My school district is launching into a two year Literacy Initiative and part of that push is to send a bunch of us to a conference called Literacy for All in November (right before I head to Philly for various National Writing Project and National Conference for Teachers of English conferences).
The Literacy for All Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, has a lot of interesting sessions and many seem very useful to me as a teacher of writing and reading. I can’t wait to gain some new insights and some new approaches, and be part of the conversations. Now, I know this Literacy for All is not a technology conference, but you would think that in this day and age, there would be some technology integration into some of the topics and workshops being planned.
Right?
Wrong.
As far as I can tell from the descriptions of the sessions, there is a complete absence of the digital world reflected in the workshops being presented at Literacy for All. Isn’t digital composition the platform for real writing that kids are doing outside of school and shouldn’t that be reflected in some of the ways we approach teaching? I think so.
I’ll contrast that to the NWP and NCTE meetings that follow Literacy for All, where much of the focus will be on ways that technology and digital tools are impacting the writing process and how teachers are using these concepts to engage their students in new and interesting ways.
I am looking forward to Literacy for All, but it just made me wonder …
Peace (in the Digital Age),
Kevin