Is Digital literacy destroying or enhancing students’ ability to read and write? Andrea Lunsford, Alice Robinson, Nicole Pickard, and Mark Federman debated this issue on the television program “The Agenda” found on this website: http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779626&ts=2009-10-01%2020:00:00.0
E-mail, twitter, face book and blogs is changing today’s literary world. Students are writing more than ever. Many students are writing on a daily basis in an informal setting. College professors feel that because of digital literacy, students are coming to college less prepared to write formal essays. They feel that students’ literacy is suffering. Is this true? According to Andrea Lunsford, students are coming to college and university better prepared, with better reading and writing abilities. She points out that students’ literacy levels for the first time in 10 years is improving. She attributes these improvements to students using their computers to write daily.
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In response to the question: "Is Digital literacy destroying or enhancing students’ ability to read and write?"
ReplyDeleteStudents of today are exposed to many informal means of communication. So much so that their ability to use proper structure or even correct grammar can become greatly affected. While using forms of communication such as texting or instant messaging, popular methods among students, it is common for a separate informal language to be used. This informal language can be very useful in creating short, quick messages between friends but it has no place in the business world and can contribute to bad writing techniques. Many of these issues are discussed in the following article:
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/cell-phone-texting-can-endanger-spelling-276413.html
Much like previously discussed, many people are concerned about how digital literacy is affecting the more recent generations. According to Wikipedia visual literacy is, “the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image.” This has been going on since the beginning of time when people first decided to record information. Dating back to the ancient Egyptians, around 4326 B.C., hieroglyphs were used as the first form of records rather than any type of alphabet. Is photo-visual literacy any reason to worry or it is rather a modern spin on an old medium of communication? Many schools have moved to adapt this new type of literacy by adding it directly into the learning curriculum. According to one teacher’s site, educating children to be literate in the current world involves both recognition of words and symbols. Photo-visual literacy is a new computerized adaptation of an old medium, but much like discussed by Brandon it has it time and place of when to be used. For example using such language as “=^), ;-0” is inappropriate for any formal setting, but welcomed in casual friendly conversations. My support was gathered from the following sites:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_literacy
http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/ancient_history.htm
http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/