What are the new literacies?
chip bruce
(chip@uiuc.edu)
(ready to use)
ASK
Subject Areas
| Education, Information Science, Language Arts, Social Studies |
Unit Keywords
Open Directory Category
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Society/Issues/Education/Literacy/Literacy_in_the_Information_Age
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Rationale of the Unit
What are the new literacy practices? What demands do they entail for literacy educators?
In the workplace, literacy is assuming an ever more central role. This is a new kind of literacy, which entails not only basic reading and writing, but the ability to use reading and writing to solve problems and to communicate complex information. It is necessary for "knowledge work," the new modal form of work:
By the end of this century knowledge workers will make up a third or more of the work force in the United States--as large a proportion as manufacturing workers ever made up, except in wartime." (Peter Drucker, 1994, p. 62).
In an interview for internet.au , Nathan Shedroff, Creative Director at Vivid Studios, says, Few people are ever taught to create successful, satisfying exprences for others. Mostly, those folks are in the performing arts: dancers, comedians, storytellers, singers, actors, etc. I now wish I had more training in theater and performing arts to rely on...especially improvisational theater. That's like the highest form of ineractivity.
Do we really know what the fundamental skills for 21st-century literacy will be?
Interview: vivid: strikingly bright (1997, February). internet.au (No. 16, pp. 40-41). |
Background and Resources
Activities and Open-ended problems
ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE OF CLASS
Search on the web to see what you can find about the idea of new forms of literacy developing through new information and communication technologies. What would these postulated changes in literacy practices mean for education, quite aside from any specific use of new technologies for teaching?
- Find at least one additional web source addressing these issues.
- Go to the Literacy in the Information Age site in Open Directory and add the URL you found plus a description, using the Open Directory Project format.
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Dialogues, Discussions, and Presentations
ON-LINE DIALOGUES
Discuss these issues and the site you found in the class web board.
IN-CLASS DISCUSSIONS
Bruce, B. C. Twenty-first century literacy
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
View the E-Literate? video.
Questions: - What specific items do you remember from the video?
- What would you add or take away?
- What assumptions does it make?
- How would you title it?
- Who should see it?
- What have you experienced similar to the video?
- What would you say to the video (or its creators)?
Squire, Kurt (2001, September 16). Deconstructing images from the media: Analyzing sound and news footage.
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Assessment, Related Questions, and Story of the Unit
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