After taking this class, I have gotten many answers to literacy queries as well as come up with many new questions. One of the most important overall questions that we have been trying to figure out is; what is literacy? This is a very complicated and difficult question, but I would personally define literacy as the ability to read, write, and effectively communicate with those around you as well as possess all of skills needed for you to function in your everyday society. I recognize that this is a somewhat loose definition of literacy and doesn’t give any specific guidelines or requirements for what people actually need to know, but this is because the requirements of what make a person literate are constantly changing. Not only do the skills needed change over time as society changes and we acquire new technology, but they also vary depending on where you live and what your job is.

I have always thought of literacy in terms of reading and writing, and so this class really expanded my mind in terms of beginning to think about functional literacy. I never would have considered writing a check or navigating through a grocery store as literacy before, so now I think of literacy very differently. It really seems to encompass nearly every aspect of our lives and is just a much bigger part of our lives than I previously thought. I’ve also had a lot of thought changes regarding education and the teaching of literacy in our society.

The first big thought change is that I now see many more problems with our current education system than I did before. I’ve always loved to write and especially to read, and probably as a result of that, I moved through the AR reading system and similar structured learning systems without incident. However, I do see now that the programs are problematic for many students, and that I myself could have received greater benefit from a program that was structured differently. For something as complicated and varied as literacy, the literacy programs taught in schools are terribly narrow and structured. It doesn’t seem beneficial to lock kids into a reading level group and work off of a point system. The point system especially bothers me because there are so many important reasons that kids need to learn how to read and the last thing they should be focusing on is gaining imaginary “points”. Instead it seems like we should be teaching kids the true importance of reading and literacy and what it means to the big picture of their lives.

After experiencing some mental shifts in my thoughts on literacy education, I began to focus on what educators could do to change programs, use new tools, and make learning a more beneficial experience for their students. I read James Gee’s book on literacy and video games, and this was especially useful in helping me see that there are many different ways for kids to learn, and many alternatives to traditional teaching methods. That book got me thinking about how much there is to learn from something like a video game, that many people would dismiss as an educational tool.

I also realized how many new and useful technologies there are now that could be easily accessed in classrooms. Growing up I mostly just remember reading hard copies of books, and occasionally making power point slideshows for presentations. Now there are so many different programs that can be utilized to make learning a more interesting and interactive experience. Things like google docs, popcorn, and simple video editing programs allow students to easily collaborate on projects and make visual aids that may reach some students more than simply reading a book would. This brings up an important point about connecting with students in today’s society.

Adolescents in today’s society are extremely connected to technology and pop culture, and so it is important that we shift teaching methods to include subjects that students will be able to relate to and be interested in. Although I believe that there are some texts and things that need to be taught that students won’t be thrilled about, I think it’s important to have a variety of lessons so that students don’t completely disengage from what is being taught to them. After working in the adolescent literacy and identity group, I see that adolescents especially need their own lesson plans that are crafted to their specific learning needs.

The last area that I feel I really gained some perspective in are sponsors. I’ve always felt that learning needs to extend beyond regular teachers and the classroom, but now I feel that it is even more important than I previously thought. Since literacy extends to every part of our lives, I believe it is more important than ever that children receive help from their parents and have a supportive learning environment at home as well as at school. I think it’s crucial that everyone works to ensure that all children have access to the help and materials that they need to explore and continue learning.

I’m not planning on being a teacher, but I hope to have children one day and I want to make sure that they are successful with literacy and receive a great education both at school and at home. While I don’t expect to be putting any of these new ideas to use in a classroom, I do feel like I’ve gained a lot of knowledge to help my future children continue their education at home, and have learned how I can be a better sponsor to any child that needed help or guidance with reading, writing, and becoming more literate.

Moje’s The Complex World of Adolescent Literacy: Myths, Motivations and Mystery made a lot of interesting observations about adolescent literacy. However, I was most interested by the section that discussed adolescent’s motivation for why they wanted to read and write.

This section was interesting because much of the discussion I have read on this topic is geared towards trying to figure out what the best way is to motivate students and seems to be looking for a “standard” that will work for all students in our modern society. In Moje’s interviews with students, she found that there was an enormous amount of variety in the answers that children gave about why they want to read and write. This struck a chord with me because I feel like educators are often looking for a “cure-all” way to teach that they can apply to every student, and often times they are not flexible if one of their students is struggling and not gaining anything from a reading program etc…

Instead of trying to make a new program that still won’t work for every kid, it seems like educators should be focusing on coming up with multiple ways of teaching literacy to their students. There are so many new tools in our modern society that can be utilized in the classroom, and in my opinion, one tool isn’t any better than another. Many different methods should be employed to try and  help each student.

I also thought that Moje made good points about literacy outside of the classroom. She talked about the fact that some students had a hard time finding  accessing materials or knowing what to read. This seems like an important point as well, because reading and writing needs to extend beyond the classroom and  continue in adolescent’s home lives in order for them to be as successful as they can. This is a trickier area because it depends on the children’s home lives and family situations, however, it seems like an important area to explore and discuss more in the future.

I really enjoyed doing article groups over the last few weeks. It was a fun project to work on and the presentations have been great! The activities that went along with the lectures were all creative and I enjoyed the interactive aspect of the process.

My favorite presentation was the digital literacy group that went today. I thought that the popcorn website that makes movie clips was awesome and I’d like to try making one myself in the future. I also really liked the video game group. Their activity was well thought out and I thought that they did the best job of using their topic to help us think about learning in the new way.

Overall article groups were a good experience. I would definitely be interested in doing more group projects for the remainder of the semester because I think it’s been very beneficial for me to think through ideas about literacy and education tools in a small group format rather than alone or as a giant class.

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Why_Online_Programs_Fail.html

For my article I chose “Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It” by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel. In this article, the authors discuss the difficulties with online education programs and explain why they aren’t very successful, as well as offer some potential solutions to the problem.

I thought this article was interesting because I have taken several different online and hybrid classes in a variety of different subjects at CSU Chico, and never had much success with any of them. I found that when I took classes in my major, I didn’t get the full extent of learning that I would have received in the classroom, especially when it came to interacting with other students and group discussion which I believe is very valuable. The GE classes that I took weren’t very successful either, because I felt extremely disconnected from what I was learning and ended up doing the bare minimum of work without being inspired to put any creative thought into what I was doing.

This topic is extremely relevant to what we are working on in class. One of the main ideas that has come up over and over again is computer literacy, which directly applies to online classes. Our new technology and literacies allow us to explore new ways of learning through the internet, but at the moment, our current systems are only providing students with a tiny fracture of the experience that they could be having in a physical classroom with their peers. The main problem that the authors of the articles have identified, is that there is no infrastructure between the students or the classes that each student is taking. People are isolated and have little to no interaction with each other. The classes are extremely linear and students can simply complete the work in each link one at a time without digging in deeper to the subject they are studying.

The authors suggest that in order to fix the current problems, we should do several things: design a new learning model rather than basing online learning off of our current school programs, incorporate more technological pedagogy (because many of the people designing these programs don’t have extensive knowledge of the tools available for their online class), stop worrying about online learning overtaking traditional learning, take more risks with the programs, and finally, hold group sessions to develop much broader learning strategies.

I personally think that developing online learning is an extremely important area for us to focus our energy in. I personally like the idea of online classes and enjoy the convenience of being able to “attend class” around my work and other activities, I just have never felt that I received a quality education from any of them. It would be great to see some changes that helped bring online learning up to par with traditional learning so that more students would feel like online learning is an option for them.

My article group is adolescent identity and literacy. So far the research that we have done has been all over the place because this is a very broad topic, but there have been some consistencies in the essays and articles that I have read so far.

One of the main points that everyone seems to agree on is that adolescents are a very unique age group, and require a much different style of teaching than children or adults do. All of the authors have stressed the idea that identity and literacy are closely tied together when it comes to adolescent learning. At that age, kids are starting to discover who they are, and will latch on to ideas or renown figures that they can relate to. It is crucial to make the material that you are teaching them relatable so that they will be interested in what they are learning about. If adolescents are unable to find a way to relate to the literature they’re reading then they will detach and either become resistant to learning or, at the very least, won’t take away as much from their studies as they could.

Another extremely consistent theme is that our techniques for teaching adolescents need to be updated to match the current times. Pop culture is huge today and is an important part of most adolescent’s lives. Many educators feel that pop culture should be incorporated into the education process. Nowadays computer literacy is required for almost any job and for daily life, and pop culture and social media go hand in hand with that area of knowledge. Social media is also critical because it can be a major way to get kids engaged and interested in what they are doing in school.

Most of the authors whose articles I have read seem to feel that many of our programs related to reading and writing are outdated and need to be improved. While all feel that social media and pop culture need to be incorporated, they are also concerned with preserving the old material as well. So far I haven’t seen any great solutions to the problem of trying to combine the old and new material. It will be interesting to see what people come up with in the future!