely affects our being literate human beings. In today's world, we need to know how to email and use instant messenger, and even blog! I am so glad that this class has taught me how to use a blog because I feel that this form of posting and communicating ideas in large groups might become a major way to communicate with our peers in the future. Also, since we know that our society is evolving in this way, we should be teaching children how to communicate in this way in school, so that they are prepared to function in the world around them. I think that it is wonderful that so many nations across the globe have made an effort to develop children's abilities when dealing with ICT's and I think that more strides should be made in this direction and that it should definitely continue to be focused on in every country.

Also, the article talks about hypermedia and how basically there can be many things going on in only one web page and people need to know how to navigate on the computer and on web pages to make sense of what they see and be able to "read" what they see. I think this is very true as well because if you do not know how to navigate once you are on a page, you can become extremely lost and not get information you might need. Comprehension definitely takes on a whole new meaning when looking at it in regard to the Internet because there are many different ways to comprehend just one web page.

Additionally, I agree that literacy is deictic and that new technology is changing it, I also agree that in order to tackle new technology, people need to have a firm foundation in traditional literacy. This new literacy or new literacies we are producing stem from and use traditional literacy as a foundation.

Finally, the idea that teachers will need to be aware of all new technologies and fully comprehend them does, to be honest, make a little nervous. I am definitely aware of new technologies and understand a lot, but I know that I do not have a firm grasp on everything and the fact that this area is expanding at such a rapid rate makes me a bit nervous. I definitely think that there will need to be a lot more professional development for teachers in this area, if we as a society are to fully support new literacies and give our children the best advantage.

Thoughts on NCLB and Politics in Education

I have read a great deal of information regarding NCLB, so I did not read this article without having prior feelings. For some reason, when I think about NCLB, I start to feel angry. It's not that I think NCLB is a completely poor idea, however, I feel that there are a lot of problems with it. First, I feel that measuring any skill with a standardized test, and only a standardized test, is useless. I do not feel that these tests tell the government much. Sure, schools need to be held accountable, and I am sure that this way is the most efficient, but I hardly see how it is accurate. Also, the amount of money that is poured into testing could be used in SO many other, more beneficial ways. It's costly to give these tests and instead of using this money to determine which schools are doing poorly, why couldn't this money be put toward enhancing all schools around the nation?

Also, I find it a bit scary that the federal government can withhold funds if a school, like the one in Utah, decides not to cooperate. While I do understand why they would withhold funds, I feel as if the rules should be more flexible. Furthermore, I think it's completely ridiculous that the government is implementing a program that they are unable to fully fund in the first place. If the government has high expectations and wants our students to succeed, shouldn't they be able to pay to implement their program to the fullest degree. I think it's unfair to expect certain things from schools and not provide the resources necessary in order for the improvements to actually occur.

In addition, I agree that students are not necessarily improving on these tests, but instead, I believe that a lot of this improvement comes from "tweaking" the tests and the scores. Moreover, I also feel that a lot of class time is specifically geared towards these tests in the hopes that students will have practiced their way to achievement, which again, is not beneficial. Why test students on things that they will never be able to use in the real world or relate to their real world experiences. It just all seems like a huge waste of time.

Also, the idea that children only have a three year window to take tests in their native language, but only ten states test children in their native language is contradictory to say the least. Moreover, I think it's nearly impossible to account for every language and be able to provide a test in every language. Furthermore, cultures vary across the globe, so even if an English test is translated, it still has American cultural bias in the questions, and is still unfair.

With all of this being said, I think it is important for schools to be held accountable. I think the way the government is measuring accountability is flawed and with all of the research that is going on, I would think they could find an alternative method. I do not think that the tests need to be eliminated altogether. I do think there need to be other options and more flexibility and more funding.

With regard to reading, I feel that resources and funding to assist struggling readers and challenge confident readers is necessary. I feel that reading can be tested but is inaccurate if everyone gets the same test. Furthermore, I think that any success in reading is valuable and while some children may not score particularly high on a standardized test, they may still have a achieved a great deal and that should be celebrated as well. I don't think the same expectations should be placed on everyone. I think that NCLB is a great model in theory but needs a lot of improvements in order to be successful.

Thoughts on Assessment

I feel that it is important for children to be assessed in order to determine their progress and achievements in various areas. Without assessment, a teacher might not know that a child is lagging behind or that a student needs more challenging work in order to improve their skills. However, I feel that there are many ways to assess students and have students assess themselves and no way is right or wrong. Some student might do well on tests but some students might need to express themselves differently. They might need to act something out or draw a picture or even just discuss a topic in order to express what they know. Also, I think we should assess things like how well students collaborate with one another or how capable they are of finding alternative solutions to problems, etc. We should not be assessing only what they have stored in their memory banks. We should assess them on qualities that are important for them to survive in the global economy. We cannot just teach them and have them spit out exactly what we want them to know. We need to encourage them to think for themselves and come up with their own ideas on various topics and add to the foundation that we set before them. This is truly what should be assessed. The standardized tests that we are shoving down their throats are doing very little to benefit them. First, these are unfair, biased assessments. Secondly, they are not testing skills that are important for our democracy to thrive and so, are not very meaningful in my opinion. They additionally take a lot of time to prepare for, and that time could be spent in a different and more beneficial way. Most importantly they do not seem authentic to me. They do not connect in any real context. They are artificial.

Furthermore, I agree that teachers should not be the only ones assessing students. Students should definitely share in this task. This was exemplified in Ms. Rodriguez's classroom and I feel that it is definitely important. After all, the students know themselves the best and can best explain their actions and their work. Also, I think that in terms of a student lead conference, the student will feel more involved and feel like they have power over their situation. I think this power and having a say in what is going on will give them confidence and motivation. Also, I feel that parents should definitely be involved as well. They also know their children well and can assist their children in making changes in their routine or improving their skills. Also, in Ms. Rodriguez's classroom, I think the fact that she included both the process of the student's learning and also their final products in their portfolio was great because both are important and contain valuable information. Additionally, she did not use just one form of assessment and this is helpful as well.

Also, I agree that portfolios do not mean much without the student behind them. The student needs to explain what they have done and share everything with whoever would like to look. It doesn't make sense for someone to sit and judge a student's work without thinking of the student and how they connect to their work.

Finally, I feel that in the area of literacy, assessment is even more important. After reading that it becomes more difficult to help struggling readers after the second grade, I feel that assessing reading ability in kindergarten and first grade is extremely important. By using assessment, a child can be helped before it becomes too late and even more difficult. Also, since literacy in general relates directly with being able to function in our society, student's must be assessed regularly and continually. Even as adults, we should self access our literacy in all areas and determine areas that might need work. I for instance am not fully computer literate. I consider myself to be somewhat proficient, however, I feel I could definitely work on making myself more familiar and more comfortable with certain things.

My Thoughts on chapters 5, 6, and 7

I liked aspects of most of the theories discussed in chapter 5. While I disagree with the Maturation Theory and I see why it has been pushed to the side, I can completely understand how it originated. My ideas align with the ideas in the Theory of Literacy Development and Family Literacy Theory because I feel that a strong connection between home life and school life should be made and children should be exposed heavily at home to reading and other forms of literacy and this should be related to how they are taught in school as well. I think Big Books are a great idea because children can then see everything in terms of pictures, sentences, spelling, etc. as they are being read to. It seems silly to read to a classroom full of children and have at least half of the children struggle to see the pages. However, I do no think that just because the book might be enlarged that the children will feel as if they are sitting on the teachers lap. I understand the reference but I think that it is a little far fetched. Also, I strongly agree with the Emergent Literacy Theory's stress on the early experiences of children being talked to and read to and how these both relate to literacy development. I definitely think that the more children are exposed to language and reading, the more fluent they will become. I feel that heavy exposure to anything will enhance a child's skills in any area. It also makes sense that children who tend to be good listeners and speakers will be advanced when it comes to reading. If they already have a strong foundation on a language, then being able to decode the written word will be easier because they can search their memory banks for words that they are already familiar with. Finally, in chapter 5, I thought Piaget's theory and how it applies to classroom learning to be very interesting. I majored in psychology in undergrad and so many of these theories are not new to me, but relating the information to the classroom in particular is interesting and I believe useful. For instance, I would never have though that children in the concrete operational period would benefit from organizational charts more than children in other stages but it makes complete sense to me now that I've been provided with the information.

Also, I found the theories in chapter 6 to be very true. I believe that social interaction does play a large role in learning language and learning to read and becoming literate. I found a connection between The Emergent Literacy Theory and Social linguistic Theory in that they both seem to support oral language as the foundation for becoming an efficient reader, and again, I am in agreement. The results of Health's study did not surprise me. Also, Au's outlook regarding The Socio-Cultural Theory was enlightening. It makes perfect sense that reading, even by oneself, is a social activity because of the origin of the writing and the interaction between the author and reader, but I never had thought of it this way before. Also, the fact that we construct reading within a certain context does mean that we cannot separate reading from that context and I liked Au's perspective on this as well. Moreover, scaffolding, zone of proximal development, vicarious learning, and modeling, among the other concepts discusses within the Social Constructivism and Social Learning Theory, all seem to make sense to me but I think that these practices take place even if someone is not familiar with the terminology. I think people model behavior and assist others depending on their abilities even if they are unaware that they are doing so. I think, however, that with the knowledge of such concepts, teachers will be more able to incorporate activities such as buddy reading or be able to understand why they should modify lessons for differentiated instruction to allow for scaffolding to occur or to account for a student's zone of proximal development.

As for chapter 7, I was again familiar with much of the information on memory, however, the information relating to how it all relates to reading made me think about memory from a different perspective. First, I believe the Interactive Model is the most accurate in terms of it not just being a one way process. I definitely agree that reading cannot be understood only as a one way process of decoding and world identification leading to comprehension. I remember a study that I learned about that indicated that if you scramble letters of individual words in a paragraph but leave the first and last letter of the word where it should be, a person can easily read the paragraph as if nothing was scrambled at all. I find this so so interesting and I think that it relates to this idea of reading being an interactive process. Obviously, when reading a scrambled word without hesitation in a paragraph, a person is not decoding the word as they would normally. They are probably able to read the words because on some level they are comprehending the story before they decode the individual word, if that makes sense. I am not sure exactly what I am trying to say here but I think this study does relate to the interactiveness of the process. Also, The Automatic Information Processing Model provides insight to why some children hate to read. If a child is struggling to decode words and doesn't have the ability to comprehend what he or she is reading at the same time because they are expending all of their energy decoding, then why would it be enjoyable? There is no benefit to them if they do not understand what they are decoding. It all must seem so pointless. Knowing this information and keeping it in mind when helping children learn to read is valuable because if, as it states in the text, the teacher knows to give the child an easier text to read in order for them to comprehend what they are reading, then the student might have an easier time and enjoy reading and actually improve instead of just becoming more and more frustrated. Finally, I think it is important to note that different kinds of memory help us to understand the underlying processes involved when learning and can definitely be applied to learning to read.

Language Acquisition

There seems to be a few ideas as to how children acquire language. The Nativist theory holds that language is pretty much innate and all children are born with the capability of speaking and understand grammar due to an innate grammar module. Social Interactionists seem to believe that adults play more of a part in spreading language to their children. After reading through the articles, I believe that both of these theories have some truth. I do think there is a critical period for language development and if that is the case, then language cannot be completely innate. Also, the fact that children universally make the same errors in the same way must mean something as well. Humans must have something built into them in order for the same type of mistakes to occur worldwide.

Also, if children are born with langauge capabilities and in addition, need adults to model language to assist in the learning process, then it makes sense that the more adult interaction with language that a child experiences, the better grasp of language they will have. I believe this coincides with the way children learn to read as well. If children are born with language capabilities, then it makes sense that they might be born with reading capabilities as well. So, if they are capable of learning to read, then adult assistance and exposure to reading would also benefit them in learning to acquire reading skills. So, if a child is read to a great deal or is heavily exposed to the written word in other ways, it would make sense that that child would be familiar with reading and probably more skilled in that area than a child who had not been as heavily exposed.

I know that from personal experience, my sister read to my niece and nephew every night before bed when they were small and neither child had difficulty learning to read. Furthermore, as a side note, both of them enjoy reading a great deal and I believe there is a correlation there as well.

Response to three articles

I found the article on Literacy from Wikipedia to be very informative and thought provoking. I read through the article and learned about the different levels of literacy around the world and various definitions of literacy, but the end of the article almost contradicted this information in my opinion. The end of the article says "Some scholars argue that literacy is not autonomous or a set of discrete technical and objective skills that can be applied across context. Instead, they posit that literacy is determined by the cultural, political, and historical contexts of the community in which it is used, drawing on academic disciplines including cultural anthropology and linguistic anthropology to make the case." After thinking about this idea, I believe I agree with it. I do not see how one definition could be applied and then used to measure literacy around the world. I think the real way to determine literacy in different areas would be to determine the forms of communication used in each society and then literacy levels could be measured accordingly. This might take a great deal more time and I am not exactly sure how someone would even begin to do that, but I think it would be the most accurate form of measurement.

Also, I was not suprised by the Silencing Teachers article. I think that a lot of times, an administrator might make a decision without thinking about the actual implications it might have in the classroom. Jaeger expresses that the administration never once thought that the teachers might have had something valuable to offer. This statement is so sad because the teachers are the ones that are doing the actual teaching and transferring of knowledge and they are the ones who know their students. I think the people who are actually doing the teaching should have a say in what they are doing. Also, I would like to learn more about the different ways to teach reading and how flexible most school districts are with the teaching styles.

Also, the "Open Books" collaboration seems to be an effective way to promote reading. I think these illustrators should be celebrated because of their great contributions to children's literature.

Hi

Hello, I am Rachel. I graduated from Rutgers last year and this is my second semester at Montclair.