It's all about the book...

Maggie made an interesting comment about how librarians may feel about the "connected classroom" video. She stated that many "teachers do not feel that reading on a computer screen is actually reading--and that is all the reading many of our students get each day after school". This raises an interesting question about the definition of literacy and what it means to be literate in today's world. Not only do many kids ONLY read off the screen at home , many times they are ONLY reading from text and writing on paper in schools. If you haven't seen MWesch's Web 2.0 Video you simply must! The types of reading and writing that exist on the internet are different from traditional reading and writing that are happening in schools. So all teachers of reading and writing must engage in the conversation about how best to use these new technologies to teach kids about these new literacies. Donald Leu and his team at the University of Connecticut are talking about just that. We teach kids to read and write for different purposes, yet we ignore teaching kids how to read hypertext. Kids are doing research and while the original site is valid, may end up finding information that is unreliable based on the site where it is located. Even some adults link from place to place (site to site) without realizing that is what they are doing. Isn't it our responsibility to teach children ALL forms of reading and writing? After all, books were once the "new technology" as well:-)