This article is not only a great boost of confidence for teachers who may feel inadequate when dealing with new age multimedia texts softwares or newer technology in the classroom, but also shows some great activities to use when trying to learn about these new literacy types and text outputs and implement them in a classroom.
I can see how many teachers can be scared of new technology or formats because they are either unfamiliar with them, or think they are too "out of the loop" to learn. Because of this they stray from using these visual literacies and stick to using alphabetic literacies.
The majority of text output in today's society is done through computers using word processors, online blogs, pdf files, and other ways of reading and creating text. With this high prevalence, it is of the upmost importance that as a teacher I help my students learn how to use these sources properly and in order to do that I need to incorporate them into my classroom.
One of the assignments that is listed in this article is for students to reflect upon the different types of literacies that they have used in their lifetimes. This allows students to look at both visual literacies and alphabetic literacies, comparing and contrasting the two, seeing the benefits and the negative sides of both, and seeing how both play a role in their lives. This also gives them the opportunity to creat a visual essay, actually on the types of literacies. I think giving students the opportunity to use visual literacies is a great way for them to build experiences and knowledge they can use in the present time and in their future classroom and life endeavors.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
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