Addition of New Literacies in Schools - Essay Example

Addition of New Literacies in Schools The purpose of this essay is to revise the learning of new literacies, as introduced in the and MSU. Stating simply, it will elaborate more on our reading, writing, and researching skills so that revision could be made of what has been learned so far. This paper will help in understanding why the new literacies have become critical for high school students, and what is the aim of evaluating these changes in reading, writing, and researching among high school students through comparison, discussion, and evaluation. Just a decade before, the new literacies were not in vogue. Students’ literary skills among others included paper-based reading and writing, and researching by visiting a local or school library. Assignments were prepared by taking guide notes from the reference books available in the schools. Opinions about literacy have changed since the first essay was written, as the semester offered awareness on reading, writing, and researching practices. All aspects of literacy are yet to be cleared, which the revision on the given topic will help in knowing. The changed awareness is critical to enrich with the additional knowledge of reading and writing. The new learning acquired during the semester are going to help during the college studies, as the traditional mode of reading and writing have become outdated. So all learning will have to be acquired through the medium of internet. All of us, the student community is going to benefit from this reading about the ways literacy is going to impact the career path of all of us. A detailing of the new ways of learning will help us in knowing and practicing the innovative ways of learning and preparing us in advance on writing content after reading and researching the relevant content through various modes made available through the internet technology. As it was argued in the previous paper that with the changed understanding of writing, now it can be accomplished through various media. This essay will provide sufficient understanding over using the remix content in our texts. Also, the additional knowledge has acquainted all of us about the new essay writing strategies such as RAIDS and SWAP. A discussion of new literacies includes such digital mediums of literacy as instant messaging, blogs, online web games and sms language that has become a part of everybody’s life. Students use these shortcut mediums of communication very often. They are relatively more adapted in the usage of new literacies than their adult teachers and parents. These new literacies can be made a part of the classroom activities to help in controlling the number of school-dropping students. Teachers can work closely with students through website interactions to help in the usage of new literacies from the available resources. Such functions can help in putting on hold the dropping-out plans, high school students would be relatively more interested in the learning of new literacies than the traditional boring methods of learning, such as reading and writing of the print version, like books and copies for taking lecture notes (Pryor 6). The new literacies that the high school students use these days include email, computer games, digital personal assistants, digital storytelling, mobile phones with their different applications, videos, networking through search engines, chatting, MSN messenger, wikis, blogs, iPods, and digital games technology, like Nintendo DS. The application of these tools require new features of decoding written content other than exploiting meaning from various semiotics codes like visuals and sound (Pryor 9). Social software Social software or the social web and Web 2.0 has made a number of new literacies possible through web-based software. It facilitates users to communicate online, share content, and interact with other users, for example on Facebook users can put in their personal profiles online, send invitations to friends to interact and exchange on topics of mutual discussion via the site. Instant messaging feature offers online chatting in real time; it is an online platform for users to reply via the message board. Students can write their own blogs, the online journals can be managed by students or group, and wikis, websites like Wikipedia. These tools help guests to contribute through writing as well as edit the written text. The extent of technology also covers social book marking services like del.ico.us, multimedia sites such as FlickR and YouTube, and podcasting (Pryor 9). Chat rooms/ Instant messenger Instant messaging is one the most common uses of the Internet among young people. One can talk in a hybrid type of language made from certain linguistics characteristics of both spoken and written print, using signs with different colors and fonts to exhibit meaning. One can employ complicated language tactics by changing language styles, word selection and feel to customize as per the audience needs. Meanings of words get clear and effective through various fonts and color; symbols like smiley faces convey the meaning through interesting emotions. Such communication tools help in the creation and preservation of social identities (Pryor 10). Digital Games is yet another medium of new literacies to understand complicated text presented through maps, sound, talk, color, divided screens of computer games. Computer games add meaning, and are socially related and interacting while raising problems of community, representation and, recognition (Pryor10). Mobile phones and Text Messaging Mobile phones are being actively used for SMS communications. Text messaging or SMS (short message service) language is a new type of literacy with its own meaningful characteristics. Instant messaging is also facilitated through this way of language. Change of time has created the need to convey in brief with the help of only 160 characters including spaces. It has become just a type of shorthand. The hybrid element of language makes use of linguistic characteristics like letters, numbers and symbols. It is a cursory kind of written language that makes random use of linguistic features of the spoken form of language in easy structure, division as based on known assumptions. It is just the spoken form in written format. Meaning gets derived through tactics used to create SMS language by shrinking text, while identifying the drawbacks of space to create a message (Pryor11). Tactics include: Phonetic spelling: phone changes to fone, some to sum Acronyms: Face to face turns into F2F, laugh out loud to LOL Omitting vowels: little is written as lttl, prepared to prprd Symbols like smiley faces are utilized to confirm the clarity in meaning: I don’t like it but I’m feeling OK about it, which means I don’t like it  Letters take the place of numbers: late is changed to l8, forward to 4ward, to & too gets changed in 2 Whole words Gget changed to one letter or symbol: see is written as C, you as U, c u - see you, are - r, happy -  , sad - Punctuation marks such as full stops and commas get erased. I wll cum how will u get thr These tactics are then linked to attain maximum meaning with the minimum characters: Cn we mt tmrrw? – Can we meet tomorrow? I h8 u!  - I hate you! (said humorously - Smiley face provides a positive meaning) u cn prb rd ths f u try hrd enuf. - "You can probably read this if you try hard enough." Thus, texting fulfills multiple functions at a time. It is a feature of a number of new literacies (Pryor 12). Conclusion New literacies have arrived; these can not be ignored any more in the school education, particularly to create interest in those students who fear coming to school and are ready to drop-out. It has been noticed that such students have started taking keen interest in school activities and are becoming regular attendees because of the interest created by new literacies. Need is to implement the new literary functionalities and their usage in the classrooms so that students’ eagerness to learn new literacies could be used for their benefit. Usage of new literacies will help in raising the literary ranking of students, in both qualitative and quantitative aspects. It will provide the opportunity to the teachers also to see whether usage of new literacies helps in improving spelling and grammar (Pryor 36). Teacher resources would also get strengthened. Finally, it would be interesting to see how students with disabilities engage themselves in new literacy activities. The experience of Shillair (par. 1) in the context of deaf and blind student, recognizing the letters w-a-t-e-r, while her hands were kept under the cold flowing water is a good sign that the new literacies hold for the disabled students. Works Cited Pryor, Kerrin. “Integrating New Lits into Classroom Practice Final Report.” New Literacies. 2008. 5 December 2012 . Shillair, Ruth. “My Revised, Yet Still Draft, Technology Statement.” Weblog Entry. Teaching with Technology AL 881. 28 June 2012. . Read More