Literacy in the 21st Century

Remember when we used Etherpad to collaboratively write a poem? Well here’s an interesting cross between collaborative writing (there’s only one person doing it) and screencasting (as Joanne demonstrated in her talk on podcasting). Check out 13 Sentences About Startups. It’s brilliant, but I need to spend some more time with it and see if I can slow it down. Think about this as a visualization of composing and editing, and the way that every change (and every mistake) can be meaningful. Cool stuff.

Then we have yet another take on the future of books — this time, though, the problems we’ve discussed (not simply replicating paper on screens, for instance) is being addressed! The NYT reports on Vook, a new company designed to make electronic books … well, more electronic. Check it out.

This next article was sent to me by a former student (hi, Jay!), and it speaks to many of the things we’ve discussed in class: psychology, tailoring messages to particular audiences, market research, and the way we’re programmed to respond to certain things, but not others. Disney is researching teen boys to develop shows designed to appeal especially to them. That’s not earth-shattering, of course. All companies research their target demographics, but this article gets into some of the details of how detailed they are in their research. It’s creepy. And a fantastic read. You should definitely check it out.

Next, for all of you Blade Runner fans out there, io9 is reporting that Boom! Studios is adapting Philip K. Dick’s classic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a graphic-ish novel. As Graeme McMillan writes:

The series, appropriately titled Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? will include the full text of Dick’s 1968 novel - famously adapted into the movie Blade Runner - alongside brand new sequential illustrations for something more than just illustrated prose.

I’m excited, but I really have no idea what it will look like in the end. Perhaps that’s why I’m excited. The first issue of PKDDADoES? goes on sale in June.

And finally, all is not well in Puppetland. Click the link to read all about the game (it’s a very concise game manual). Click here to download your own puppet character sheet. We’ll be filling them out in class on the 29th, but you’ll be much happier if you’ve thought about your character ahead of time. As we’ll all be taking turns gamemastering, I’ll explain the situation next week so you can also have enough time to come up with a good scenario. Trust me… Punch the Maker-Killer has come up with a truly insidious plan this time!

So much going on!

Think you’ve got this whole “new media literacy” thing down? Try this: a new “novel” by Aaron A. Reed, Blue Lacunae. It’s a hybrid novel/interactive fiction, and it’s quite interesting in the parts I’ve “read” so far. I won’t give anything away, but I did enjoy the avatar customization he includes. It’s rare to find that in a book. Even an eBook.

And perhaps most importantly, Amazon unveiled its Kindle 2 today. We’ll watch this video in class and discuss it, but there’s more info at Amazon if you’re interested.

After last week’s post about TV watching and book-being-read-to-you-ness, I finally got around to watching the Superbowl ads. And what did I find, but this:

And not only that, but another New York Times article for us! This one is why TV is still around when we have computers to satisfy all of our needs. In case you’re not sufficiently piqued to read it, here’s Randall Stross with a daily dose of infuriation:

Consumers are increasingly avoiding newspapers — and books, too — because the text mode is now used so infrequently that it can feel like a burden. People are showing a clear preference for a fully formed video experience that comes ready to play on a screen, requiring nothing but our passive attention.

Go on, I dare you to read it. On a screen, of course!

Holy crap last weekend was full of literacy-related stuff! Here’s a quick run-down.

In the comics we had Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman’s Zits talking about childrens’ books. Here’s the first two cells:

And Bunny Hoest and John Reiner’s Lockhorns discussing reading skill and its inverse relationship to TV watching:

And then in the New York Times Mazagine, Virginia Heffernan’s “The Medium” column asked “What are kids learning to read when they learn to read online?” That’s more than relevant. I think our classroom is bugged.

Heffernan opens:

“Did you like this book?” asks the computer. It’s a customer-satisfaction question, but it seems more profound than that.

We hesitate. Ben, my 3-year-old son, shoots me a puzzled look. The answer should be yes. Ben enjoys what’s on the screen right now: Starfall, an online medley of free learn-to-read activities. But he doesn’t like the question.

“It’s not a book,” he explains, emphatically, to the laptop. “It’s more like a movie or a video.”

Read the rest — it’s really interesting, especially from a childrens’ lit perspective. And super interesting, from a Proust and the Squid perspective, when Heffernan notes that:

I’d like for Ben to sit with One More Story and come away with the impression that he’d been read beautiful books all afternoon. But Ben tends to ask for One More Story when he wants privacy, the same state of mind in which he likes videos. Books, by contrast, are for when he feels snuggly.

As I said, read it all. It’s well worth your time. Even if you have to read it on a computer monitor.

In an article last month for US News & World Reports.com, Andrew J. Rotherhamw rites about a worrisome trend he has spotted:

In public education today, “21st-century skills” are all the rage. Educators, business leaders, and elected officials are united around the idea that there are new skills students must have to be successful in today’s economy. But while it is exciting to think we live in times so revolutionary that they demand entirely new skills, that assumption and others threaten to establish a false choice between teaching facts and teaching how to approach them—and to make the 21st-century skills movement another fad leading to little change in American education.

You may be wondering, what exactly are “21st Century skills,” and do I have them? If not, whose fault is it, and can I sue over it?

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