“I placed my feet carefully, one foot in front of the other, on the slippery path. Then I ran out of rocks. I couldn’t see one more step. How do you take another step when you can’t see the path in front of you? I thought I would begin my post with a quote from the book Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool.
This is an amazing book about a journey of self discovery. This quote keeps playing over in my mind as I come to class each day wondering where I’m going with my learning. Today I ran out of rocks and felt that I couldn’t see or reach out to take another step. It was today that I realized what I need from this course. Literacy.
“One must consider the differences in literacy between text and technology. Where textual literacy only has to be acquired once because letters, codes and meanings stay the same, generally speaking, technology such as the computer and its software typically uses a hybrid set of codes involving pictorial icons and invented words. These images and created words are constantly evolving and becoming increasingly less transparent in meaning as time goes by.” 1
I am on the path of learning this new language so that I can be ready to teach in this new era of education which is asking us to teach a broadened definition of literacy which includes social, information, media, digital. I’m not sure if I’m making sense to anyone else, but I understand my own need to change my path of learning and step out into a path that I can’t quite see yet but will help me to feel like I can communicate with my neighbors, collegues, student family and the world in this 21st Century.

1 University of Chicago: http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/literacy.htm

“The consequences of rapidly changing definitions of literacy are abundant. McLuhan claims “mental breakdown of varying degrees is the very common result of uprooting and inundation with new information and endless new patterns of information.”10 We are in a world where a person who cannot master technology is considered disabled and thus prevented from participating in the world fully. “ 1