Introduction
In the world of today, technology is a crucial progression to advance the learner’s ability to learn more efficiently, with the learner being anyone, be it child or adult, male or female. The importance of literacy education is growing larger every day, with the changing types of technology being created or introduced into our daily lives. Why not incorporate some of these technological advances to assist us with our learning, comprehending and understanding of literacy? In this report I will discuss why new forms of technology such as the Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle are important in the school and work place environments. I will also discuss the importance of utilizing technology in literacy education. This report will also outline what literacy is, the impact that technology has on literacy education in schools and in special needs classrooms whilst bringing to light some of the changes in the multiliteracies and multimodalities that the students of today are being exposed to.
What is an Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle and what are they used for?
The Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle are new hand held and portable technologies able to access a wide range of traditional and new forms of text. They have the ability to take a multimodal society of information and condense it into one single linear mode. For example, all of the world’s different newspapers and magazines are available simultaneously on the device.
The Amazon Kindle was specifically designed to be a high tech replacement for the book. It allows users to carry thousands of texts around with them on one small, light, compact device. It has a wireless connection to the Amazon.com online bookstore making any text available to download to the user’s portable device (the Kindle) for a heavily reduced cost, compared to the hardback book in the local bookstore. It has features such as a large screen, zoom in technology, expandable memory (to
References: Winch, G, Ross Johnston, R, March, P, Ljungdahl, L, and Holliday, M, 2006, ‘Introduction: Literacy in the modern world,’ Literacy; Reading, Writing and children’s Literature, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, Victoria, Australia. Domine, V, 2009, a social history of media, technology and schooling, Journal of Media Literacy Education 1, Montclair, NJ, USA. McInerney, D.M and McInerney, V, 2006, Educational Psychology: Constructing Learning, Pearson, Frenchs Forest, NSW. Carter, S. 2006, ‘Redefining Literacy as a Social Practice’ Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2006, Knobel, M and Healy, A, 1998, ‘Critical Literacies: an introduction’, Critical literacies in the classroom, Primary English Teaching Association, Newtown, NSW, Australia Vasquez, V, 2010, ‘Getting Beyond “I like the Book”: Creating Space for Critical Literacy in K–6 Classrooms, the Reading Teacher, 63(7), pp. 614–616, International Reading Association Comber, B, Nixon, H, and Reid, J, 2007, Literacies in place: Teaching environmental communications, Newtown, NSW, Australia: Primary English Teachers Association Hernández-Ramos, P. (2006). How Does Educational Technology Benefit Humanity? Five Years of Evidence, Educational Technology & Society, Dept of Education & Center for Science, Tech, and Society, Santa Clara University, CA, U.S.A Kinzer, C K, 2003 ‘The importance of recognizing the expanding boundaries of literacy’ Reading online Volume 6, number 10 at http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/kinzer/