Change is something that people tend to do either very well or not so well. I usually fall into the later category. However, since becoming a parent, I have found that I have to be extremely flexible to change. One of the biggest changes I have encountered is my use of technology. In the past, I have always been the book girl, the pen and paper girl, and the meet and talk about it girl. Now with a squirmy, wormy four month old, I find my time precious and limited. My family takes more of my time so I don't find time to pick up a book to find something, jot a note to someone, or readily be able to meet for coffee to connect about what is going on. However, I still want to connect with the world outside me and share the goings on of my family.
In the opening chapter of Handbook of Research on New Literacies the authors note that "Literacy is no longer a static construct from the standpoint of its defining technology for the past 500 years, it has now come to mean a rapid and continuous process of change in the ways in which we read, write, view, listen, compose, and communicate information (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). As a mom-to-be on bedrest and a new mom, I found that the web was one of the only ways I could keep in touch with folks in a timely manner, as well as get information about topics I was interested in both personally and professinally. However, as I began to navigate all the different possibilities, I realized I needed to use a variety of critical thinking skills to evaluate the text in my "online" or digital reading that was different from the way I had approached my "offline" or print reading (Weigel & Gardner, 2008). As I looked up topics about my brand new son, I needed to make sure that the sources I was consulting were reliable, accurate, and had multiple perspectives.
According to Eagleton and Dobler (2007), there are two views of the reading process that give readers a background for comprehending print and digital texts -- Cueing Systems Theory and Transactional Theory. Although "offline" reading strategies, such as imagining or visualizing, making connections, analyzing text structure, making inferences or predictions, asking questions, determining important ideas, evaluating and synthesizing, and rereading or adjusting approaches to text (Boke, 2004) are important when reading "online" material, there are other devices to help us be more literate with "offline" text. The New Literacies Perspectives based on the work on Donald Leu identifies five "functions" of new literacies: (1) generating important questions or problems to be solved; (2) locating relevant information; (3) critically evaluating the usefulness of that information; (4) synthesizing information to address those questions or problems; and (5) communicating possible solutions to others (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004). Although each of these "functions" are important for looking at new literacies, I was most interested in being able to critically evaluate not only the usefulness of the information but also the relevancy, accuracy, reliability, bias (perspective), and commercial bias of the information (Coiro, 2008). Julie Coiro does a great job explaining the elements involved in critically evaluating text:
Relevancy: the information’s level of importance to a particular reading purpose or stated information need
Accuracy: the extent to which information contains factual and updated details that can be verified by consulting alternative and/or primary sources
Reliability: the information’s level of trustworthiness based on information about the author and the publishing body
Bias (perspective): the position or slant toward which an author shapes information
Commercial bias: the extent to which information appears to be influenced by commercial interests for or against a certain product (Coiro, 2008).
On her website for a workshop I took this summer, she gives a series of great lessons and activities to show students how to critically look at elements of a website by investigating relevancy, accuracy, reliability, bias (perspective), and commercial bias. Having students be able to critically evaluate "online" text is extremely important since these types of texts sometimes involve more layers than an "offline" text like a book or magazine article. I can't pretend to fully comprehend all that I encounter in my pursuit of "online" materials, but I can say that now I use a more critical eye. Hopefully, some of these resources will help spark some ideas that you can use to get students more involved in this process. I hope in future posts to continue the conversation of what some are calling Literacy 2.0 (Knobel & Wilbur, 2009) as I think we will be seeing a lot about it in the next couple years.
Resources
Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of new literacies. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Eagleton, M.B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry.New York: The Guilford Press.
Knobel, M., & Wilber, D. (2009, March).Let's Talk 2.0. Educational Leadership, 66, 20-24.
