Literacy, Blogging, and Education...The Times Are Changing.

photo courtesy of: http://www.lucidica.com/blog/how-to-guides/blogging-for-beginners/

I have a confession to make I never even considered blogging as a useful tool for education.  The idea of having my students surf the web endlessly searching for blogs filled with information from unvetted sources really intimidated me.  As I look back I am beginning to realize how wrong I was and in fact I followed blogs all the time and didn't realize it because I was following specific people based around a specific interest that I am on some level knowledgeable about.  I follow a man in Spain by the name of Arnaud Cousergue who is a high ranking shihan in my martial art.  I visited his blog all the time to pick up his insights on the martial arts and why I never bothered to even look towards individuals in my own profession now seems ridiculous at best or hubris at its worst.

There is really no denying that the field of education is definitely in a major period of transformation. With the availability of affordable technology and communication not only cheap but instant, the way we deliver education has to change as well.  One of my greatest fears as an educator is becoming obsolete.  Think about it for just a moment; our students have access to more information in a single day than our grandparents had in a lifetime and that statement may seem like hyperbole but its not.  This generation of kids have never existed in a world without immediate 24 hour access to news or other media.  They know Facebook, Instagram, and twitter better than I know my ABC's.  If I as an educator can not change and adapt my lessons and instruction to suit a new generation of students who are being prepared as Richard Riley says "for jobs that don't yet exist."  (disclosure, I completely stole that from Beth Werrell's blog) how can I justify to my students that I am intentionally providing them with an obsolete education.  The answer is pretty clear, I can not, and really none of us in the field of education want to do that.  No body goes into teaching hoping to provide lousy instruction; we get into teaching because we care about our kids and we want them to have a better future.  We must realize however that as the times are changing so must the way we provide instruction.

So just how is literacy changing in the 21st century?  Well for starters students are doing far more now in terms of seeking out information.  Information is provided to them through far more avenues than books.  Also in the 21st century everyone has a voice and the audience is global.  This is of course providing new and exciting challenges as well as a bit intimidating as well.  We are quickly learning how crucial it is to educate students on how to identify well sourced information as opposed to rather sketchy or misleading information.  Just do a Google search for flat earth evidence or you can watch this video for a quick chuckle.  Another way that literacy is changing in the 21st century is that students are producers as well as consumers.  They can create blogs, websites, or participate in a variety of online communities while developing and distributing their own content.  As a result people are also quickly learning to "watch" their digital language.  A misquote or common misspelling is likely to receive an immediate response.  Luckily for me my computer comes with an autocorrct feature.  Yes you probably just noticed that I misspelled autocorrect a moment ago and I left that there intentionally to prove a point.  As I type this I see an annoying red line underneath of the word begging for my attention but alas I will leave it misspelled.  As we venture further into the 21st century literacy through the use of the technology and the internet is becoming increasingly: global, interactive, and perhaps most importantly available to everyone.  

I mentioned earlier that I never saw the use for blogs.  I am also aware that there are many people out there with interesting ideas that I never thought about before and this is just one example of how maybe just maybe I am not in fact the best teacher to ever grace the halls of my school but am a continual work in progress just like my students.  What's that phrase we hear all so often that I try really hard not to roll my eyes at whenever I hear it? Oh yeah, "life long learner."  Sometimes I think it's funny how things come around.  Student becomes teacher becomes student once again.