Albin Wallace's Page

Albin Wallace Male Titchmarsh, Northamptonshire United Kingdom: Like

0 members like this; Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook MySpace Tweet

Blog Posts
Discussions
Groups - Find a Special-Interest Group or Start Your Own
Photos
Photo Albums
Videos

Profile Information

School / Work Affiliation: United Learning Trust

Blog: http://profile.to/albinwallace/

Website: http://profile.to/albinwallace/

About Me: I would like to discuss critically whether the new technologies are changing the ways in which we read and write, and examine some of the important issues raised by this possibility for teaching policy and practice. I will make reference to key theorists and draws upon primary, multi-media and other texts to substantiate the argument. As the Group ICT Director of the United Learning Trust, I have strategic responsibility for the educational use of ICT across all our schools and academies, and the implications of digital literacy are key to our decision-making on learning and teaching, especially in the context of reading and writing. I would like to examine literacy broadly as a social practice and in some further detail as a digital phenomenon. Ethnography will be briefly examined as a research methodology for examining this and the unique challenges it presents as a subject for examination, and a number of specific characteristics of digital literacy such as multimedia and the role of communities of practice will also be examined. I will conclude by discussing the ways in which technologies change the way we read and write along with implications for teaching policy and practice. The topic is a crucial one for me to investigate as not only must we drive ICT from the educational perspective, we must also be open to the opportunities afforded to us by ICT to change and improve the literacy experiences of our learners. From a reflexive perspective, I should declare my position . After studying linguistics as an undergraduate, I became a primary teacher with a major interest in literacy. Since 1984, I have been involved in the learning opportunities offered by ICT and the unique place it has in education. I will, however, limit my discussion to the effect of Internet-based ICT and its relationship to literacy. I hope to to come to the conclusion that the advent of Internet Protocol-based technologies inevitably and profoundly impact on current and emerging literacy practices. For the purposes of this study, the phrase “digital literacy” refers to online reading and writing practices and is not intended to be a synonym for “computer literacy”, which refers broadly to the development of computer skills in general rather than to reading and writing skills.