I imagine that every parent investigating a potential school for their child wants to know how well that school is doing in the development of literacy in its students. I also imagine the series of questions that might be asked: “How well does your school do on the Provincial Literacy Test?” “What reading programmes do you have in place?” and “How do you encourage kids to read for pleasure?”
Any school worth serious consideration for your child would need to provide positive, detailed answers to those questions. However, these questions are often related to ‘traditional’ literacy and fail to address ‘new literacy’ – a critical skill for your child’s success in the 21st century.
The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. In today’s schools much of the focus in teaching centers around the printed word i.e. books, journals and the like. I maintain that we need to be shifting some of our focus to ‘new literacy’. The Curriculum 2.0 website suggests:
“As our world changes, so must curriculum if it is to remain a relevant institution whose mission is to prepare our students for the demands of citizenship on the world stage. Every day our pupils read and navigate through a “global electronic library” as well as through the media housed in traditional libraries. They have access to a wealth of information and resources unimaginable even five years ago. Students are able to access, create, design and present information in so many new and exciting ways that educators are having trouble keeping pace. A new literacy has emerged and with it comes a brand new set of skills, responsibilities and challenges. It is time to rethink the role that information technology plays in schools and transition from disconnected entities to partners in learning.”
Daniel Pink in “A Whole New Mind” points out that we live in a predominantly left-brain society “… that has long honoured linear, logical, left to right, top to bottom, beginning to end …” thinking. These left-brain attributes are precisely the skills that enable student to develop sound reading habits in the print medium.
Don Tapscott in “Grown Up Digital” suggests that when reading in hypertext (on the Internet) students need the same left-brain skills Pink identifies “… plus the ability to scan, navigate, analyze whether information is pertinent, synthesize, and remember what question you’re trying to answer as you click on the links.” My suggestion to parents when exploring schools is to ask what strategies the schools have in place to develop the skills for this ‘new literacy.’
The explosion of information on the internet, coupled with the Net Generation’s natural tendencies to go to the net as their first source, make it all the more important for teachers and schools to develop critical thinking skills that will enable their students to evaluate the information they will find. When seeking a school for their children, parents need to ask how schools are addressing the ‘new literacy.’
Not only was this informative, but also gave me a different perspective on my child’s literacy, and how its being affected by the Internet.
Hi John,
If you are interested in reading a bit more about this there is a link in the text below that will take you to an interesting academic study. The text is from Will Richardson’s blog http://weblogg-ed.com/
Will writes:
What is different here, though, is something that is not being articulated by the Partnership or many others, and that is the learning that can be done (and is being done already) using online social tools and networks. I’d point you to a recent MacArthur Foundation study which concludes that “New media forms have altered how youth socialize and learn” and that this has very important implications for schools and teaching (http://tinyurl.com/55a878, pdf). While most kids’ uses of these technologies are “friendship based”, the more compelling shift is when their use is “interest based” or when they connect with other kids or adults around the topics or ideas they are passionate to learn about. With access to the Internet, and with an understanding of how to create and navigate these online, social learning spaces, opportunities for learning widely and deeply reside in the connections that we make with other people who can teach or mentor us and/or collaboarate with us in the learning process. That, I think, is where we find 21st Century skills that are different and important. Sure, those connections require a well developed reading and writing literacy, and critical thinking and creativity and many of the others are skills inherent to the process. But this new potential to learn easily and deeply in environments that are not bounded by physical space or scheduled time constraints requires us as educators to take a hard look at how we are helping our students realize the potentials of those opportunities.