2-10 Reading Assignment- Chps.1&2 Lankshear & Knobel

The authors Lankshear and Knobel discuss some very important topics of literacy in their book, New Literacies 2.0. The first topic is how the term literacy has changed throughout time and how the importance of it has been in the spotlight for a long time now. When I was in school, the term “literacy” was not used. We didn't have a literacy class; it was referred to as “reading” class. According to the authors, this change came about from numerous factors, one being the work of Paulo Freire. Freire worked with numerous groups of people from all over the world and in doing so, he helped people realize the components of literacy. I like his concept of literacy being, “Reading the word and the world.” (9) I think this is important since we live in such a diverse world and our classrooms are made up of different cultures. This is important to us as educators because we need to understand that each student is different because of their background. Because of this, each student has a different level of knowledge to offer and for that reason, they can not be expected to learn at the same pace, or in the same way as one another.
After reading the chapters, I realized how far we have come in the area of literacy. From the term itself, the importance of it, and how it is taught. Literacy is an on going and developing process. Today, literacy is more then just reading and writing , its using technology, the internet, and looking at the world around us.