Assignment 2
Literacy and Technology in my lifetime
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Assignment 2 - A Critical Reflection (word count, 2 729)
This assignment will provide a personalised and critical reflection on aspects of literacy that have been developed and extended through participation in the course, ‘Multi-Modal Texts and New Literacies’. It will illustrate my growth and understanding of new literacies and multimodal text and how these are aligned to pedagogy and my own context. A critical analysis and evaluation of my own thinking in relation to course content and discussion postings will be provided as well as my understanding of what it means to be literate in the 21st century, and issues that arise as a result.
Before: Critically reflecting on where I started
Upon commencement of this course, I believed that I had a broad understanding of literacy. My specific thoughts about ‘what is literacy’, however, were very focussed upon the reading and writing aspects, and upon ‘decoding’. Because of my contextual situation I did have a broad knowledge and understanding of new literacies and the impact of emerging technologies upon social and literate practices of today’s students. My position was one of an early adopter of technology. Historically I was one of the first teachers at my school to embrace the online learning model delivered through a LMS. My practice reflected this in terms of the mode of curriculum delivery. An early discussion posting outlined my teaching role
“For the past several years I have been heavily involved in the transition of our school from paper based materials, to online curriculum delivery. Most of the content I teach is available via a LMS. Our curriculum is also delivered via web conferencing tools (Elluminate)
Part of my role is supporting teachers in the writing of online courses (both technical and pedagogies) and also supporting teachers in the integration of ICTs into their teaching practice. For many years I have been passionate about web design and development...this knowledge and skill has helped me enormously in the development of online courses.” (C Mayer, discussion post, 28th February 2010)
In terms of literacy, I had also recently completed a course on Functional Grammar. This reinforced for me that we are all teachers of literacy, no matter what subject area we teach.
“I am hoping the course will be very relevant to my teaching situation as I believe we are all teachers of literacy, no matter what subject area we teach...it is all to do with literacy.” (C Mayer, discussion post, 28th February 2010)