English 101 Professor Shepherd 1/25/2014 Gabe Kleinschmidt The New Literacy

Kleinschmidt 1

I believe literacy is traditionally defined as the ability to read and write. However Reading and writing has changed over time and so has the meaning. The way that people are being literate in our time is through technology. As technology grows over time, so does the way we use it, and how we use it for literacy. As a kid growing up in the 21st century I was raised on technology. In the second grade instead of taking a class on writing, we took a class on computers; we learned how they worked how to type and over time, that became normal to me. As I grew, computers and technology became more and more predominant in my life. There were certain markers in life in which you would advance in technology. Third grade you get a video game console, and fifth grade you get your first cell phone. When I got older, I found it easier to cut corners or find better things to do then do school work. If I had a question, I would just look it up online. With so many ways to avoid what I really needed to do, and over time avoiding most of the work, I found myself not as literate as most of my colleagues. When my grandmother talks about when she was in school, it seemed so much harder then it is today. She would talk about walking to the library, spending hours trying to find the right book with the right information. Then she would read it through and write down the information needed. I feel that today we are not as literate with books as we once were with the rise in technology.

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In Dana Gioias article On the Importance of Reading, he discussed the decline in readers in our society: Reading has declined among every group of adult Americans: every age group, educational group, income group, religion and race (Gioia p.18). As he stated, it doesnt matter what race or religion we are, our reading and writing has still declined. Along with our education we now resort to technology to educate our selves then to sit down and read. This limits the amount of reading people really need to do if they are curious about something. No more searching through the library to find the book you need. Now we can just look up one simple question instead of having to hunt through a book. This may be problematic as we age. As technology ages so will our literacy. Once I became older, I found myself wrapped in a video game called Sims. In this game, you are god, you create families, and control every move they make: where they live, whom they date, and their careers, are all controlled by me. I would push away from real life to be with my fantasy life and would put all my energy into my family on this game. In Jane McGongials speech Gaming can make a Better World, she talks about how gamers exert a lot of energy into their virtual worlds such as games like World of War Craft, a game where you do tasks to help out your village. With the acceleration of technology we find our selves investing the same amount of time with playing video games as we do with our education (Jane McGongial). With all the time and energy gamers spend playing games we find our selves wondering why. She questions how we can use the energy that a gamer puts into saving or helping their virtual world into a reality for our own world.

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Now most children learn new things through technology. Children now use games in ways to learn, such as ABC Mouse. This is a game where children at a young age, usually before they are old enough for school, log onto this website and to them its all just games but really they are beginning to learn knew things without having to think of it as work. Over time it has shown to be a very effective way of learning for children just starting out with early learning education. In a way I think this relates to Jane McGongials idea that we can use video games to influence better things for the world. In this case it would be learning. In many ways technology had helped our literacy. In todays world we see the idea of literacy changing. Not only the definition but also the way we use new ways to become literate. It is true however, that with all the technology it seems that we may have declined in the rate that we as a population read. This may have affected our literacy, though Mcgonigal brought up a good point that maybe with this technology we might reverse this decline. I think over time literacy will always have the same definition, the act of reading and writing but the way in which we obtain reading and writing will always be changing.

Kleinschmidt 4 Work Cited:

Gions, Dana. On the Importance of reading. Commonwealth. 2006. McGongigal, Jane. Gaming can make a Better World. 2010