Many educators believe that with the growth of media and information technology, media literacy is just as important as – or even more important than – print literacy (that is, learning to read and write).
What is your position on the relative importance of the two “literacies”?
I believe that print literacy is just as important as media literacy. Technology continues to change the way schools and businesses operate. It is up to the education system to prepare our students for the future of technology that will be awaiting them. Although, teaching print literacy is very important, media literacy provides creativity and innovation to the classrooms. It's new and exciting for the students. They communicate and work together to research a topic and make a product or project as an end result. They take ownership of their learning. The special education population are benefiting greatly because of the assistance media/technology provides for them. On the other hand, some people are just not computer literate. This type of person will rely on his/her print literacy skills to make sure they acquire a job that does not mandate computer technology use.
What information from this chapter helps support your position?
The chapter points out many benefits to media literacy development that are listed in the chart on page 281. However, traditional methods of print literacy will always need to be evident to a certain extent, in order for media literacy to occur.
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For question #1, I do agree with your assertion that media literacy skills do provide creativity and innovation to the classrooms and that they are an essential skill to develop and have for now and for the future for students and for non-students as well. But I still think that print literacy for now should have the relative importance as far as the two are concerned. Many jobs and activities in today’s society still require competent print literacy skills first and don’t think this will change anytime soon. It might change 1000 years from now, but not anytime soon. I think prioritizing print literacy ahead of media literacy should still be the main focus within the school system.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that print literacy and media literacy are just as important. It is also true the people that are not computer literate do just rely on their print literacy to get them around in this world. The thing is that they may not be able to do that for much longer. The way that our society and world is moving towards everything being digital people that are not computer literate will have to learn how to be. Many jobs require you to be able to know how to type and know certain programs on the computer. I guess one of the solutions to this problem is that they must attend a class to teach them the skills they do not need.
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