Toward New Media Texts

This article hit home with me because the same way that teachers are leery about new media texts in this article, I am too. I am one of the ones who was raised on alphabetic literacy, and I do feel inadequate when it comes to new media texts. I definitely lack the skills to conduct serious study of these texts, an effective vocabulary, and set of strategies for discussing the structure and composition of new text medias. Before I started school, I did absolutely nothing with computers. I never used computers unless it was at my job, and the computers there do not have the Internet. If it wasn't for this class, I would not know anything about blogging, twittering, or anything like that However, I do think that using new text media in classrooms is very beneficial in these days and times because children are very computer literate now. They know how to use the computer better than the teachers do. They know the computer as being fun and entertaining. I think that teachers need to show students that the computer can be educational and fun so that the computers won't take away from and/or replace traditional education. The article provided a lot of great activities about new text media. The two activities that I liked the most were the visual essay and creating a visual argument. Both activities allow the students to really think about new text media, decide if it is beneficial to them, and use it to express their opinions.