bibliosmartgirl · Transcript · · Updated
What Does it Mean to be Literate in the 21st Century? (short version 8 min) – Transcript
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Summary
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- Literacy extends beyond traditional reading and writing to encompass critical, visual, oral, social, and outdoor literacies.
- Students need to be literate in using various technologies such as computers, video, and cameras to function in the present and future.
- Educators must be aware of how students receive information and teach them how to evaluate and use those pieces of information.
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When I was thinking about that, I still went back to that literacy means the basic being able to work with words and numbers. Listening, speaking, reading, writing, but I'd also throw in there critical literacy and visual literacies.
Oral literacy is important as well. Literacy to me means being able to understand and read the world, right, as opposed to text, right? You know, being able to read information in textbooks, to be able to understand it, to be able to synthesize that information, but as well be able to understand and operate, you know, computer programs, you know, the different ways that we research
information. I think that students need to be more literate in terms of visual media and that isn't words, you know, symbols and signs and graphs and all that kind of stuff. The whole other question of social literacy, you know, successful students are the ones that are socially intelligent and that are emotionally intelligent.
So there's that whole thing. How do you read people? How do you read relationships? How do you, you know, your ability to connect with people? There's also outdoor literacy as well, that if you think of way back when First Nations had a really keen sense, they knew when.
They were literate about their surroundings. I think it's taken teachers from being the sage on the stage to the guide on the side, because there's no way teachers know a fraction of what the kids know.
Most of the kids, the higher grades know way more than we do. You know, people were teaching other people how to farm when the older person or the more experienced person actually had the information. So now the kids, it's like a little bit more of a partnership in learning.
And students will, in order to function in the world as it is now and certainly in the future, will need to be literate in using all types of technologies, video, computers, cameras, you name it, they're going to need to be very literate in these tools.
Because in the 21st century all the kids are on the computer, they all have a computer pretty much, maybe one or two kids don't. They're watching TV, they're not outside active as much as they used to be back in the day. So now because part of their lifestyle is being on a computer watching TV, all this, we need to incorporate this in schools.
I think that there's a different way of thinking. Students have just so much information all the time and they don't really sit with the information or they don't take it, they don't think critically about it or take it a step deeper. I think as teachers we're always concerned about the welfare.
Sometimes I wonder what this is doing to their emotional health. In terms of, you know, media, there's so many different ways for them to receive all this information. You know, driving in a car down a road, they see ads, they see pictures, they see all these different kinds of things on the internet and magazines that they're reading and even in the books that they're reading, at their age level, there's so many different messages that I just hope that we can really be aware of the different ways that they're
receiving information and to teach them how to evaluate and use those pieces of information. While teachers must be really competent, I guess, in using the computers and that they need training.
The people that are coming into education now as educators are, you know, in their 20s. So now we're seeing a whole new generation of kids that have grown up online, they've grown up with the technology and so they come into, as an administrator, they come into a workplace and they're going to want the technology to use as an educator.
To understand what they're going to be needing to do in the work world. Like PowerPoint is used so frequently, so, you know, they need to be very comfortable with using these kinds of media. Yes, they're helpful tools, but they also take away from important elements of our
lives. I think as technology grows, it invades into our private life. I think that literacy is the same and you're teaching the same strategies and skills no matter what you're using.
I think that it needs to maybe add a little bit to it when it comes to adding technology and ways of using websites and using computers and media. With, you know, the evolving of new technology, that needs to be another strand of our literacy component.
Literacy I think has a very near focus for most people. Most people think of it in terms of text and it's beyond that because there's technology literacy, there's also outdoor literacy as well. Yes, absolutely. And that's why I referred to earlier, like the multiple literacies and I don't know, I don't know what it would be called.
I mean, that would be an interesting conversation in itself, but absolutely it's so much more broader than when I was going to school, when I thought of, you know, paper and pencil and print.