With the world changing every day and the current trends of globalization and digitalisation everything has to change to be up to date; to maintain the best standards within a society. Not only politics has the need to keep up with the new possibilities of the 21st century, but it also affects everybody’s daily life. An important part plays education. It provides one with the tools needed to function and participate in the social, working and private life.
The countless options one is able to access in the era of digitalisation open up many new ways to deal with literacy. The term Multiliteracies represents all of what’s new.
In the past, literacy was based on reading and writing traditional texts in written form, which were accessible in class as a printed version, mostly in the national language. As a result of globalization, the world is now more connected than ever before, creating a huge cultural and linguistic diversity. In addition to that not only is one able to have access to texts all around the world, but the basic form of a text as such has also changed. Electrical devices require this new literacy which is multimodal, meaning it does not just concentrate on traditional language-based approaches, instead it gives one a huge variety of literacy combining modes. These modes can be auditory, visual, linguistic, gestural and spacial, meaning that literacy does not have to contain just written text, but can feature pictures, sound recordings, videos, statistics and other illustrations. Besides that, next to the classic genres like poetry, novels and scientific texts, as well as others; new forms are born. A blog post, like this one, shows the essence of the digitalisation. It can be easily uploaded to a platform, making it possible for everybody to read and access this post via a link.
The use of digital media, especially in the working context, challenges the schools to integrate digital devices into the lesson, also with younger students.
More and more companies expect future employees to be able to deal with writing programs and social media platforms. Students still need to learn how to write a scientific text; what’s new is the way to communicate through social media, as more companies present themselves online and connect with companies all around the world. Dealing with this literacy is especially important in the language classroom, as a cross-cultural world has to communicate, without leaving somebody behind. Therefore Multiliteracies does not only has the goal to improve the economic and business life, but it also has advantages concerning equal educational standards. Everybody, without considering nationality, ethnicity or religion, should have access.
The internet connects us, removes borders and gives us the possibility to share innovation and wonderful thoughts with the whole world. A great responsibility lies within all of this, as one has to use this in a positive and respectful way, to make it gainful for everyone. As a teacher, it is, therefore, more than ever important, to show students this responsibility, as the content is not only accessible to the people located near you but the whole world. If students are taught to use social media in a correct way, they can benefit from it as well. So much good can be spread through digital media and it can become more every day.
By Hannah-Lena
Dear Hannah-Lena,
first of all I really liked your blog entry and I enjoyed reading it. Especially your introductory part was well structured. You have introduced the relevance of the topic and you immediately caught my intention. I also enjoyed the structure of your main body, as it was easy to follow. Initially, you came up with an example of writing in the 20th century and then you addressed the variety of possibilities in the 21th century. The aforementioned comparison gave a good impression of the topic.
You finished your blog post with a small conclusions, which was also well structured and easy to understand.
The only recommendation I have refers to your bibliography. I don’t know if you used some sources to elaborate your text, but if you did, it would be useful to include them.
I enjoyed reading your blog entry because it was well structured and very interesting.
You chose a heading which catches the readers´ attention and attracts interest.
I liked your connection between the topic of multiliteracies and everyday items like the internet, working life and politics because it offers the reader the possibility to identify with your blog entry.
Hey Hannah-Lena,
I really enjoyed reading your blog post! I think that you perfeclty managed to catch the reader´s attention with your title, I was very curious to read your blog entry. I also really liked the fact that you ended your entry with a little conclusion, this gives your text a great structure!