Can social medium boost literacy skills in young adult readers?
It is evident young children are aware of the different types of social media. I think most people would agree that children 7-16 at least have heard of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, emails, and text messages. All these mediums seem to play an effect on students and literacy. In the article, Can Social Networking Boost Literacy Skills? Written by the Alberta Teacher Association it talks about how there have been many studies indicating that students read more social mediums than they read text while in the classroom. More that 50 per cent of the young adults studied admitted to reading a social medium outside of school on a daily basis. It is important to understand that there is an interest with students reading literature from technology. It does raise another question, are we then worried about what students are reading on these different mediums.
The article also raises the point that with literacy increasing in with social media the involvement of the writing process has also increase. Students who are reading more are feeling more confident in the area of writing. If a student is fluent in reading than the chances of their writing ability is increased. Students are no longer writing long written reports when asked to do so they are now writing emails, forums, texts, and or blogs. The study also showed that students enjoy writing on these networks and there were an increased percentage of students who participated in the classes whom had blogs or some sort of response to make via technology.
After reading the article it was pleasant to see that there is actual data on the amount and increase of students who use social media outside of the classroom. Granted students are no blogging about shoes or how their day was, but in order to have someone follow them they definitely have to read the post before they can correctly relate and leave a message. I also believe students have a boost of literacy due to these different social mediums. Whether this is the way we wanted our future leaders to develop their literacy skills it seems we should embrace the social networking world to help our student become better readers and writers.
Alberto Teacher Association (2010). Can Social Networking Booster Literacy Skills? Retrieved from http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/The%20Learning%20Team/Volume-14/Number-1/Pages/Can-social-networking-boost-literacy-skills.aspx on October 20, 20011.
I have not given nor recieved help on this project.
I had never considered how much social media is increasing students’ interaction with text. Many students who would never crack the spine of a book, if they did not have to for school, log on to the internet every day to read friends’ posts on Facebook and update their status. Those same literature-avoiding teens may also go on to check a blog about their favorite video game, interacting with text even more. Without technology and social media it is tough to know if these students would ever turn to books for entertainment, but teachers should be happy that students are interacting with text on the internet. As teachers, maybe we could tie students’ interest in social media into classroom instruction through our own class blogs or use of internet in curriculum.
ReplyDelete