Can Literacy be Taught?

Interestingly, each computer has something different on the screen.  This is probably fine.  Students should be free to use their machines as a thought extensions, utilizing the tools in ways that make sense to them, to help them make sense of what’s being taught. (( Richbourg, Smyth. “What I Do.” Flickr. 23 Apr 2005. Web. 7 Nov 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsmyther/10599159/>. ))

My week is over, with gigs in Raleigh, Long Island, and three full days around Edmonton, Canada.  I take the elevator down in about ten minutes to grab a cab for the Edmonton airport, landing in Raleigh at about 4:40 PM.  So I have ten minutes, and its the first ten minutes I’ve had in a week to think about blogging.

So I decided to check for comments on 2¢ Worth that needed moderating, and was surprised to find a number of them.  Alas, I haven’t gotten anywhere, because the first one grabbed my attention, a comment from Susi, a teacher in Bangkok.  It was a response to my blog post on the difference between Computer Applications and Computer Application (minus the ending “s”), and she implied that to learn a language, such as Japanese, and to become fluent in the language to any degree, it takes more than just teaching it.  It has to become a tool for the learning.
 
Students who become fluent in reading, do so because they read, not because they were taught the basic reading skills.  Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without having been taught the basic reading skills.  But they become fluent because they are required to read for the rest of their formal education and beyond.

If we expect students to become fluent in the broader and equally critical information and technology skills of being literate in a networked, digital, and abundant (contemporary) information environment, then they should be required to use those skills in all of their formal education, just like reading.  Reading, for education, is a learning literacy.  Reading, processing, and expressing knowledge in a networked, digital, and abundant information landscape are equally important learning skills — learning literacies. 

Our stated goal, right now, in every school and school district, should be for every student to walk into their classrooms with a computer (literacy machine, not a handheld) under their arm.  It’s no long a matter of “if” — it’s “when.”

..because literacy skills are meaningless until they become literacy habits.

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13 thoughts on “Can Literacy be Taught?”

  1. Can literacy be taught? What a loaded question. If it can’t, a lot of teachers would lose their jobs.

    The fact is, literacy can be taught well or poorly. Teaching literacy well involves an inspired knowledge of the content, motivating students with engaging ideas, allowing them to collaborate to build upon ideas, enabling them to see that literacy is not just for English class, progressing with a sensitivity to a student’s skill level, and empowering them through vital assignments to be critical thinkers. This process, as you say, includes a networked, digital, and abundant learning environment.

  2. I think the point that David is trying to make is that tech literacy isn’t just a skill that is taught, but more of an attitude and a behavior that is ingrained and reinforced through repeated practice an modeling. This can only happen if tech literacy in intertwined throughout the curriculum

  3. We can teach literacy skills. We can (and do) teach the basic reading skills and the higher order skills of using networked, digital, abundant information. But to become fluent, truly literate, then you have to practice them as learning skills. We do this largely with basic reading already — as what course does not require students to read. They same, I say, is true for the skills involved in using today’s information environment. They need to become ingrained as a learning skills in every class for students to become fluent and for them to grow from being skills to being habits.

    — dave —

    1. Dave and Curtuis,

      I believe that teaching technology literacy is vitally important for students. As I am a language arts educator, I can even admit that students learning how to read, write, research, and communicate effectively over the internet is equally important to learning how to apply these skills within a classroom and through the use of novels and texts. However, to teach these skills is not as easy as it may seem. I will readily admit that my students often know more about technology than I do,but they also believe that they already know everything they need to know about posting responses and their ideas to an online forum. However, the skills that these students lack are in considering the impact of their words before pressing the ‘send’ button, considering how to effectively extend their knowledge of a subject by using reliable resources and websites, and learning how to maintain their privacy and be safe when using technology in today’s society. As A. November (2008) writes, “Our students need us to provide the excellent role models and the thoughtful ethics this medium [technology]demands,” (p. 79) because “If we do not teach our students how this powerful media works, the worse case may not be student abuse….The real danger is that a majority of our students will lack the critical thinking skills necessary to separate the message from the medium” (p. 80).
      Reference:
      November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
      Publications.

  4. I agree with Curtis that literacy isn’t just a skill but an attitude and a behavior that are integrated into daily life and should be expanded upon in that context. Technology isn’t going to go away, so we need to use it to its fullest capacity and integrate the literacy along with it.

  5. How timely! I have been struggling with this issue at my school the past two weeks. Our district did not meet AYP in the area of reading for our free and reduced lunch population for the second year in a row. The state dept. of ed. assigned a consultant to guide us through establishing a formal plan for meeting AYP. Problem is, all of the interventions involve removing kids from their normal classes to work on reading skills (almost all of which focus only on grammar and mechanics). I have argued two points in this matter which have been met with general frustration from the team developing this plan: 1. If we are cited for reading in this category it is most likely that these kids have not had the breadth of experiences to draw upon to adequately comprehend what they read; and 2. Taking students out of courses that expand their breadth of content knowledge will further cripple their ability to comprehend in the future. When I broach this issue I am told that everything we put into this AYP plan has to be data driven (based solely on data from our standardized test scores). Ignoring other data addresses only the symptoms and not the problem. Also, if the process schools take in addressing this issue have to be data driven, perhaps a good data driven decision would be not to follow advice from state departments who have not had a good record in helping schools meet AYP.

    The same is true for any kind of literacy. It has to be a holistic approach. Teaching content is teaching literacy both for reading and writing and for tech skills. Some problems cannot be solved by focusing on them. This issue reminds me of those optical illusions where if you look past the image a 3d picture appears but focusing on the image produces only dots and odd patterns.

  6. Carl, I sympathize with your frustration. As a writing teacher, it was always frustrating to defend our writing workshop program to administration and parents who thought we should have a grammar book and a spelling curriculum to teach writing. In order to write well, students need to write a lot–not learn grammar in isolation and and never in practice–just as in order to learn to read, students need to read a lot and deal with different content areas in a variety of forms. Your examples really do relate to the holistic approach that is necessary to help make students information literate. Teaching ABOUT technology and information literacy is not the same as allowing, guiding, and encouraging students to use technology and search for information in all classes throughout the school day.

  7. I thoroughly agree with Karen, and I do sympathize with you Carl, as well. Our school has put all kinds of data-driven measures in place to prove that the state’s magic number of time on task in reading hours are met. In order to do this, we’ve short-circuited the exact genre of reading kids need most–non-fiction! Kids are naturally curious about their world…both scientifically and from a socio-political standpoint. The media world supports that interest.( The outside stage is global…hello?) If we lived in a wireless environment with a lap-top under each kid’s arm…I could nail my goals in writing, reading and in the content areas! We’d knock their socks off every day! I myself am a writer as well as a teacher. I rarely write on paper except in my journal, and haven’t for years. Literate learners need practice, writing, re-reading, polishing, tinkering and then producing work just as they’ll be asked to in the work world some day. Pen and paper? I doubt it. (Okay, well maybe a bit.) I do think we’re being asked to teach kids today with our hands tied behind our backs. I’m not advocating abandoning the physical actions of opening a text book or putting a pen to a page. However we need to meet them where they live, surround them with literate opportunities and celebrate their precocity!

  8. The heart of the matter is that reading is used as a tool, a tool through which other information is sought. I am a language arts/French teacher who sees value in teaching reading in isolation for younger students, but to incorporate it across the curriculum in middle school and beyond. I see technology in the same way. A class I’m taking includes a video featuring an elementary teacher teaching her students to blog. Just like reading, this lesson can be scaffolded in to bigger projects each year and then becomes a skill students use rather than a lesson in isolation. My students have done power points for so long they ask if they can do them. But it’s time to move beyond the comfort zone. This starts with the teachers. In many ways education is lags behind society in technological advancements. But we all agree students need these skills to be successful in this digital communication age. When a school district does not implement the tools necessary for advancement, I would challenge teachers to take this task to heart, get comfortable with the technology themselves, then try to bring it to the classroom to make learning align with students’ real life experiences.

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