Opportunity of 21st Century Literacies

          To the new learners and educators arriving at my blog, welcome! I am Robyn and an aspiring teacher candidate at Brock University. Some of my interests other than working with and learning about young people are reading, swimming and eating as much dim-sum as humanly possible. In this blog I have created I often focus on topics of education that I learn within my classes that interest me. The next few post will be for my 21st Century Literacy's class, in which I will be discussing what I found interesting in class and hopefully new ways of implementing these ideas into practice. 

Brandy Agerbek (October 21, 2005). Retrieved from:
http://www.loosetooth.com/Viscom/gf/21c_literacy.htm

            Just a week ago when I thought of the word ‘literacy’ I usually pictured the basics of just reading and writing. In elementary and highschool when we were tested on our literacy skills I remember being tested on my ability to read and write, if I was able to do this I am deemed ‘literate’. During my first 21^st Century Literacies lecture this semester we were introduced to a vast amount of literacies such as critical literacy, media literacy, moral literacy, and multicultural literacy. So what does it mean to introduce all of these new literacies into classrooms? I believe that it means that it gives students more opportunities to advance in variety of subjects and areas of learning. Though reading and writing is ultimately very important, as times are changing we are learning that it is also important different types of literacies. A good example of this is the addition to media literacy, this is extremely important in schools today. Due to so many outlets of learning are now online we must teach students to properly access online material. From my own experience in classrooms recently I have seem technological literacy in action, where grade two/ three students are learning how to work on Google Docs (which is something I only learned last year). Therefore, as we are learning more about education and society around us it is important to educate students so they can keep up with what is going on in the world today.

            As I mentioned above I believe that these new literacties give students opportunity. Opportunity to advance in a specific learning area. Opportunity to widen their abilities and skills. Opportunity to find their passion for learning. Through introducing environmental literacy, multicultural literacy, and financial literacy students are not only able to learn necessary skills that are needed to be successful in society but also find interest in them and begin to create new ideas and solutions for them. This introduces the idea of critical literacy, where there is no right answer and there are multiple different ways of looking at the world. I believe that each new literacy can be looked at critically, can be transformed and further put into action by students. Through the implementation of 21^st century literacies students are able to strive among different contexts.

Small hands big ideas: Do you ever truly miss an opportunity (Aug 16, 2011). Retrieved from: http://smallhandsbigideas.com/business/do-you-ever-truly-miss-an-opportunity/