David Warlick gives a very comprehensive narrative of the future of literacy and classrooms and how technology is already changing them. Many of the technologies he mentions are already popular (smart boards and classrooms, personal computers, distance learning) and others, like the tablets and e-readers everybody has in his “future fiction” story, are being introduced now. At the end of the first chapter he proposes that students need to be “light trained” (18) to indicate that to fall under his “contemporary literacy” definition students need reading and writing and math skills but “in the context of an information environment that is: digital, global, indexed, hyper-organized, multimedia” (17).
Warlick’s ideas are timely and can help a lot of educators update their teaching methods and concepts but the article The New Digital Divide published in The New York Times brought to my mind something that we have been discussing in class: access to literacy has always been for those who can afford it, leaving the underprivileged behind. The article mentions that as everything moves online, those who can’t afford to have high speed internet connection at home would be left out of health services, career opportunities, education and entertainment options. With this in mind, we have to be prepared teach our students on the basis of this “contemporary literacy” and also be ready to bring those that don’t have the same access up to date so they can be ready to compete in this digital world.
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