William Cope
Reda Sadki
May Thet Khine Nyein
Eugenia Arvanitis
Pinakini Shah
Jonathan deHaan
Alessandra Coutinho Fernandes
Ketan HeinLiteracy Teaching and Learning MOOC’s Updates
Section 1a: Introduction
Welcome to this Literacies Learning Module. Using Scholar, we prompt a number of different kinds of interaction between course participants, all of which use digital media and collaborative writing processes. Our Scholar medium is our Multiliteracies message!
So, what is 'Multiliteracies'? This term captures two aspects of meaning making in the era of our contemporary communications environment, two kinds of 'multi', if you like. The first is the multimodality of contemporary meaning making in which text, image, sound and other media are used together and the same time to make meaning. Just look at a social media activity feed, and Scholar's activity stream, and you will see this mutlimodality at work. The second is the multiplicity of different ways of meaning. Once, literacy was just about correct spelling and grammar, as if there was one best and correct way to communicate. Now, we explore literacies in the plural. A social media post is different from a report on a science experiment, is different from a personal opinion blogpost, is different from an email, is different from a text message. Literacies are about creating a message that is right for the context and medium, and contexts and media are always different.
Scholar is a web discussion and writing environment that supports multimodal literacies. As well as text, your 'writing' in Scholar can include images, videos, audio, dataset, and even embedded web media—which means that you can do traditional literacy here, and also broaden out your meaning-making to create multimodal communications. Scholar is also very social. In this Learning Module, you will be discussing literacies issues and topics with your peers in the Community Area of Scholar. You will be taking surveys. You will also be creating multimodal works in the Creator area of Scholar, peer reviewing each others works, then revising for submission to your community admin, and publication to your personal portfolio page in Community. You will not only be exploring the subject of literacies. In the spirit of our time, this will itself be a very multimodal and very social experience of literacies.
Comment: Discuss the ways in which literacy is changing, and why the word 'literacies' might be more appropriate today. Read over each others' comments as they come through in the comments area and respond to each other's thoughts by mentiong the other person, @ Their Name.
@Nelaine Flaviano, I agree with you. Literacy is now commonplace—it involves not only reading and writing, but also images, sounds, videos, and digital interactions. This approach is more relevant, inclusive, and in line with how students learn and communicate in the real world.
Literacy stems from human understanding passed from one person to another, which then spreads and provides understanding of the meaning. Literacy has developed due to technology. The impact of technological development has made literacy a representation of understanding, contributing significantly to an increasingly connected and complex world. The use of the word literacy is more appropriate today because it is more flexible and its meaning often evolves, meeting the needs of humans who want everything to be simple and fast. Currently, there are many media or tools that can broaden the meaning of literacy.
https://cgscholar.com/community/community_profiles/literacy-teaching-and-learning-mooc/community_updates/35622
Literacy used to mean reading and writing usually on paper. But if we go way back, it started with oral storytelling where people passing down knowledge by speaking and listening. Then came symbols, writing systems, books, and eventually digital texts. Each shift changed how we communicate and what it means to be “literate.”
Today, our learners don’t just read books, they watch videos, scroll through posts, write captions, and chat online. That’s why we now talk about literacies—plural. It’s not just one skill anymore. It’s reading, writing, viewing, listening, speaking, and even creating across different formats.
Using literacies helps us teach in ways that match real life. It honors the many ways our students learn and express themselves—especially in diverse, multilingual classrooms like ours.
In the process of teaching and learning. I can say that integrating technology as classroom instructions is more appropriate today, and most appropriate to use. We know how media literacy evolves and changing when we apply it through interacting with others and applying it in real life scenarios.
The evolving technology has been very helpful for individuals. It gives us so many privileges, like easier access to information, faster communication, and new ways to learn and express ourselves. These changes are part of why we now talk about literacies instead of just literacy.
In the whole evolution of literacies, what I think the most important takeaway for the future is that literacy is never fixed—it evolves in step with human needs and technologies. From the evolution of writing, to the printing press, to the digital media today, each new innovation has brought new opportunities for communication but also new pitfalls, such as inequality or the erasure of some languages. The takeaway is that we must be flexible, accept many different kinds of literacies, and ensure the new modes of meaning-making get distributed fairly and inclusively.
Literacy evolves as time goes by, thrugh the evolving technology.
Literacy has evolved greatly with the development of technology and also has adapted to new learning theories. Literacy used to be reduced to reading and writing, to specific meaning of words and grammatical constructions. But now, literacy has adapted to diversity and to the many ways different cultures use to communicate. Writing is not a fixed construction any more, it has become more like speech in the way that social media and technology has made it more direct and spontaneous. Also, we can’t ignore the way meaning is given by different cultures and generations, making language adaptable and ever changing.
Multiliteracies have made the process of learning and using a language more fluid and natural, giving people the opportunity to move between different media to express and understand ideas at different levels. New generations are beyond using a single form of meaning when communicating, making it almost unnecessary to speak a certain language to understand what someone at the other side of the world is saying. The use of multiliteracies makes the exchange of messages faster and easier, at least at a superficial level, and the adaptability it requires of us as individuals is important.
Introduction to the Concept of Literacy provides fascinating insights into how literacy has evolved as part of human history. Literacy is not merely about reading and writing; rather, it is an artificial technology that has transformed the way humans store knowledge and communicate. This video discusses three major moments in the globalization of literacy: first, spoken language, which has been used by humans for over 100,000 years; second, the emergence of writing around 5,000 years ago, enabling the transmission of information across generations; and third, the era of digital media over the past 60 years, which has drastically changed the way we think and interact. These changes highlight that literacy is not just an individual skill but also a reflection of how humans adapt to technological and media developments in constructing meaning. As an introduction, this video effectively explains that literacy is an ongoing process of evolution, though it would be even more engaging if concrete examples were provided on how digital literacy impacts everyday life across different cultures.