John Connell has written an excellent post, Literacy, Postliteracy, Modes of Expression….and a real Guitar Hero! that you really should read. In it, he muses over the notion of literacy and how it can be defined in our changing landscape. His post struck a chord with me; literacy, and our definition of it, was a frequent topic of discussion at Learning 2.008.
John writes so well it is daunting to even think of leaving a comment! But leave one I did, and here is my 2 cents worth;
This was a topic under frequent discussion at Learning 2.008 John. Doug Johnson calls it postliteracy, others call it digital literacy or 21st Century literacy. Clarence Fisher and others were asking the question, is it not just literacy? Sure, it’s different from our print based focus of the past, but it’s where we are today. I’m a Teacher-Librarian and I recognise that my students respond to visual media today far more than they do print based and I am trying to find ways to integrate the visual medium into my library space. I find myself charged by the visual medium and avail myself of stimuli off YouTube to spark my students’ interest in curriculum offerings. I have been moved by their digital creations that express meaning so eloquently without words, but through pictures that create a metaphor. It seems to me that as we deal with a highly visual world we will find our definition of literacy changing. When it becomes normative practice in our understanding of how we function we will become accepting that this is the literacy of our age.
I encourage you to visit John’s blog and read his post. While there, do yourself a favour and take a stroll through some of his other entries. I guarantee you’ll come away enriched by the experience.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 