Everything Old is New Again

I’m now more convinced than ever that the concept of literacy is no different in the digital age than it ever was, even though there are certainly many new forms it can take. Clarence Fisher identifies three components of literacy: comprehension, production, and interactivity, but then goes on to make a really big deal about how literacy is in a constant state of change. I kept expecting him to then add new components of literacy to his list as a result of newer media, but he didn’t, which proves the point that literacy is literacy. All of the many skills students need that Fisher discusses, his “toolbox,” are things students need to be literate in any kind of media. When I got my MAT thirteen years ago, our clinical professor for social studies was a Vietnam vet who talked in every single class about how the US was involved in Vietnam for more than twenty years, but the average textbook covers Vietnam in about two paragraphs. In other words, he was teaching us that we had to teach our students to “evaluate for content” and “discern the truth.” I’m sure anyone who has received a teaching degree in the last decade, or even anyone who has had any professional development in the last ten years recognizes the need for differentiating instruction, part of which, to me, is allowing kids some latitude in and teaching them how to choose an appropriate medium in which to present their work. One can open any crappy textbook and notice all different forms of text combined in a single space. The internet didn’t invent that, though Clarence Fisher seems to think it did.

If anything, I believe that the “constant state of change” in technology behooves us to teach students skills that will allow them to adapt to this constant flux, rather than trying to teach them each new technology as it comes along. I can make an analogy to teaching history here: just as there’s no possible way to teach “all” the historical content in one course, there’s not possible way to teach “all” the new technology. Just as we have to focus on processes and teach kids how to “do” history rather than to memorize it, so do we have to teach kids to “do” technology.

As an urban educator, I also take exception to Thomas Friedman’s “the world is flat” analogy. While technology may be flattening the world as a whole, allowing parts of the populations of China and India to “catch up,” these populations are just leaving the rest of their countrymen who do not have technological access farther and farther behind. The same holds true in the US. People seem to be so concerned about making our students technologically literate because China and India might surpass us, but what about the inequities within our own country? The walls haven’t come down when my district blocks our use of social networking technologies, but the private school across town has access to this technology. I guess in the end I’m just more a Jonathan Kozol girl than a Thomas Friedman girl.