[Air-L] Your Opinion

[Pam Brewer]

Hi Elaine--

What a great question--how do we know?  I'm not sure what research has 
been done on issues of context:  how it plays a part in education (at 
all levels), how it can play a part, whether that education works, how 
it might increase our ability to develop global understanding, and on 
and on.  Does anyone know of research specifically regarding context and 
education?

P

Pamela Estes Brewer
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Appalachian State University
phone 828-262-2351
fax  828-262-2133
email  brewerpe at appstate.edu



Elaine Studnicki wrote:
> P, 
>
> I do know many literate adults who couldn't make there way out of a
> technology brown paper bag but they are considered literate.  In education
> we try to make connections with real world experiences to put the learning
> into a context and hopefully students will know how to use and associate
> technology to other experiences.  But honestly I don't know how often that
> happens and how effective it is.  How do we know?
>
> Thanks, 
>
> Elaine
>
>
> On 4/15/09 3:50 PM, "Pam Brewer" <brewerpe at appstate.edu> wrote:
>
>   
>> Jeremy--
>>
>> On the one hand, you point to "digital literacy" as somewhat extraneous
>>
>> "Digital literacy to me is just 'literacy'.... if you have the right
>> skills to be 'literate' you should have the right skills to be digitally
>> literate, but the argument is frequently made that it isn't so, thus we
>> have digital literacy, we also have informational literacy, which is a
>> different thing also apparently, there is internet literacy, and webbed
>> literacies and multimodal media literacies."
>>
>> On the other hand, you point out the importance of context.  I think
>> digital literacy is just one way to contextualize literacy, and maybe
>> the ability to contextualize is central to this discussion because that
>> ability contributes to both literacy and learning.  It might also be a
>> key issue to K-12 improvements.  Context is certainly exigent to my
>> field of technical communication and to my teaching though I hadn't
>> thought about in quite this way before.
>>
>> P
>>
>> Pamela Estes Brewer
>>
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of English
>> Appalachian State University
>> phone 828-262-2351
>> fax  828-262-2133
>> email  brewerpe at appstate.edu
>>
>>
>>
>> jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>>     
>>> hoover dam... good proofreader.... yes, that's not me.
>>> On Apr 15, 2009, at 3:15 PM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> True, but there in a 747 we are talking about something a bit more
>>>> like a complex system of technologies, much like say the hoover damn
>>>> than the the canonical aristotelian example which is similar
>>>> though.... it is captaining a ship, which is a complex system, and
>>>> takes years of mentorship, which is why i later talked about this in
>>>> terms of that apprenticeship model of knowledge acquisition.
>>>>
>>>> but in the end i was talking about the skills necessary to achieve
>>>> literacy more than the literacy in this post and the
>>>> practicing/development of those skills will likely be performed in a
>>>> social context as an individual....
>>>>
>>>> probably should also state that i generally mean a bit more than
>>>> objects when i refer to technology, i tend to mean more than the
>>>> echnics as the technology, so technology includes is all the social,
>>>> cultural, ideological, systems that exist within the ecological arena
>>>> that situates the technology in its performative and other
>>>> contexts.    that is closer i think to the 'techne' 'logos' meaning
>>>> of technology than perhaps the more modern object without context.
>>>>
>>>> anyway, i'm still supposed to be writing about knowledge and
>>>> commodity forms in the information society and am still avoiding it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 15, 2009, at 3:00 PM, Scott Swigart wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> " what we need for the future, we need people who have the skills
>>>>>           
>>>>>> to achieve literacy on their own on any given new technology or old
>>>>>> technology they are confronted with"
>>>>>>             
>>>>> Not all technology is created equal.  This assumes that the
>>>>> technology is
>>>>> designed to be usable, discoverable, and intuitive.   Some of the most
>>>>> academically challenged people figured out how to use their iPhones
>>>>> just
>>>>> fine.  The designers of the 747, on the other hand, had no
>>>>> requirement that
>>>>> pilots simply be able to figure it out on their own.
>>>>> d
>>>>>           
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>
>
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