New Media & New Literacies

 For most of my life, we focused on the primary method of writing, everything was on paper. Not until high school did teachers start applying the movies that were based on the book as well. Just about everyone has seen the Romeo and Juliet movie in their English class, it is hard for the students to relate to that because it is dated and the language is still Shakespearean. However, some of my English teachers have noticed that and have begun to modernize the curriculum to keep up with the changing generations.  Michael Hernandez takes the quote, "Pictures often say far more than words that describe them, especially metaphor, but they can sometimes bring a historical or cultural context into the discussion of writers and poets".  Students have a hard time trying to picture life from long ago, even if it truly wasn't that far back. I tend to find that they forget how modern life was and that they were not that far off from how we live today. Reading can only be interpreted...

 While I do not work with ELL students anymore, I found the interaction of an audio blog interesting and I plan on creating something for my general education students. I would like to use it as a means of planning out our writing assignments. Most of my students do not plan out their writing or have a fluid thought while writing, they "idea jump". However, the use of audio blogs could help them and each other hear what they plan on writing. Rather than write it down once and not think about the organization or grammar of the writing assignment. But the audio blogs just like all of their school work, require communication between the teacher and students. One of the quotes that stuck with me was when Hsu said, "The 'e-generation' is strongly motivated by the integration of technology". When educators think of our students as the "e-generation" we have the ability to do great things. We cannot teach the future generations based on past examples, we ...