A New Literacy

A great deal of time is spent in our media center trying to get our students reading. For me, the most surprising aspect of this task is the ease in which it is accomplished. THS has a good number of avid readers. Each day I encounter dozens of students who are inquiring about specific books, discussing favorite authors, or simply borrowing multiple titles from our "new arrivals" area. With all the other available diversions available to them, who would have thought that today's teens would still have time for books (and I'm referring here to the ones with actual pages).



Of course, there is still a good segment of the student population who wouldn't be caught dead with a monograph in their hands. How worried should we be about these kids? Are they doomed to a future of limited literacy? From what I am seeing, we've got little to be concerned about!



Again, technology has come to the rescue. I think today's students are doing more reading and writing than we can imagine. But does surfing the social-networking sites and texting friends actually count as reading and writing? Well, here there is some debate...



See Motoko Rich's New York Times article, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading" (7/27/08):

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1518016981&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=103090&RQT=309&VName=PQD



As a product of the television generation, I'm a true believer that the internet (and even cellphones at this point) are legitimate literacy tools. The media that today's kids are using daily requires a level of interactivity that at its core is essentially reading and writing-based. Should we as teachers not take full advantage of this new literacy? Let's keep the reading and writing coming by incorporating the tools that our students already know into our daily lessons. (Just don't tell the kids that they are learning reading and writing skills).