Blogpost Example

Below is an EXAMPLE BLOG POST written by Kristine Wilber, a teaching assistant in a previous semester of CI 414 / 504, a teacher veteran, and school librarian!

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The term “literacy” is loosely defined as the ability to read, view, write, design, speak, and listen in a way that allows effective communication. If someone is “literate,” they are proficient, capable, sophisticated, articulate, productive. 

It’s a rather fun exercise to imagine all the ways we ARE literate, then all the ways we are not. I, myself, am literate in traditional, book-bound reading and writing. There is hardly a time when I am not participating in one or the other. (That’s hyperbole.) I cannot, however, claim much literacy with numerical and spatial concepts. I struggle to understand very basic mathematical ideas like slope. I cannot read maps and get lost leaving the garage. 

My dear colleague in the STEM department, Mr. Math, has never finished a book, nor will he ever (he claims). He hates reading and can’t focus. As Chess Club advisor, however, he plays (and beats) four students at once. He can also explain integration by parts. His math literacy is a miracle to me. 

Mr. Math and I share many of the same students and their literate practices soar to an entirely different level. They can tie their shoes, check a weather app, shout out to a friend in the hallway, look at an assignment on Google Classroom, post an Instagram, and take/post a selfie on Snap, and order lunch -- all in about 7 seconds. 

Their literacy transcends letters and numbers into a whole multimodal world of bodies, spaces, animated movement, gestures, images -- all manner of representations. 

If Mr. Math and I feel calm and competent about our respective areas of expertise and the literacies therein, we are both a bit at sea trying to understand and embrace our students’ complicated, dimensional, performative, integrated habits. 

Here are two interesting studies on the literacy practices of young people. If they make you feel old, outdated, and confused, ask your students for clarification.

Wargo, J. M. (2015). Spatial Stories with Nomadic Narrators: Affect, Snapchat, and Feeling Embodiment. in Youth Mobile Composing. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 11(1), 47-64.

Lenters, K. (2016). Riding the lines and overwriting in the margins: Affect and multimodal literacy practices. Journal of Literacy Research, 48(3), 280-316.


If the studies above had accompanying graphics, they might look like this:

A wonderful thing about an expansive definition of literacy is that it validates and embraces all the ways we -- and our students -- create rich literacy practices to express and enact our stories, ideas and preferences in diverse, creative ways. Thinking broadly and inclusively about what literacy can mean lifts us away from stodgy exclusivity into an assemblage of stories, objects, words, places, and people. Mr. Math and I might get out of our ruts, after all.