The need for traditional literacy skills is still just as important today, but being literate has taken on a different new meaning in the technology age. There are new literacies that we must incorporate in to our teaching if we want our students to be ready for the world when they graduate. “In his book The Third Wave futurist Alvin Toffler noted that, ‘the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn’” (as cited in Jukes, 2007). This is a critical skill as we embark on this digital age.
Davis Warlick tells us that it is not merely the ability to read that article; it is about exposing the truth, evaluating the information, understanding the “grammar of the internet”, and finding the source of the information. These are our new basic literacy skills. (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). Ian Jukes helps us break it down farther saying that “we need to move beyond literacy to an expanded list of 21st century fluencies” (Jukes, 2007). These are the same fluencies I see being addressed by the 21st Century Fluency Project, Fluency 21, and the skills that are embedded into the Common Core State Standards. The fluencies that Jukes talks about include:
- Speaking and Listening Skills
- Reading & Writing Skills
- Information Skills
- Technical Skills
- Media Skills
- Personal Skills
- Group/Team/Partner Skills
- Professional Skills
- Teacher Skills
These skills are not just ones that happen on the Internet, they are ones that happen in all forms of learning, teaching, communicating, collaborating, critically thinking, and creating. Out of all these though, I see teachers struggle the most with teaching the information skills, which includes evaluation strategies.
Traditionally, being able “to read and understand the text was sufficient to be literate” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). Now students do not always go to print encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, and textbooks to get answers to their questions, instead now go online to find the information. However, going online, reading, and evaluating websites takes a completely new set of literacies. “The formats of webpages vary greatly…with such varied forms of websites and pages, it is difficult to provide novice Internet readers with consistent information about where to find information on a website“ (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007, p.166). All websites are created in different ways, with different visuals, and by different publishers. On the net, anyone can be a publisher, which makes evaluating the content that much more important. Students find it difficult to tell what is real and not real, so having them be able to critically think about the content on the page is so important. It is also just as important to know if this information is from a reputable source. “Just as you might teach students not to cite a book without knowing who is responsible for he information, consider applying those same principals to Web pages” (November, 2008, p. 39). This is not just as easy as it is with books and turning to a specific page that contains the publisher and copyright information. On the web, finding the author or source of a site may require a few additional skills. This is why, just like with our traditional literacy, we must begin at a young age and scaffold.
Evaluating the information is not where it ends. Being able to understand the information that is being presented to you can be difficult due to the nature of its presentation. On the web, information can be presented in text, visuals, video, audio, and images. Webpages can have visuals that may not even relate to the text. There are many strategies we need to teach are students to help them get beyond the 'pretty'.
“Helping students develop research and critical-thinking skills on the Web can be a daunting task” (November, 2008, p. 95). This is why I believe more teachers are not making the move to teaching these new literacies. Like anything though, it is all about taking that first step in the right direction. You will not be able to teach them all the skills they need in one class period, one semester, or even one school year, but you are giving them a foundation to which they can continue to build these new fluencies upon.
Resources
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Jukes, I. (2007). 21st Century fluency skills: Attributes of a 21st century learner. Retrieved from http://tkcstemp.pbworks.com/f/Attributes+of+a+21st+Century+Learner.pdf
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author.
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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