The world of Literacy

We see literacy as:

Social (always changing and advancing)

Private vs. Public

Ability is based on interest

Literacy cycles

Cultural differences

Media

Professional/Proper/Casual

Appealing

Vertical vs. Horizontal

Multi-literacies (the way you are taught)

Literacy is academic and cognitive

Discourse

Sponsors

Practice vs. Skills

Functional

Accumulation

“Such practices do matter for both school achievement and for young people’s emotional and cognitive development,” (Moje 10).

We have been discussing literacy as an academic issue whereas if someone is illiterate that they are unsuccessful readers and achievers in school. I liked this quote because in my article group we are discussing Gender and Literacy and I found a video based on a man who wrote a book called, “The Minds of Boys,” in which he discusses differences between genders. He says, “What is going to help these children isn’t what  they read, it’s that they read “. Our teaching society stresses so heavily on the issue that children either need to be motivated or challenged in their readings rather than being tested on assigned readings or adequate level readings, but the truth of the matter is that kids just need to read! Regardless of what it is. I remember being younger and being in the AR program, I LOVED reading the Goosebumps series. I loved the thrill of it and the mystery of what would happen next, but this series was not a part of the AR program. I barely got to read them because I didn’t have time for a free-read on top of homework. So I tried reading the books that the other kids read, but they were just so predictable or slow or just didn’t meet my interest. My brother on the other hand picked books of several higher reading levels, his teachers didn’t encourage him, but he did it anyway and took a quiz on the book and scored really highly. These books intrigued him. Now, my brother is a complete book worm, he can tell you what any word means, can relate these stories to his real life experiences and has all the reading and writing skills that adolescents are “supposed” to have. I’m the opposite. I can’t read books, I despise it. I can read articles, web pages, blogs, etc. because they are short lived and straight to the point. Because I wasn’t involved in reading as a child, I really struggle with reading now. My brother read and still reads. I can tell you about Shakespeare, Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, October Sky, and all these required materials from High School because I listened in class. My brother couldn’t tell you anything from these stories because they never interested him. My point being, I entirely support the idea that it doesn’t matter what an adolescent is reading, it matters that they are just reading. From reading of interest their mind will expand and explore other books and will comprehend new material better. I think teachers are too worried about structured reading and certain programs to follow when really, reading itself whether it is magazines, music lyrics, websites, short stories, articles, or books, it will benefit a person academically, emotionally and cognitively just as Moje said.

 

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

The Hybrid Pedagogy I read is based on Personal Learning Networks. Alison Seaman begins her article with bringing Sherry Turkle’s argument to life. Turkle thinks that technology is not only unbeneficial to our society, but that it is harmful: “We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true … If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely”. This statement does make a valid point, but the reality of our life is that we truly are never alone. As unique or isolated that we may feel, there are so many other people who feel the exact same way.

Seaman makes the obvious arguments of how technology truly connects us all. Through technology we are provided communication, research and cooperation. Seaman says, ‘What can lead to isolation is a lack of both technical skills and an understanding of the social elements of the Web, both of which are required for productive social networks”. This is not only true because our society has evolved into a technological relm, but it has now formed into a way of teaching.

I was intrigued by this article because during our article groups we have learned that there are thousands of different techniques to teaching. As we have studied literacy we have concluded that their are different genres of literacy: social, private, public, gender differences, cultural differences, etc. With our articles it is evident that through sports, video games, pop culture, several diverse media techniques, and gender differences that teaching techniques have to be adapted to each genre and interest of a person. Not every individual is the same. Everyone learns differently and through these resources I think there can both be better teaching and better learning.

Our group is studying the idea of gender and literacy. Throughout the articles we have read we all obtained that the common interest is that females learn literacy socially and males learn literacy more privately and through symbols. We have found some really interesting stereotypes regarding genders such as females are better at reading and writing whereas boys are better at math and science. These articles also said that females are stronger and memorizing and males learn better symbolically. These claims seem outdated to my group and myself and we are fighting to reestablish to people how boys and girls learn literacy.

We think that literacy in regards to gender isn’t based on female vs. males, it is what interests each gender in literacy. For example, if a class is assigned a reading based on a love story, statistically speaking girls would likely be more interested in the story than boys would. In an opposite situation if a reading was assigned based on video games, boys are likely to be more intrigued in the reading than girls. I really disagree with these articles that argue which genders are “biologically” better at certain subjects. I think it is more based around someones personal interest. I’m really excited for our group activity that we will perform because I think it will be beneficial to us as a class in moving forward with defining literacy in the gender aspect with our own experiment and results.