New Literacies: Is ICT challenging the real meaning of ‘What it means to be Literate’?

SO WHAT DO WE REALLY MEAN BY LITERATE?

In Jane Edward’s blog  Jane ‘Are Digital Technologies Diminishing Student’s Hand-Writing Skills’? Jane reflected on her own personal journey through ICT and how her life was impacted since the rapid development of technology. Jane researches an article which explained- since New Literacies has become more frequently used in the classroom, emoticons and slang seem to be creeping into children’s work. Personally, I believe that technology plays a large factor in many literacy issues in politics and the media today. Spell Check and such technologies provide us with an invisible safety net which we seem to take for granted. This got me thinking…

How does this effect teachers and their ability to teach?

Along with Jane, I decided to do some research of my own. I stumbled upon an interesting article called ‘Technological Change and its Impact of Literacy Learning’ .This gave me an insight into New Literacies and how ICT is challenging what it means to be a literate person. Today, what does it mean to be literate? This is an ever changing question because of the constantly changing digital world.