Literacy Today

I’ll be honest, I signed up for this class because I was told I needed to in order to sign up for the Internship in English. I ended up deciding to sign up for the internship next semester, but stayed in this class. I wasn’t entirely sure what the class had in store for me, but I’m glad I stayed.

Having two classes in the same classroom with the same teacher at the same table makes it difficult sometimes to separate what we learned in one class with what we talked about in another. Many times, the principles can be applied to both subjects. Literacy is one of those things.

We as a generation are reading more than any other generation previously simply because we have so many ways to. Social media, texting, and commercials are all examples of literacy that no one had dreamed of one hundred years ago, yet they are all ingrained in our culture today. If you are a journalist, but are unable to use Twitter, you are seriously lacking in your skillset. Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr are the main ways people find out about what’s happening in the world. Someone can hear within minutes that there was a natural disaster in China, rather than having to wait until the next day (or never) with traditional news sources.

Literacy to me has always meant what I’m pretty sure it meant to most of my classmates before this semester. It meant being able to read. However, that isn’t entirely true.

Since starting the class, that definition has changed drastically. Literacy is not only happening when you’re able to read books, but also when you watch an advertisement on TV and use the computer. It’s using Siri on your smartphone and it’s using Twitter to connect with the world (#twitteracy).