And it is done

This semester I learned that I had a pretty good idea what literacy was and was able to see it in all its glory. I worked with the middle school and was able to see literacy through their eyes, just like I talked about in my IgniteTalk. Of my experiences there, I can say that I now understand the need to keep up with the schools around me to understand what their needs are. It’s shaped the ideas around what it is I need to be expecting my students to do once they get into high school, or respectively, how to prepare them in middle school for everything that comes after. What do I think about teaching literacy now? I think that pretty much I could use any of the lovely vocabulary words that we have been given but it would still amount to: Literacy is important because it is accessible at all levels. It changes, grows, it doesn’t have a standard, but an understanding is made that it is every part of reading, writing, surfing, hacking, presenting, explaining, presenting and networking. Literacy is hackable, creatable, diagram-able, dismantle-able and comes in every shape, size and genre. And if I was to take anything from this course and apply it, I would think about how important it is to acknowledge every kind of genre of literacy and expand my own knowledge of what literacy looks like. There will always be on particular way to do a thing but there are new ways that those things can be done too. It’s realizing that its all about creativity and seeing things from another perspective and as I learned from Gallager, its creating a flood of information and books and technology with the intent to reach out and find other people who think like you or question you. Its knowing how to best take your resources and use them.