The Definition of 21st Century Literacies
The bullet points below are taken from the NCTE website, National Council of Teachers of English and are a great guideline for what should be taught in schools today. I think it is a great reminder of what we should working with at every level. When the students start high school we hope they have some of these skills, but for the most part, these literacies have not been taught at all. It seems most teachers either assume the students have the required knowledge, or possibly do not know how to teach this. If it is not in the curriculum nobody bothers!
Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups.
Twenty-first century readers and writers need to
- Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
- Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
- Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
- Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
- Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
- Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments
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