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worth repeating |
Cynthia Selfe, of Michigan Technological University, delivered this year’s Humanities Computing Lecture for the Center for Humanities and Arts earlier this month. Her topic was “Challenges of Literacy and Communication in the 21st Century: A Glimpse of the Future for Educators?” Some excerpts: “I want to talk a little bit about technology in the 21st century, and I want to talk a little bit about the students who compose these texts. . . . Here are the questions we want to answer. “What new understanding of words like ‘text’ and ‘composing’ will be necessary for students in the 21st century? . . . What kinds of texts are these students going to be reading, and what will they be composing? . . . . Will our English teachers, especially, be prepared to deal with these texts? . . . . Are composition courses prepared for these students? Do we need to teach not only alphabetic literacy but also include -images and sound for the cross-lingual world of the 21st century? . . . “We need to seek a balance in literacy teaching. That doesn’t mean we’re going to leave behind alphabetic literacy, but our composition curriculum must change to address multiple modes of composing and communicating, and we must provide current faculty with professional development opportunities that help teach multiple modalities of composing. There are challenges here, especially for faculty prepared in an age of print literacy.” |
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—Beth
Roberts |
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