Dr. Pagnucci Asks (#1)

Even though I am using this blog for writing about life in Indiana, PA, the real reason for its existence is so I can have a "reflective research blog" for my Technology and Literacy class. So, interspersed with ramblings about Tofutti and the weather will be posts like this one.

Dr. Pagnucci asks, "How do you understand literacy, based on what you read and your own experiences? As literacy teachers, what should are goals be? What are we trying to do when we teach literacy?"

To begin any conversation about literacy, you have to define your terms first. There are as many definitions, or ways to interpret, literacy as there are episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

So, if you take a broad view, literacy is the ability to read signs. Signs can be most anything: people's expressions and body language are signs, so if you have interpersonal literacy, you can "read" people. Then there are literal signs- the symbols we encounter in text (letters) and in the world (brands, street signs)- and many think of literacy is the ability to put phonemes together. Information literacy is a big buzzword these days, and so if you teach that, you teach people to be able to not only read text online, but also to be able to sort through the unlimited amounts of information. In this way, sometimes literacy is also considered critical thinking, but in order to have something to think critically about, you have to be able to read the signs in the first place.

I suppose I can take any of these views of literacy, depending on what argument I am trying to win ;). But, really, I think having a rigid definition of literacy is to over simplify something that can't be that easily reduced.

But, perhaps more illuminating than what I say is what I do ...to be continued