Reading Response- Chapter 1
My interest in Lankshear & Knobel’s work is focused around the idea of what is considered literate and how the word “new” is associated with the terms literacy and literacies. As I read Lankshear & Knobel’s work, what came to mind was how one was considered to be literate. In New Literacies by Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel, they discussed a widespread of functional illiteracy among adults in the USA during the early 1970s. Lankshear & Knobel stated “This was not a measure of absolute literacy, but rather, of the extent to which members of a population could be said to be reading and writing at a level deemed to be the minimal requirement for being able to manage the kinds of text they would have to deal with on a day-to-day survival basis.” Why I find this statement so interesting is because the classification of being literate changes over time. Without the skills to adapt and change one can lose their status of being literate. For example, the text mentions “digital literacy” and “twenty-first-century literacies” as two current high-profile literacies. These two particular literacies are more sought out in today’s society and skills taught before these literacies have lost their value.
The video above from DML Research Hub features Nichole Pinkard a Digital Media Scholar stating “literacy has always been defined by the technology” and that being literate today means being able to take in more than just traditional text. My response to all of this is that literacies will always be ever changing. In agreement with Nichole Pinkard, I believe that technology plays a very important role in how one is considered to be literate. The access to and knowledge of new technologies provides opportunities to progress in knowledge based consumption. Technology is always advancing and to stay relevant, one must keep up with the advancing progress especially from an industrial standpoint. Industries are consistently looking for new ways to advance their companies into a new era and technology has always given them the tools to do so. Recognizing how technology plays such an important role in classifying literacy, I question how students are being measured in their literacies. Is technology being considered when measuring one’s level of literacy?
