Critical Literacy

To me critical literacy is the encouragement of readers to actively analyze texts. It is being an active participant in learning and education. Critical literacy allows for the texts to incorporate television, movies, web pages, music, etc. thus making critical literacy perhaps more appealing to modern day students. In Lynde Tan’s article “From Print to Critical Multimedia Literacy: One Teacher’s Foray Into New Literacies Practices,” she mentions that the reception of new types of literacies has been a sort of mixed bag. An even number of teachers either fight the new process with tooth and nail or they fully embrace the ideal. Tan also notes that it is important to distinguish the roles of the teacher and students. If students and teachers understand their roles within the classroom they will be able to better facilitate the lesson. All in all, Tan’s article was more informative rather than helping solidify what critical literacy means in the classroom; although, she does have apt advice when detailing specific strategies to incorporate the roles within the classroom.

Digital Literacy

This week I spent quite a bit of time think about what I wanted to do as my digital literacy assignment. One thing that I've been interested in having students do a Book Talk. In a Book Talk, students will review and give a short summary about a book of their choosing. For my Book Talk I discussed the book Alive. I will let the Book Talk tell you what it is about :)

I found the process relatively easy. The biggest thing that I noticed was when I used my laptop's built in mic it would pick up the fan of the computer creating a little bit of feedback that was slightly annoying. Also the programs were easy to find, and most of them were already installed on my computer.