I used to think that literacy was just about the ability to read and write. When I thought about someone who was literate I just thought about their reading and writing skills. I knew that in order for someone to be literate they needed to be able to read things from a variety of different sources but I never considered the different types of sources and what that means for an individual’s ability to read them. If I thought about someone who was digitally literate, I thought about someone who could use technology well, but did not really think about how that related to being able to read and understand something. I never considered how the digital texts that students are presented with can be so different from the print version of a text and how if a student doesn’t understand all of the digital text features they may not have a true understanding of the reading. I always knew that students needed to use the text features to help them navigate through a reading and understand it better, however I didn’t think about how those text features change with new and different types of media calling for new and different types of literacies.
Now that I have spent time learning about digital and media literacies, my understandings of these topics have transformed my understanding of what it means to be literate. I have a deeper understanding of how literacy contains a variety of intertwined skills so that when students encounter new resources they are able to navigate through the source to obtain the information they need as well as evaluate the information and its validity and usefulness. The idea of media literacy has stuck out as a somewhat new idea for me; although I knew the importance of understanding the author’s purpose, I never really put an emphasis on the ability to interpret the meaning behind the media that students come across. This class has helped me value teaching the students to become media literate in addition to just being able to understand the content. With all of the information available on digital sources, it is essential for students to develop this media literacy in order to become successful individuals. If students are not able to break apart the message behind the advertisements or articles they are presented with, they will not be able to draw their own conclusion on the importance or validity of the source. We do not want to produce a world of consumers who blindly accept everything before them. Instead, we want to develop a world of individuals who are not only able to analyze, evaluate, and critique the information they are presented with, but also who will be able to create and produce media to share their responses or their own ideas.
