New Media in the Classroom

If you haven't figured out, I'm an advocate of incorporating new media into the classroom. I came across the Wordle below and realized that each word describes something I'm striving for in my classroom. Even though I don't necessarily teach it and assess it (such as Amazon or Craig's List), I believe an essential (and unwritten but expected) part of my job as a special education English teacher is to teach civil literacy. This means that I've given students access to the skills that allow them to be a successful citizen.

Cynthia Selfe in "Toward New Media Texts: Taking Up the Challenges of Visual Literacy" from Writing New Media emphasizes the importance of new media texts, especially visually stimulating texts. I just love when I read works by people that are advocating for the same things that I'm trying to push for in my own classroom. I don't have too much else to say on the matter of new media literacies and visual literacy because I am a proponent for them, and I have been quite open about that in other posts. However, I came across this diagram (image below), and thought it was a great summarization of why new media literacies need to be and should be incorporated into the curriculum. If you can't read it, I believe you can click on the picture to enlarge it.