ASB TLT

Perhaps it’s human nature to worry.  Currently people seemed to be worried about literacy because of trendsetting technologies.  Here’s a scene from a New York Times article, Literacy Debate: R U Really Reading?  where one parent is reading the paper, the other parent a novel, while the two children sitting on the couch cuddle up to their laptops.  For some, this picture challenges the notion that to be literate is to read paper.  Does one need to also know how to read from a computer screen? 

Another article from The Atlantic Monthly makes the claim that current technologies are decreasing our mental capabilities: Is Google Making Us Stupid?  This claim in itself is stupid!  How could a new technology make us lose our intelligence?  Of course our intelligences evolve, but hasn’t this been happening since man has been around.  We progressively have become intelligently different through time.  The needs that arise within the current time help to shape our intelligences. 

Damon Darlin argues the Google article well in Tech Doesn’t Dumb Us Down; It Frees Our Minds.  He points out that, “over the course of human history, writing, printing, computing, and Googling have only made it easier to think and communicate.”  Yes, we still are literate, yet our definition of literacy has evolved.  Now not only are we literate with the paper version of text, but we also are literate with the screen version of the written word. 

As educators, we need to make sure to help guide, model, and support literacy of all kinds: visual, digital, informational, textual…the list goes on.  Perhaps rather than feeling challenged by technology, we should rather embrace it to increase the literacy of our students today.  Most importantly, we shouldn’t worry about the actual technological format because that too will change. 

….Or update your status in the most talked about new application out on the web: TWITTER. 

Actually there is one more definition from Encarta Dictionaries.  TWITTER, noun: teaser.  Ha!

New applications pop up on a regular basis.  Right when you’ve gotten used  to your social Facebook account you find out you should also have a professional LinkedIn account.  You finally mastered using Shutterfly to find out that you should be uploading in Flickr.  (Why?  That’s a whole ‘nother post on tags to be written later…)  You have Edublogs, Google Apps, and Wikispaces and most likely you may not be sure what to use for what.  (Don’t worry that’s normal, and again more future topics for us all to discuss.)

I like my Facebook account, and rather enjoy occasionally updating my status.  It’s kind of fun to see what other people are up to.  But thankfully there are more features to Facebook; it isn’t solely an update of what people are doing.  The status of an individual is basically what one given person is doing at that moment.  Twitter is only that.  Although, Twitter is a status updater with a twist.  Once you have an account you gather people to follow (and only hope that people in turn want to follow you).  On my Twitter account I currently follow 9 people and 5 of those people follow me.  But that’s the totally silly part.  Who cares what I am doing all the time of my day?  Really.  Who cares if I’m writing about Twitter on a blog right now?  Does anyone really care? Do my 5 followers care? 

Since I’ve been expermenting with this whole Twitter movement, I have to admit it has been kind of fun.  I’m not totally sold, but I can see a couple of positive outcomes from updating my status.  Let’s take the sample above.  Let’s say I want all my followers to join me in this discussion of Twitter’s worthiness.  For PR reasons it would be in my benefit to update my Twitter including the link to this blog.  It then might get people to visit this blog and join in this conversation. 

I’m still on the Twitter fence though.  Sometimes it’s totally silly.  I feel real stupid writing that, “I’m going to go to bed now,” on my Twitter account.  So, I guess instead I’ll say, “Join me in this discussion of whether or not we all need to know what we are all doing all the time!”