Me, illiterate?

Having spent much of the previous school year creating a course to help struggling students develop better literacy skills, I am beginning to wonder if, I, myself am not illiterate. Not in the traditional sense of the word, but in the newest incarnation of the term literacy. The new "literacy” is now expanded to include one’s ability to learn and interact with technology in a meaningful way. With the explosion of Web 2.0 applications, it is hard to imagine anyone being fully “literate” in how to use all of these resources given the daily updates and changes that are occurring. As teachers this creates new challenges for us as well in terms of helping our students become literate because as Coiro (2003) points out “electronic texts compound the challenges because they possess new characteristics that require different types of comprehension processes and a different set of instructional strategies” (p. 459). How can I effectively present the latest application to my students when I am barely literate myself?

So with that laying heavily on my mind I decided to take my illiterate self into the world of videosharing, better known to my students as YouTube. I have previously surfed on YouTube for relevant clips related to my course content. In fact, I have found several clips that have enhanced the delivery of the curriculum. I have not, however, signed up for an account or uploaded a movie. Signing up was very easy, my google account worked quite nicely (hey, at least there is not another password to remember!). I decided to take a short clip of my family at a barbeque using my camera, since it is the only thing I have capable of taking video. Taking the video, not a problem. Uploading the video? We’ll see. After my second try at exporting the video from my camera, I succeeded. With some trepidation I logged onto my YouTube account. What do you know? There is a handy dandy little yellow icon in the top right hand corner for illiterate people like me. In less than a minute I was able to begin uploading my first video. Maybe I am becoming more literate than I think? My frustration level, however, soon begins to rise as I realize that my stellar internet speed is going to take one hour to upload a one minute video clip.
While I’m waiting, impatiently, I decide to check out some other features on YouTube. I sign up to automatically upload any movies I post to my Facebook account. Love that feature! This summer I have spent every free moment I have reading about guided reading, so I search for some interesting clips on that topic. One video in particular catches my eye so I decided to create a guided reading playlist and add the clip to that folder. I noticed that there is an e-mail feature, so I figure, why not e-mail the video to my admin partner?

After my little adventure into the world of videosharing, I discover that I am, perhaps, not as illiterate as I initially thought. Inexperienced? Yes. Willing to learn? Absolutely! This video illustrates the importance of having teachers teach students digital literacy skills as they navigate through the googilized world that we live in.

Peter Goodwin and Jo Parker’s blog discusses at length the importance of educating students about effective way to become literate in a digital world. While the primary focus of the blog in for librarians, I found many gems for the classrooms teacher as well.

An important aspect of the “new literacies” is having students become aware of the implications of their actions online. A quick YouTube search using my hometown’s name revealed some startling results. In a matter of minutes I found video clips of this year’s grad party posted, saw a former student try her first cigar, watched three students drive around town intoxicated, and watched two students’ production of a show they called Kal and Boomer. Do these students understand the implications of their actions? Probably not. One recent online news article estimates that there are nearly 3000 YouTube videos posted on how to cheat. Students posting these videos commented on how they did not see any harm in posting such videos, after all, there are worse things to view on YouTube. While this may be true, what are the long-term consequences of such actions? Would a future employer search for their name to see what their extracurricular activities have been? In today’s technological era employers are searching many popular online sites to screen potential employees. Recently, my husband changed jobs. While he was having lunch with his new employer, his boss mentioned that they had done their homework in terms of checking him out. They had searched YouTube for clips and had even went as far as looking at his Facebook account. An important part of becoming literate in the 21st century will involve becoming a discerning user of Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube.

So, while I still do not feel as if I am literate in the newest sense of the word, I do believe that as I learn and grow in how to use these web-based resources, I will be able to guide my students to become critical consumers of technology. They will probably always be more technologically savvy than I as they are natives to the internet and I am only an immigrant. However, I can offer them food for thought as they navigate through the tangled Web 2.0.