Last Sunday, The New York Times sparked a debate over Internet, literacy and education through its article, “Literacy Debate: Online R U Really Reading?” The article offered examples of young people, who like most of their counterparts, spend an increased about of time on the Internet, compared to students of yester-year. The article then details the woes and fears and some statistics to prove them of those who believe that online time is hurting children’s mental growth. For example, “Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun (Rich, 2008).”
This has brought up the questions: What are schools to do? Should the Internet be a part of literacy learning? And if so, how much a part? Will students who spend education time on Internet literacy not learn the patience and imagination skills developed by sustained reading of traditional print sources? It could and it might, but that is the very reason why educators should get online and develop curriculum that helps students synthesize online information with what they learn through traditional print texts, and decide when and how to use online information to enhance their learning and understanding. Whether we like it or not, the Internet is here to stay. It is the printing press of the 20th Century. Similar to the way in which we use calculators to find answers to complicated math problems, we will use Google to search for quick, factual information, and never look back.
In a study of how Internet literacy influences classrooms, Rachel Karchmer states, “…global information economies will require students to be prepared to use Internet technologies to quickly gather and evaluate information, use that information to solve problems, and then quickly communicate their solutions to others (2001).” This is in line with the standards of 21st century learning skills—an educational movement that focuses on media literacy, problem-solving, career skills and communication. Indeed, in 2000, the United States Department of Labor predicted that the top five fastest growing occupations for the following eight years would all necessitate technological skills (Karchmer, 2001). If educators are to prepare students to be successful in the world, they must change with the times.
To those who question whether or not schools should count Internet proficiency as literacy, I would like to point out that despite the prevalent use of computer technology and communication in the professional sphere, access to the Internet is still divided along economic lines. People with higher income status (over $50,000) are twice as likely to use the Internet on a regular basis as those in middle to low income brackets ($25.000-$49,999 and up to $24,999, respectively). Additionally, people with college degrees are nearly three times as likely to use the Internet on a regular basis as those without (Bucy, 2000). It only seems right that the public school system use its equalizing power to bridge this social gap in access to information by teaching students to become more Internet literate, so that they can compete in a global society whose Internet connection is only growing stronger by the minute.
References
Bucy, E. P. (2000). Social access to the Internet. The Harvard Review of Press/Politics,
5(1), 50-61.
Karchmer, R. A. (2001). The journey ahead: thirteen teachers report how they Internet
influences literacy and literacy instruction the their K-12 classrooms.
Research Quarterly, 36(4), 442-446.
Rich, M. (2008, July 27). Literacy debate: online r u really reading? The New York Times,
No comments:
Post a Comment