Literacies and ICT reflection

 The inspiration for the reflection came from reading Charmaine's blog post about literacies. I agree with Charmaine that literacy is essential and that we must foster literacy skills that benefit the use of ICTs. I started thinking about how I could use ICTs with the 4 resources model in my classroom. The picture below describes the 4 resources model.

In ICTs we have a lot more codes that we need to learn to be able to manipulate the many 'texts' including websites, software etc. To participate students need to have the knowledge of how to manipulate the text to communicate their ideas effectively. To use the text, students need to be able to analyse the purpose and audience of the text and discern whether it is right for their context. Students also need to be able to analyse and evaluate how their own texts or texts from others impacts on them and others. 

I also did a little bit of research to see what the literature says about using ICTs and literacies. And I found that there was a lot of research about how to teach students to be ICT literate, but not how to use ICTs to help become literate. - That sentence may have got away from me a bit. The first article I found focuses on the first idea. 

Gamble and Easingwood (2000) mention that an ICT literate person can read, digest, re-present, and display information. They can also story tell and speak in public. They can be creative and use text, graphics, speech, video and animation to do this. 

They argue that technologies can make it hard for people to concentrate and can diminish peoples sense of culture and community. Even though a computer is just as essential as a pencilcase these days. 

They ask whether students have the skills to access and decode multimedia text.  To create multimedia, know how to create text, scan/draw images, record sound and therefore we need to teach these skills to some degree. This is where the 4 resources model comes in. 

The second article that I found by Monteith (2005) focuses on the second idea. It mentions that ICTs provide an opportunity for us to rethink the way we teach students in literacy. This is especially because text can come in many forms and we can interchange these forms. Text in a word document can be converted to audio and we can print it. 

Upon reflection, I think its safe to say that I need to be able to teach students using the 4 resources model how to use, analyse, participate and code break ICT texts. But I can also use ICTs to teach literacy skills such as code breaking, analysing, using and participating. 

For example, in terms of using ICTs to teach literacies, I could use Diigo to help students to break the code of a text. Students can participate in texts through blogs and discuss with others the meaning they get from texts, determine the purpose and audience of the text, and analyse the impact it has on them. I could also use online surveys to show how texts can impact people, by asking the students to determine the impact a text had on them. Students could collaborate on twitter with people around the world to see how their own texts can impact others. I'm just throwing around some ideas here. I would consider designing literacy activities for students using ICTs in my unit plan for assignment 2. 

References

Gamble, N. & Easingwood, N. (2000). ICT and literacy: Information and communications technology, media, reading and writing. London: Continuum.

Monteith, M. (2005). Teaching secondary school literacies with ICT. Maidenhead: Open University Press.