ED 7720 Week #6 Reading Response

I really enjoyed reading the Lankshear and Knobel article because it discussed the ever-changing world of technology and new literacies.  They were discussing how new literacies are always changing and I totally agree. 

This was one of the first times I decided I wanted to try reading all of the articles on my computer rather than print them out (which I always do).  I couldn’t help but notice that my email updates would pop up in the upper right hand corner of the screen and the my iMessges from friends would also be displayed in the same spot.  My computer was an example of the new literacies! 

To think back to college when Instant Messaging was the thing; you could walk down any dorm room hallway and hear the dinging noise alerting someone that they had a message.  Text messages were just beginning and Facebook was just starting.  Ten years later how the world has changed and moved onto new literacies! 

A lot of people would rather send a text message than have an actual phone call.  Facebook is so common that businesses (even my dentist office) request that you “like” their business to increase the free advertising.  And now when I ask my teenage cousins in high school and college about instant messaging they say that no one does that anymore.  In some ways it looks like I’m moving from Mindset 1 to Mindset 2 not because I have to but because I want to and I’m willing to try to learn more about the latest new literacies.

The Connected Learning Principles article had a lot of information to share.  It showed how learning isn’t really based on set purpose but instead a group of ideas that work and build together to create a new vision of learning.  “Through a new vision of learning, it holds out the possibility for productive and broad-based educational change”(Connected Learning TV, 2014).  I thought to myself “What is going to be the next possibility for educational change?”  I then realized that it probably occurring right now without someone like myself knowing it!

John Seely Brown video shared once again how technology is continuing to grow and how education needs to change with it.  I really liked how it brought up blogging.  Beginning this program at UNH I was immersed into the world of blogging.  Of course I had heard of it before and had a few favorite blogs for ideas for my classroom and future lessons/centers/bulletin boards but I had no idea what was really out there.  I have shared with my friends and colleagues that I have created a blog with this program and a few have checked it out (Hi, Christine).  John Seely Brown said, “Blogging is unfinished conversation rather than a production.”  How true a statement!  Blogging puts ideas out in the world but is never truly finished.  As someone who likes to be organized and likes “finished products” blogging is something that I can go back to again and again and revisit.  It’s new to me and something that I am still getting used to and get the hang of but I am slowly getting used it.

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