EDED 4310/ CHAPTER 9

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”?
What information from this chapter helps support your position?

I believe that the growth of the media and information technology is very important especially in an era where technology advances on a daily basis. The text book emphasizes on the importance of "expanding the definition of literacy" (pp. 279). This means that the definition has changed over time since when it first only meant being able to sign your name to being proficient in the 21st century skills that are context specific (Kaestel et. al., 1989; Myers, 1996; National Adolescent Literacy Coalition, 2007). It is important that we integrate technology in education because it enhances language arts instruction. Many of our students don't care about the class curriculum, instead they are more interested in updating their myspace, texting their friends, etc. so we need to find ways to motivate our students so that their interest in learning whithin the classroom increases. According to the English Language Arts Standards (NCT/IRA, 1996), technology not only enhances students' motivation to write but also encourages them to assume greater responsability for their learning.
Print literacy is definately more important because they are fundamental to succeed in most other disciplines such as social studies, sciences, and mathematics. In order to become media literate we need to first be print literate. We will need to read guides, manuals, etc to become media literate, so how can media literate be more important than print literacy? The answer is that it cannot be more important than print literacy. For example, how can we use word and power point if we do not know how to read and write? If we did not know how to read and write these programs would be useless because we would not be able to type information in these programs. Juat imagine that you did not know how to read and you needed to research a topic for a writing assignment. How would you type the topic in the designated spot of a search engine such as google? If you were to find the information on your topic how would you read the information google gathered for you? I think we can use media literacy as a tool in education but it will never be able to replace print literacy because it is the base and a prerequisite to becoming media literate.