Literacy Moves On Chapters 1-5

There was a lot of material that was covered in these chapters, but the main idea of this text is that there are popular culture, new technologies and critical literacy that we can incorporate into the classroom. Helping our students read critically beyond the images, as well as reading in between the lines, demands the development of vocabulary that students can evaluate the meaning of these ideas. A first step that the teacher needs to take is to investigate things that interest students outside of school, and bring them into the lessons. It is important to discover what children know about the texts they encounter inside and outside school and the many ways they might represent their ideas. It is interesting how literacy can change as technology develops the ways in which we communicate with one another. I learned while reading that media education is vitally important in this society because children have grown up with new technologies every day. As future teachers, we cannot ignore this new switch because it will help us be more effective with the lessons we are trying to teach. If we are incorporating film, editing, music into the classroom, we are also introducing them to careers that are in the future. Use the children's experiences and knowledge as a starting point. Mackey looks at how video games could potentially be beneficial to the students and classroom as a whole. When looking closer at computer games, you notice that the child has to "orchestrate many complex reactions in order to navigate the story." (51) Learning how to make progress in a video game is a form of literacy. I would have never thought of this being beneficial as a teacher, but research shows that video games have no fewer than 36 education principles related to literacy. That just seems incredible to me. I think all in all, teachers need to remember the "power of talk." We are able to facilitate great discussions that can guide students to different views to their original ideas.

Overall, I can clearly see that teachers need to incorporate activities into the classroom that are interesting to students. We need to make school fun, and with new technologies being introduced in the home, we need to update our styles of teaching in the classroom.