ICT and Literacy

From my reading this week, it has become clear that ICT most definitely has a place within the Literacy curriculum in schools and as a newly qualified teacher I hope to be able to encorporate it into my lessons.

Janet Evans, in her article, The Changing Nature of Literacy in the 21st Century, looks at the gap between modern technology and the way literacy is taught in school. She identifies the variety of technologies and literary texts that children utilise on a daily basis, and argues that by integrating the interests of children with the curriculum, it is possible to make them part of the teaching and learning process. My thoughts on this are that if children are interested in what they are learning, then surely there is far greater potential for that learning, and ultimately it can be more effective.

Evans also discusses the multimodal nature of 'texts,' and how it is possible to encourage critical thinking in children by exposing them to a wide variety of these texts and exploring their social standpoint or hertitage. I think this is a really interesting point and something that I hope to refer to in my future teaching also. I hope to use a wide range of texts in Literacy with the children I teach, for example, emails, blogs, web pages, and visual images also. I also think it is important for children to recognise that a 'text' is not simply a passage of writing, but that it takes on many forms. I believe that using ICT would greatly assist this idea.

Furthermore, I believe it is very important as a teacher to understand the world of the children I teach. What I have to keep reminding myself is that children today are different to when I was a child - therefore, keeping up with the new technologies and popular culture that is important to them, will be crucial to effectively teaching Literacy with ICT.