New Literacies

I just finished reading the Fall issue of OnCUE, the publication for CUE, Computer Using Educators, Addressing the 21st Century Literacies. This issue is about the New Literacies. Wow! This issue was like an answer to an age long prayer. I have been rambling on to whoever will listen about the obsolete processes and requirements of the current educational system.

Chris Fitzgerald Walsh's article Wiki Racing and the New Reading looks at the ways we get our information. It no longer is comes from turning the pages of a book. The New Reading consists of podcast, You Tube, text messages, Discovery Channel, learning that easily accessible and quickly absorbed. Most of the books, fiction, that I read or rather listen to are audio books. I can do this while driving or cleaning and organizing. Oprah did a 10 week web cast on a Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. I have not yet read the book but have a sense of it and do quote from the parts that I know. I can have a meaningful conversation about this book and not have read it.

We need to broaden our definition of Reading and literacy. Depending on what source you reference, after the commonly known definition of "ability to read and write", the third definition is "a person's knowledge of a particular subject or field". This is what Chris Walsh was referring to. My students and I can get tons of information about Sharks from Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

This reminds me of a question posed to a group of administrators a few years ago. If reading, as we know it, decoding, blending and comprehending the written word becomes obsolete what would we as educators do? The thought sent waves of fear around the room. What will we do? It was truly inconceivable that reading and it's importance might wane. Why do we read? For enjoyment and to acquire knowledge. Can that be done without sight sound correlation? the answer is yes. So, how long will it take educators to learn how to deal with the change.

More next time.

Hamsters, Trains, Chairs and Black Holes

Conversations with Kindergartners can generate some interesting topics.  On the first day of school, a Kindergarten teacher asked her class, "What do you want to learn in Kindergarten?" "How to buy a hamster!" exclaimed one, "How to drive a train."  shouted another and "How to make a chair." finished the third.  This kind of  enthusiasm and excitements held by these four and five year old boys and girls is rarely matched at any other time in a life.  

As a group of these same age students were sharing their recently dictated stories with me, some how we ended up on one student's understanding of black holes.  He explained to me, in a broken English, "that, not now but in long time, black hole will take all of earth in it.  In a time when there are no more people."  I said to him, "That's right.  In the future, the sun will turn super nova and then collapse into a black hole."  Of course I know, but he's five.  He looked at me and just shook his head up and down with a look on his face that said, "Lady, that's what I just said."  Needless to say, these questions and probably many others won't be answered this year in Kindergarten. 

 

What is the point to all of this?  The point is that these little ones come to us full of curiosity, knowledge, a connectedness to what's around them and just a lively different perspective on the world we live in.  Many American public schools don't seem to care about what these students come to school capable of doing or knowing.  We treat them like empty vessels to be filled or a puppy that needs training.  This negates all that thee children are and are trying to become.  

Our school district, along with many others, have returned to basics.  What that means, is Kindergarten is the new first grade.  The curriculum standards that are required for Kindergarten, a little less than ten years ago, were the expectations for First Graders.  The thought being that since these children need retraining or filling, it is perfectly okay to raise the bar and expect all students to meet it.  We just need to give them more information sooner.  

A saying I heard during when I was getting my teaching credential back during the last century. The saying was, Children come to school like and exclamation mark and they left like a period. Unfortunately, we are starting that process and ensuring that it happens earlier and earlier in the life of children.  Many times that is shown to us by our drop out rate.  These students are finish and moving on often times ill equipped for life.   Charter schools are pulling away students from the public schools like a slow hemorrhage.  These are all in response to what public schools are doing and not doing.  How can we stop these madness?