sometimes the pieces fall into place

I love how the stars align for us. The pieces fall into place, and the reading assignments come together to help tackle the next big project. Is it that we just get lucky? Or is it that as we continue our studies, we are able to make connections among articles and ideas and begin to see the big picture? I know our professors hope that we’re learning to make those connections, and that’s exactly what I did today. So here’s to a successful afternoon of reading and putting the pieces together.

Last week, I talked with Allison about creating a professional development unit for teachers in which they investigate the new definitions of literacy in light of 21st century skills and try new literacies for themselves – videos, blogs, wikis, chats. I’ve known that secondary ELA teachers should consider new forms of reading and writing for quite some time. I’ve known this because of my experiences in the classroom and because of life at home with my own 16-year-old digital native. I see how he drags himself to and from school, purely in survival mode. And I see how he races to the computer at the end of the school day, anxious to connect with friends, to check out the “most watched” videos posted on several sites (including news sites), and to write using multiple modes (images, text, video, etc.).

The wonderful part about today is that I realized that what I’ve known is finally beginning to appear (on a massive scale) in journal articles, in practitioner books, in studies from non-profit organizations, in policy statements, and so on. Those painstaking searches for articles about new literacies (for me, beginning in the early 2000s) have transformed into searches that yield an abundance of information.

So here’s to a good day of reading and thinking about the final project. I feel like I have plenty to think about… maybe too much. It appears that the English community is headed into a new frontier – reading and writing in digital spaces. I’ve been waiting for this for such a long time.