David,
I had just been writing a "lecture" for an online composition course when your message came. I had been questioning the value of reading and writing as we do, not just in English classes, but now, in every discipline, in a audio/visual world in which, I'm convinced, those who have grown up with computers read differently: neurologically perhaps, certainly in different patterns. I wonder if anyone has done research on this? So I attached your message to my lecture.  As for 'critical thinking' in an electronic age, doesn't learning to read and write with care and thought help one to do this? "Writing to learn," "reading/writing not just to be understood but for a purpose," all of these lead one, or can, beyond what's on the page or screen. It will be interesting to see what others think. I didn't "assign" your message, or the article attached, but it will be interesting to see what response I get to it, and I'll pass it on. My online students come from
 everywhere, are in the military, working, single parents: a very diverse group of folks who interact online in a very lively fashion, more so than in f2f class discussions.


----- Original Message ----
From: David J. Rosen <djrosen at comcast.net>
To: The Technology and Literacy Discussion List <technology at nifl.gov>
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 8:48:12 AM
Subject: [Technology 1644]  "From literacy to digiracy"

Colleagues,

I am intrigued by the last sentence of a May 16, 2008 article in the Economist entitled "From literacy to digiracy" 

Teachers must recognise that our pedagogical tools are inconsistent with the skills needed 
to survive in a world where people are always connected to everyone and everything. In such a world, 
learning to think for oneself could well be more important than simply learning to read and write.


http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11392128

Do we have tools for adult learners, for example media literacy curricula, to enable thinking for onself in a world where increasingly information comes from the (e)mergingmultimedia of mobilephone/TV/Web/blog/wiki/podcast/social networking Web spaces/Electronic Newspaper/Twitter/Jott?

How do we help adult learners and ourselves sort the wheat from the chaff?

David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/technology/attachments/20080520/1b194645/attachment.html