Digital Texts In and Out of School

Introduction: "We believe that new teachers must be prepared to teach in schools that are embedded in a world where technologies, particularly portable digital technologies, are changing the ways in which we make meanings and engage with each other (p. 3)."

I agree with this particular quote completely. Teachers should be very familiar with technology; we rely on technology more and more each day. Students are very familiar with technology and we must keep learning about technology. If we do not implement technology in our classroom, our students will be suffering when they enter the real, working world.

Chapter 1: "In terms of the household study, in which twelve households participated, a majority of the girls were under age 8, and although some had tried videoing, they were not engaged with the camcorder in the way the older boys were (p. 17)."

I am somewhat confused about this. I would like to know more about why girls are more shy as compared to boys. Is it because the girls were more sheltered? I know that in some cultures the girls are very sheltered and not allowed to do the same things as the boys. Maybe this could be the reason.

Chapter 2: "Fourthly, with digital texts becoming increasingly multimodal, we now need to broaden our notion of what it means to be literate and include image production and analysis as part of normal procedure in the literacy classroom (p. 29)."

I am not sure if I completely agree with this. I do agree that digital texts is becoming multimodal and changing the regular classroom. However, there are many CSO's that must be covered throughout the year. Most of the time, teachers are struggling to get these all covered and taught. If we add image production and analysis, that will take up valuable time. I feel these are things students could learn in a technology/business class.

Chapter 3: "Tom and Sam describe how friends create images for themselves through their profile pages to try to look 'cool' or 'sexy' (p. 55)."

I agree that this is very true. Even my personal friends on Facebook take pictures that I do not necessarily agree with. I would never imagine taking these sort of pictures of myself. I do not feel that Facebook is the place to put these inappropriate pictures.

The readings are reinforcing the way I use technology in the classroom. The barriers for me is funding. Our county is very poor and we do not have the ability to purchase all of this new technology. We simply have to use what we have and be thankful for it.

Carrington, V., & Robinson, M. (2009). Digital literacies: Social learning and classroom practices. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.