Skype Date

On Sunday, I had a skype date with Shanna! We discussed how the Leu and colleagues reading had multiple definitions for New Literacies. For example, Leu and colleagues state that "new literacies are seen as new social practices that emerge with new technologies. Some see new literacies as important new strategies and dispositions required by the Internet that re essential for online reading comprehension, learning, and communication (Leu et al., 2007, p.6). New Literacies are also viewed as "deictic; they regularly change as defining technologies change" and lastly, they were viewed as "multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted" (Leu et al., 2007, p.7). New Literacies has an impact on the definition of reading because specific skills are needed for online reading versus offline reading. For example, navigating information from a website, analyzing important information, and synthesizing information. We said that New Literacies will have an impact on our teaching of Language Arts because we will show our students how there is more than one way to be literate. We want our students to work together and learn from each other's strengths to develop their literacies. Shanna and I also discussed the Richardson chapters, in which he states that "consumers of web content need to be editors as well as readers" (2010, p.148). We feel that it will be very important for us to teach our students how to critically analyze web based information as they explore and learn from the Web. We feel that skype is a great New Literacies tool to use with students. It could be used to connect to other classrooms, experts, authors, pen pals, and could be used to conduct interviews and complete projects. I felt that this was a fun and easy assignment to complete. I have also been using Skype for over 3 years now, so using this web tool was not a problem. I liked having to use skype for a school assignment because I've only ever used it to communicate with family and friends. When I first got my webcam, the technicalities of downloading the webcam software and adjusting its settings were a bit of an issue, so I would suggest that teachers spend some time with Skype before introducing it to their students in a classroom setting.