Janurary 27th

To me new literacy includes using reading comprehension skills to understand the content of and navigate through technological "print."  This could include understanding for the means of communication or for information.  As it was mentioned in the "C's of Change" article (http://www.ncte.org/magazine/extended) the need for students to be able be literate on the internet to increasing quickly.  Classrooms around the country are integrating technology more and more into their curriculums and students are tapping into skills that were not required when literacy consisted of "printed" books.  As students research on the internet they see text in many different formats and they must be able to differentiate between the overwhelming amount of information that is at their fingertips so that they can efficiently and accurately find the infromation that they are looking for.  I think it is interesting to note that although new literacy is an example of a fast moving change towards progress in schools, it is also widening the achievement gap.  As stated in the end of the "Expaning the New Literacies Conversation" article (http://ctserc.org/ssr/downloads/leu-newlit.pdf) this evolution of literacy will be difficult for schools in lower socio-economic status communitites.  Having less resources and less access to current technology would only leave some students in these situations farther behind.

When I consider how I can develop new literacy skills in my classroom the biggest thing that stands out to me is the fact that technology must be integrated into as much of the current curriculum as possible.  This was dicussed in all of the readings for this week including the videos done by Dr. Leu.  There are times when technology is taught seperately or even by someone other than the classroom teacher.  An example of somehing that I can do in my classroom is to weave technology based activities and assignments into my regular instruction time (a reading or math block).  There were many great reasources and ideas about how to do this featured in "New Literacy for New Times "(http://ctserc.org/ssr/downloads/leu-newlit.pdf).  As a result of the technology changing and evolving as quickly as we can teach it I think that it is important to model adapting to technology by making it a part of my every day instruction.