Literacy Debate

I want to start this blog off saying I am for balance in all things, including reading and technology.  With that said, I found reading this article slightly ironic.  I mean I am taking an on-line course in what can be a fully on-line program and reading this article on my iPad.  In fact this will be my third on-line degree so maybe I am skewed on this and the fact that I work and teach at a fully on-line school adds to that bias but I found this article interesting.

First I want to look at the data, I am old enough (as many of us are) to remember when AOL and Prodigy were the first and only online options which were not available to everyone.  I remember quite clearly my 7th grade Spanish teacher being interviewed because she was an early internet adopter and that was in 1990 or 1991.  So I feel comparing internet use in 1999 when the technology was still emerging as a day to day use to 2004 when it had become fully integrated into homes and schools might be a poor comparison.  1999 was when high speed internet was first just starting come on the market and by 2004 many teachers were putting their homework and extra help online for students.  So I believe that increase in use would be expected.  I personally would be more interested to see what the changes of use was between 2004 and 2009.

Now onto the actual debate... Maybe I am looking at it differently because I am not teaching but guiding my children as students.  I absolutely think the US is behind on testing in the digital literacy area.  We test everything and are doing it younger and younger but feel there is no need to test digital literacy but then we expect our students to research topics on the internet and we are surprised they cannot tell the difference between a good source and a poor source well of course not.  We are expecting them to teach themselves and let's be honest us parents while have gotten on board have not had technology integrated in our education.  We are learning too!  Our children who will leave K-12 and go to college and be fully independent on their learning outside of the classroom will not have the skills they need.  I see a HUGE hole in this area!

Reading books, articles, fan fiction, no matter the source is reading but each one has a purpose.  My daughter as I have said already has learning disabilities which include dyslexia.  I cannot get her to read daily with a book because it is overwhelming.  Sometimes I will read with or to her so she can work on her comprehension but that is not how her testing will go.  She will need to develop the ability to decode on her own and I for one encourage using technology as do her teachers.  Because I for one know it is just a matter of finding the right topic to hook kids on reading books.  So if she can get a lot of bits of information on a lot of topics through the internet, I say go for it!  She will eventually find one that allows her imagination to go and she will look and crave more information and that will lead to books.  Not everyone wants to read the classics.  Not every kid will buy a Shakespeare collection like I did and that is completely okay as long as we encourage learning and help children learn to love learning.  The world today is very different when it comes to technology but it appears the education has not changed much.  We are doing the same things but will some times do it through technology.  Instead of flash cards for math facts we might use an app but we are still doing the same work.  When children graduate they need to know how to use a computer and how to find information online daily.