As I think about my vision statement about literacy and teaching, I think of individuals who have  influenced me the most. I think of Diane Epstein, a literacy studies instructor in my graduate school. As a teacher, she was kind, supportive, and encouraging, but most importantly, she helped me learn how to look outside the box. She made me think of education and literacy, the role of education in our lives, and myself as an educator in a new light. She would listen to my ideas about alternative assessment with so much enthusiasm that I’d think I just said the most brilliant thing anyone had ever uttered. She would then challenge me to go further. She was frail and had difficulty getting around, but she never stopped living. She traveled around the world, and she kept on inspiring many more students. Because of her and her assessment course, I read more, I dreamed bigger, and I thought of the role of literacy in our lives. I remember reading Understanding Reading by Frank Smith, and was challenged in every possible way. But that’s what Diane wanted. She challenged me to face new, often difficult, concepts, new ways of thinking, new ways of teaching, and, and new ways of looking at education. How does education improve our lives? What is literacy? How can we teach it? How has technology affected literacy?  Diane is still teaching and still inspiring students around the world.

That’s the kind of educator I strive to be.

John Loo and I made a podcast post about Literacy and technology from the perspective of two medical doctors.  Take a listen!

Doctor TechFiles: x2

Please answer the following questions:

1. What sort of literacy is needed in the digital age?

In an increasingly technological global market and proliferation of electronic environment, a literate person needs to have computer literacy in addition to traditional literacy in order to perform social functions. In my views, the new technology literacy also involves the ability to use technology to solve problem such as locating information.

2. What are the characteristics of a technologically literate person?

According to Selfe (1999), technology literacy means “computer skills and the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity, and performance.” These skills allow one to “navigate through society as traditional skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic.” (p. 3). In other words, a technological literate person is able to use tools as mediation to complete tasks more effectively, and perhaps, more efficiently.

A person who is technologically literate is able to use available tools in order to complete tasks. The ability to perform basic troubleshooting when needed is also an important characteristic that a technologically literate person must possess.

3. How do people’s technology practice shape their literacy?

The ability to use computer technology provides an individual with access to increasing repertoire of learning resources that could mediate learning.

There is also a strong “cultural link” between technology and literacy (Selfe, 1999, p. 5). Because technological literacy provides new social opportunities, it could lead to positive change in social and economical status because it facilitates the acquisition of secondary discourses.

4. How can we best teach technological literacy?

Technological literacy is best taught through hands-on activities that allow students to practice working with technology. Project-based learning can give learning a meaningful context.

John and I worked on the discussion prompts that Dr. Pagnucci provided to us. Click here to go to John’s blog and see our thoughts: http://iblog.iup.edu/btpv/2016/06/07/defining-literacy.

I don’t remember if I was read to as a small child. My first memory of becoming an avid reader is from when I was around the age of 7. It was a summer day, school was on summer break, and my father took me to work to keep me occupied for a day. He was a manager at a department store and would take me to work occasionally so that my mother could take a break from my sister and my bickering. When I was bored out of my mind, I would beg my father to take me to work with him, and once in a while he obliged. I would roam around the department store and watch people pass by. That day, after he finished work, while we lift the store, we passed a newsstand. There were many newspapers and magazine set carefully spread on the ground around the tiny kiosk. One magazine got my attention. The title was Keyhane Bacheha, or Cosmo for Children. The magazine cover was a caricature exaggeration of a man reading a book. I asked my father to buy me the magazine, but he responded that I didn’t need it. We kept on walking, but my father must have felt my disappointment because he turned back and bought the magazine for me. Back in our house, I read and re-read every page of the magazine and carefully examined the caricatures. I then used my monthly allowance to subscribe to the magazine and got new issues in the mail weekly. It was then that I found myself a passion for reading. A couple of years later, I write a short story for the magazine and got published. It was my first, and perhaps the biggest accomplishment, to this day.

Maybe it was because there was really not much a young girl could do under the control of Islamic laws and a bloody war with a neighboring country threatened our safely on a daily basis that I spent most of my free time reading. I remember spending spent every rial of my monthly allowance on novels, sometimes saving a few months to get the book I wanted, only to finish the book in a night. My favorites were Desiree (the diaries of Napoleon’s first love) and the Withering Heights. Sometimes books that had stayed on the shelf for a long time like Pedro Martinez, a long, tick book that I picked only to have more to read until my next monthly allowance.   Some of the readings were too abstract for me and I couldn’t understand the characters, plots, cultural references. Nonetheless, I kept on reading because reading was not just for pleasure, but an act of keeping myself occupied in the safety of the house.

As an assignment for ENGL 808, I went (almost) tech free Thursday night and most of Friday. I must admit the idea was excruciating. I felt like life was going to go on without me, I was going to be unreachable, and I was going to miss out on very important things.

When I started the tech free experiment around 5:13 pm on Thursday, I also felt like I had too much time on my hands and no tools to keep me occupied. I kept thinking to myself, “I wish I had printed that handout or brought that book”. I am not used to having so much free time. Friday morning, I stayed in bed for as long as I could, then I took the longest shower. After shower, I went back to bed.

The best part of the tech-free experiment was Thursday night when my cohort got together at the Coney after a gathering to welcome the first-year cohort. All tech-free, we engaged in conversations, no multitasking, no distractions, no parallel virtual world to divide our attention. It felt good to reconnect. Then back in my apartment some of us colored an adult coloring book. I’ve always wanted to color but never had the time. So many priorities, obligations, to-do-lists, life! But that night I was free. That night at the dinner and then while coloring, I felt so good. I was present. I felt free. And I loved being in here and now.

• Primary Blog Question
  • When compared, the two film clips help illuminate a key question for this course: How has our relationship to technology changed over time?
    Our relationship to technology has changed significantly.
• Secondary Blog Questions
  • How has film technology changed?
    The film technology has changed significantly in many aspects. Some of the most salient aspects are film’s aspect ratio, audio quality, length of shots and scenes, camera movement, depth of field, and special effects. The screens are larger, the sound system is much better, shots are shorter and there are many more scenes (change of place or time), camera moves more flexibly in different directions, there are more objects at different distances in the shot while the composition of the shot is designed in a way that draws the audience’s attention to a particular object or character, and computer effects are used to enhanced the colors and the decor.
  • How have we changed as film viewers?
    I believe we have become impatient as viewers. We expect a faster paced film, originality, and thrill.
  • How has our understanding of time evolved?
    Our understanding of time has not changed much. We are still not able to travel in time.
  • How does fiction/science fiction impact our relationship to technology?
    Science-fiction shows us what technology can do. By watching simulations and larger-than-life effects in Science-fiction films we learn about the capabilities of technology. Also, science-fiction films also increase our expectations from technology. As more and more films use technology, we expect too see more innovation and more realistic or impressive special effects.

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