New Literacies Reflection

When I started this class my view of literacy mainly focused on the more traditional definition of literacy being the ability to read, write, and think critically about a variety of texts. Now I understand that literacy is a huge complex component of language arts learning. There are a number of different types of literacies, although traditionally we simply think of reading text as literacy. This new literacies project has really contributed to the change in my understanding of literacy. This growth has shown me that as a language arts teacher there are many different aspects of literacy that I need to expose my students too, and that each of them has their own unique way of teaching. I explored visual literacy and this new literacy really has helped change the way I think of literacy. I think that a lot of people view looking at images and pictures as a really standard day to day thing but they do not understand the importance of it and the amount of critical thinking that this activity can generate. As teachers it is important that we understand that so we can best equip our students with the skills they need to be visually literate. Our society is becoming more and more media based, which in turn creates a more visual environment that we are living in. Our students really need to be able to negotiate meaning and think critically about the advertisements, images, posters, graphs etc. that they are being exposed to all the time.

Exploring new technologies really helped me gain a broader knowledge of how to add variety to my teaching in a fun an interesting way for my students. My new technology was an online comic book creator and this really showed me how you can bring visual literacy to students in a nontraditional way. I think that other than talking about the illustrations in picture books in a superficial way, traditionally visual literacy is not touched upon in classrooms. Having students create their own online comic book using the website that I explored would be an extremely fun, interactive way for them to explore visual literacy. There are many aspects to think about when creating a comic, such as the layout, how important little details are, and the look of the characters and background and how that affects the tone of the story. These aspects are all very important in visual literacy and can really get students thinking critically about the various images that they are surrounded by on a daily basis. The new technology that I explored, as well as the others that I have seen from my colleagues have shown a more interactive and interesting approach to literacy instruction than the more traditional methods. I think that they both emphasize the importance of a wide knowledge on all aspects of literacy, but the new technologies really present this material to students in a more appealing way.

In order to provide effective literacy instruction to all learners a teacher really needs to expose students to a multitude of literacies in a variety of different ways. The technology that I explored really emphasized this to me and showed me how many free resources are available online for teachers to use. I really think as teachers it is our responsibility to search these resources out and utilize them to their fullest. This variety of exposure and depth of literacy content will really benefit our students and help them become really well rounded and literate people. Visual literacy really fits into this well too because it is one of the very first literacies that students have exposure too. As teachers we can really hone into this and provide a plethora of examples and situations that demonstrate the importance of being visually literate to our students.

    In order for my class of second graders to be successful teaching each other about visual literacy using an online comic they would need to have a solid knowledge of what visual literacy is. They would also need to understand the informal talk that takes place in comics. They would also need to understand how to navigate the internet, and easy to use websites. Within this they would need to have good typing skills, which my students do not yet have because they are so young. My students would have to seek out other comics or graphic novels as a resource to gain background knowledge of comics before they begin. This would give them concrete examples to work from and help them better understand what is expected of them from this task. In order to be successful teaching about visual literacy students would need to believe that literacy is a huge and intricate idea that is extremely important for students to have knowledge on.

            I think that the new technology I explored would be too difficult for my students to work with because they do not have that much experience or skills working with computers. Instead I think that it would be great to work with them on visual literacy. To kind of combine the task that I did with a task that they could perform exploring visual literacy I could have them create their own comic in which they draw it themselves. The lesson could start out with a read aloud of a shorter graphic novel. We could then move into a discussion on some key points about graphic novels and begin thinking critically of the importance of understanding images. They could then work with a partner to create their own comic about a given topic. I would provide a few options for students to choose from and we would also go over different types of page layouts that graphic novels use. I would asses this by reviewing the comic that they created and examining the way in which they chose to depict their story. I could ask the group a few questions about the decisions that they made in the creating process to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of visual literacy.