Today’s technology has reinvigorated the art of correspondence. E-mail, texting and Facebook have people using a QWERTY keyboard and the twelve keys or pads of their cells phone to communicate. My son and his peers write to each other much more than my friends and I ever did but at what price? I’ll admit I’m writing to friends and family too on all of the devices. For the most part, I use the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation I learned in elementary school but I must confess they are slipping away. My son told me I didn’t need to sign my text messages because he knew who was writing. He also could not understand why I bother with question marks, commas, and apostrophes. I realize texting and writing in Blogs and other on-line settings are not the same but I’m not sure everyone sees it that way. Bass and Rosenzweig note that “writing through on-line interaction,” allows for “joining literacy with disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry” (6) which is very exciting but I worry that in a student’s haste to participate they may not write carefully and thoughtfully. This is something that needs to be considered as we use technology in the classroom. At this point, I’m not sure how this will work. It’s something I hope to understand by the end of this course.
Bass and Rosenzweig discuss the importance of teaching “the critical evaluation of sources” (8) and “introducing students to the inquiry process” (10) before diving into use of web for accessing information. Is it safe to assume students will arrive at with this understanding or is this something we should be prepared to address in our classrooms?
hey Angela - you might check out this Wired article about new media and literacy:
ReplyDeleteClive Thompson on the New Literacy