The New Basics. (pdf file)
1. Digital Age Literacy—Today’s Basics
Basic, Scientific, and Technological Literacies
As society changes, the skills that citizens need to negotiate the complexities of life also change. In the early 1900s, a person who had acquired simple reading, writing, and calculating skills was considered literate. It has only been in recent years that the public education system has expected all students to learn to read critically, write persuasively, think and reason logically, and solve complex problems in mathematics and science.[i]
Visual and Information Literacy
The graphic user interface of the World Wide Web and the convergence of voice, video, and data into a common digital format have increased the use of visual imagery dramatically. Advances such as digital cameras, graphics packages, streaming video, and common imagery standards,allow for the use visual imagery to communicate ideas. Students need good visualization skills to be able to decipher, interpret, detect patterns, and communicate using imagery. Information Literacy includes accessing information efficiently and effectively, evaluating information critically and competently, and using information accurately and creatively. [ii]
Cultural Literacy and Global Awareness
The world is rapidly becoming wired and the resulting globalization of commerce and trade has increased the need for cultural literacy. In such a global economy, with the U.S. concerned about interactions, partnerships and competition from around the world, there is a greater necessity for knowing, understanding and appreciating other cultures, including cultural formations established as norms in a technological society, such as virtual realities. [iii]
The Metiri Group: another vendor hard at work on behalf of America's children. Along with the Partnership, which has added the state of Arizona to its list, joining Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
Let the infusing begin!
in case you've got anything that needs containing
Again, how much of this is new?
ReplyDeleteYes, a lot of people may have been expected to leave school in the early 1900s with only basic literacy and maths skills, but if you were going to go on to university you needed more in the way of literacy skills at least.
Visual and information literacy - how old is teaching art and draftmanship? And of course in the 1900s information literacy meant accessing libraries, often a more difficult skill than typing a few key words into Google.
And what were teaching foreign languages about, if not teaching cultural literacy?