Harris - New Literacies

1) YOUR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING:

My conceptual understanding of literacy has definitely improved since beginning this class. Initially, my definition of 'literacy' largely revolved around what constitutes a literate person. This project helped me realize that 'literacy' and 'literate' are two very different things. One's exposure to a number of different forms of literacy aids them in the process of becoming literate. This project helped solidify in my mind that literacy is not limited to things that involve reading and writing, but also things that provoke language through internal thought as well as external verbalization. The development of my own digital literacy using Weebly helped me realize that technology can be incorporated to make virtually any lesson more effective. I am now more knowledgeable about the fact that, to provide early elementary students with exposure to literacy, I need not only use picturebooks, but may also refer to images, videos, and voice recordings to provoke internal thought and external verbalization of those thoughts. Reviewing my classmates' projects allowed me to briefly explore and becoming minimally familiar with a wide variety of technologies that I could incorporate into my classroom lessons in the future.

2) CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS:

As technology continues to advance, students' knowledge of and familiarity with the various forms of technology available increases. For this reason, as a teacher, part of my job will be to constantly be working to discover and familiarize myself with the forms of technology that my students are or will be using. However, it is doubtful that all students in the classroom will have equal exposure to all forms of technology that are used. Some students may not have any exposure at all to one or more of the forms. For this reason, I will need to walk all students through the process of navigating and manipulating the technology in order to introduce students to the technology who are unfamiliar with it, and also to review it with the students who are familiar with it. Once all students demonstrate that they have a descent grasp on how to operate and use the technology, I will begin to incorporate that particular form of technology into lessons. In specific regard to my project, I believe digital literacy is a very effective way to provide students with exposure to cultural literacy. On the Weebly site we created, we were able to integrate photographs and videos, maps, links, facts, and more, which would not be possible without the use of some form of technology. The incorporation and use of digital literacies in my classroom to help teach lessons will help my students become literate, in regards to language arts and technology.