Group 3: Benjamin Chiou, Daniel Gaffan, Melissa West, Terrell Turner, Eric Jungbluth

What is Literacy?  Literacy has long been associated with the ability to read and write  The Random House Dictionary includes an alternate definition of literacy, the “possession of education” 1  Therefore, as technology in education is continually advancing, so to does our definition of literacy evolve content/uploads/2008/10/developmental-reading.jpg

The 21 st Century Classroom  President Obama’s view on classroom technology and the importance of modern literacy: “To give our children the chance to live out their dreams in a world that's never been more competitive, we will equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21 st century classrooms, labs, and libraries. We'll provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers so that students in Chicago and Boston can compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future,” 2  So what are some of the different forms of literacy present in the “21 st century classrooms”? speaking.jpg

Computer Literacy Helps Students:  Utilize word processing applications.  Use the internet for research and exploratory learning.  Make use of , webcams, and social networking sites for communicating.  Utilize data processing programs such as excel to help organize and analyze data.  Create and compose digital media.

When thinking about the Internet, it is necessary to look at how large it is and how fast it is growing. There are 10 basic Internet services: , listserv, newsgroups, chats, instant messaging, videoconferencing, File Transfer Protocol, the World Wide Web, the Rich Site Summary and blogging. This graph shows the increase in Internet users and how Internet Literacy has increased within the last 7 years. The internet has become a place full of online resources in which anyone can publish their own “facts”. By having the proper “internet literacy”, individuals can distinguish between what is true and false on the internet. This picture shows how certain people do not have the proper internet literacy and believe everything that is found on certain websites.

Visual Literacy  “Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea the pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.”  “Visual literacy in education develops a student's visual literacy- their ability to comprehend, make meaning of, and communicate through visual means, usually in the form of images or multimedia.” An example of ways Visual Literacy helps students

Visual Literacy in Education  Students are using and are exposed to many different types of multimedia in the classroom and are expected to know how to use things such as Microsoft PowerPoint and MovieMaker to create and to watch presentations in the classroom.  To teach visual literacy, it is very important to give your children the resources and exposure they need to create this type of presentation, but to also to allow children to understand and think critically about what they are being presented.  Blogs and wikis are being commonly used in classrooms to relay information, discuss, and turn in assignments. A teacher using a SmartBoard as Visual Literacy

In conclusion, new technology forces us to rethink our conventional ideas about literacy… content/uploads/2007/10/blogger.png