Perceptions of Literacies of the Information Age

I created this blog in the spring for my RDNG 7545, Reading Across the Content Areas Course.  In this course, we discussed much about media and information literacy in conjunction with literacy in our content areas.  I was unable to begin blogging with my students this year, but intend to begin next year with class blogging to discuss science news, extend our discussions from class, and share with each other what we are learning in class.   I want it to be a forum for us to extend our class and share; therefore, I will start my reflections for this course here since it so readily applies to this module. 

No one can deny that we live in an Information Age where a vast amount of information is always at our fingertips, especially with so many devices that enable Internet usage.  As previously mentioned, I began this blog as part of an assignment for my Reading Across the Content Areas course this spring.  In this course, my eyes were opened to the increasing importance of not only making students scientifically literate but also enabling them to become media literate.  Prior to this, I thought it was my job in the classroom to focus on helping my students understand how science works, scientific principles, and scientific processes.  Indeed this is my job, but I can and should also work to broaden the scope of what I desire my students to discover and learn.  I became more aware of the nonlinear literature at our fingertips in such things as websites in general and blogging and some social media sites.  The idea of nonlinear reading was intriguing to me, but it makes perfect sense.  We typically read books from the front cover to the back cover but on the Internet, each person can experience a different order as they explore information. 

I enjoy using technology myself, and am constantly learning new things about it and I have tried to implement the use of technology in my classroom. What I have found is that my students, even at the high school level, do not know how to really use the technology all around them.  I have found myself very frustrated at seeing how limited many of their skills are with using and extracting information from the Internet.  They all talk about what is happening on Twitter or Instagram, but when asked to complete an assignment using the Internet and Internet tools, they often struggle.  I just assume that they know how to search and find reliable information without actually teaching them how to do it. 

That is what I liked about the “Discover Information Literacy” slideshow.  It presented a concrete way to teach and model for students how to extract good and reliable information from the Internet.  I think either implementing this or devising other methods for teaching students how to use various technologies would be valuable for my students.  However, like many other educators, I think my continual struggle is the time involved.  We all struggle to race to the finish with standards and covering our material and I find it hard to fit the information all in much less adding to what I am already teaching.   I want to find more efficient ways of teaching so that I can get a bigger “bang for my buck” with the time I have with my students. 

References:

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J.L. & Mraz, M. (2011). Content area reading:  Literacy and learning across the curriculum, 10th ed. Pearson.

Campbell, A., Heller, E., Horney, E., & L. Slater. (2008). University of Mary Washington. Discover Information Literacy