New Literacy

The most striking revelation that I will take away from this course is the fact that we are actually teaching our teachers that web literacy matters. This course reminded me that even though not all teachers in my building think of the internet as a viable source of information, teachers all over the country do as well as the academic institutions that produce those teachers. The question posed to us was “…about the teaching of new literacy skills to your students…” but to me, it is the fact that we will all know that teaching students how to be internet literate is what is important when we leave this course. Slowly, teachers are being held accountable for the web 2.0 world and beyond that our students will have to function in.

The fact that I had a chance to write a lesson plan which taught web literacy in my content is invaluable to me as a teacher. Even if I use parts of the unit plan, I will have it to take from. Teaching students to start with inquiry and then to check the validity of web sources is an experience that I use and will continue to use in my English classroom. Having my students synthesize their information and use multimedia forums to express what they have done is something that I will continue to build on in my classroom because it not only models new literacy techniques students may need but also allows students freedom to go further in their projects.

My professional goal is a lofty one, but one that I believe may be expected of teachers in the future, and it is to create a filtering system specific to a project. Schools have filters as do computer and internet companies but how powerful would a filtering system that allowed teachers to create the perimeters be? I have set this goal because of the discussions I have had with my classmates about the frustrations of filtering programs we currently use that do not allow students to search viable information. I believe creating a prototype and submitting it to the school board would have to happen long before an educator could implement it in the classroom, but I do think it will happen and this course made me think of how valuable it would be. I think the more our education and new literacy’s evolve, the more apt districts will have to be to trust their teachers and allow them to take more responsibility for their students and their studies on the web.