Multiliteracties

The New London Group is a team of ten academics concerned about how the ever changing technologies of our current world effect our languages and how they are taught and used. The group came together in 1996 and are most famous for the article we just read. It is hard to find information on them as a whole, but it appears that they are from a variety of universities in both the US and the UK. Their focuses include education, linguistics, educational psychology, and technology.

As the title suggests, the main idea of this essay and theory is multiliteracies, or the idea that in our current society we need to be able to understand language in a few different contexts. These contexts can be related to social and cultural conditions, but also to the integration of technology into our lives. It is important to point out that literacy here is more than just learning how to read and write, it is a broader collection of skills and experiences necessary to function in multiple areas of society.

One thing I found really interesting was how diverse our “common global language” of English has become. It’s something you know, you just don’t really think about. There are the obvious dialects like the English they speak in the UK or Australia, but also different versions spoken in different parts of our country. There are even different versions of written English, such as the abbreviated used when text messaging or tweeting. There are versions specific to certain industries, to academic communities and to cultural communities.

I also liked that they considered curriculum and lesson planning a “design.” The teacher designs a learning experience. They use the tern “redesign” instead of “reform.” The term “reform” has a more intense connotation, like the whole thing needs to be recreated from the start in a completely different way. “Redesign” seems to imply change as a state of evolution.

My post is late and we have already discussed this briefly in class, but if we had more time to discuss this reading I would be interested in the class’s learning experiences throughout the years. How has each of our individual education systems prepared (or failed to prepare) us for college, work, etc.?