Thoughts on Literacy-Grant

Every time I think about literacy I always tend to connect to general categories. First, I think about reading and writing and the use of text. Szwed’s piece was a key first piece for me to consider about literacy because I think it’s important to realize how often literacy practices are developing and changing and adding up and being distributed to many demographics. Hamilton’s writing on studying images gave me a better outlook on the way people used text through out history. The picture we discussed in class about all the train passengers had a newspaper made me think of how the “newspaper in front of your face” generation might consider the “phone glued to your eyes” generation less literate! Since they use diverse forms of text the two users are accustomed to specific forms of literacy. A newspaper reader may have a hard time navigating a smart phone or a smart phone users may become frustrated at the physicality and engagement of a newspaper. (CTRL+F: Donald Trump said, “…., is a lot different than flipping to page 8 of your newspaper and looking through your article to find the golden quotations).

Brandt goes more in depth about the concept of sponsorship. Since I want to be a teacher, when I think about sponsorship I think of it in a very specific way. I know I want to teach high school students so I stay awake at night thinking of engaging ways to positively influence my classes. I not only want kids to think about English, but ideas about communicating ideas through business, science, art or any interest they want to pursue in life. Being up to date with technology would be a key thing for my class philosophy. As an example, I wouldn’t force my students to use dictionaries in a foreign language class, when they could look up words and full sentences with in seconds. Hopefully I would change my lessons to incorporate this convenient technology. So for me my role in sponsorship is very important to me. A story that I liked was Carol White’s in Brandt’s piece. Brandt argued White’s literacy sponsor was her employer, and that she used the practices she learned there to financially support her family. In this instance White’s family serves as her personal motivation to learn a new practice.

The relationship between learning and language is something that I naturally consider when thinking about literacy. Almost completely independent from reading and writing text, and sponsorship, the idea of literacy can embody a larger idea about learning and the complexity of language. Franklin’s blog about learning to use Twitter helped me understand key ideas and processes of accumulating literacy. After she was learned the actual mechanics of tweeting she then had to consider how to reach her audience and communicate with them. Using 140 characters started to make me think of the use of language twitter created. Someone could tweet: “Chipotle >>>>>” and I would know what this means. It translates to: “Chipotle is better than every restaurant, every food, and everything!” Twitter users took a mathematic symbol and used it to communicate a big idea with very few characters. When I first saw this symbol I think I asked my friend who used it what she meant and then instantly I was able to use it as a part of my own repertoire on Twitter. The English language Twitter vernacular could be indecipherable to a person who’s unfamiliar with it. When I see a new trend on twitter it’s so easy to figure it out and copy to communicate to the audience you want to grab whether its with my friends debating politics or me retweeting funny cat videos. The complexity of subset literacy practices mixed into the English language are infinite, as I imagine would be the same in other languages as well. I would make the claim confidently that the internet fosters the possibility for unlimited subsets of literacy practices but also makes it very easy to learn them.