New Literacy project review

I learned a large amount about creating an interactive map by doing this “New Literacies” project. From my own experiences and looking at the projects of other students, I felt that I gained a much better perspective of how I can use new technologies to keep the interests of my students. For my project, I decided to create a map using Google Maps. On the map, I placed about 30 points of interest, each containing at least a picture. In each point of interest, there was a label of what the place was highlighted for, and then I gave a brief description of why that place is important, and how students could be more culturally literate from learning about this place. I also embedded links to external websites and YouTube videos, things in which students could explore, and not feel like that they were doing “real work” but instead just having fun.

How has your conceptual understanding of literacy changed since beginning this class and how does the technology you explored inform your thinking?

Before taking this class, I thought that literacy was just being able to read, write, and speak well. However, after doing this project, I understand that literacy is on so many different levels, and that every day, every person in the world is working to become more literate in some aspect without even realizing it. I think that using an interactive map informed my thinking of this because it allowed me to realize just how big of a place that this world is, and how different everyone is. That being said, I found it hard to just highlight one part of a culture to deem the most important. Because people need to understand other cultures to become culturally literate, I think that I learned a lot about cultures just trying to figure out what points to highlight on my map.

What does it mean to provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners and how does the particular technology you explored inform your thinking?

I think that “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners means that you need to work on many different levels of literacy to work on students’ literacy. I think also it means that you need a balance in what you work on in the classroom to help the students become literate. For example, if you work too much on writing and reading literacy in the classroom, you risk the students becoming ignorant of other cultures, the environment, or new technologies. I think the part of effective literacy instruction that interactive mapping help me understand is that in this age of technology, students need a way to be entertained using technology while learning in the classroom. Because of this, I thought it was important for me to include in my map links to things like YouTube, and other websites. I am a true believer that students can learn from YouTube, if they are appropriately guided there.