New Literacy - Lindsey

My definition of literacy has definitely expanded since the beginning of this class, as well as the beginning of this project. I never thought much about how literacy affected functions not directly related to reading, writing, viewing, and understanding. This means that I never made the connections between literacy and technology, among other subjects. I also never explored the possibilities of teaching a new type of literacy (which now includes environmental, cultural, and technology literacies as well) through using a new technology (e.g. a scrapblog), as well as incorporating older technologies (e.g. an overhead projector).
When I started this project I planned on talking about an aspect of environmental literacy (more specifically wetlands) through a digital storybook with visual and audio cues. However, due to my lack of technological skill in finding an appropriate program that was compatible with my computer I switched to a website format, which I was equally unfamiliar with. The process of making a website was interesting and fun. I had a fantastic time playing with different features, changing fonts, themes, and styles, as well as different ways of presenting my information. I was not very good at any of it to begin with, and I had a hard time making a page look the way I wanted it to at first, but that made it more of a challenge. I love a good challenge, and I worked with the program until I understood it well enough to make a page that I would be happy with.
With regards to formats, I eventually decided that I liked the idea of lots of links that can connect to each other, with pictures that illustrate what that page is describing or that is appropriate for the information on that page. I hoped that the links would help whoever was navigating my site realize that it is hard to completely separate one aspect of wetlands from another, and that they are all inter-related. The pictures were used to make the pages look more interesting, and to help the more visual learners with the concepts being illustrated when pictures could be used to do that.
If students in my fifth grade class were to explore this technology, I am not sure how well that would work. Most of them are capable readers and are at approximately a fifth grade reading level, but when I have observed them in a computer lab situation they are not as self-sufficient. Many students have a hard time logging into the system properly, or working an already made website the way it was intended to be used. I think they would have fun with it once they knew what they were doing, but each student would need a large amount of individual work with someone who knows what they are doing, and monitoring so that they do not stray from what they are supposed to be doing. If this process was done in steps throughout the year, however, it could be fun to build a class website where each student is able to make a page that is about them or about a topic the class is studying and what they have learned. With this kind of work it would mostly require the comprehension of what they are supposed to be typing (the information from class or certain information specifics), and the ability to type. They would have the options of adding pictures and changing the background (along with other thematic alterations), which would expand their knowledge beyond just typing in Word.