New Literacies, verbal literacy and beyond it....
"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives" ( Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9). I teach science at a high school in NY which has a very diverse population. During Covid-19 I felt the need of digital literacy more than ever. When we were at class, I would use google translate to help my students while teaching Human Biology Bilingual. I personally understand and can read Spanish but instructing was a tremendous struggle for me. However, something I carefully observed and concluded was that students could write on their cell phones and translate much faster than me. Of course I prefer books and traditional literacy, but my students found it easier to learn English by typing and translating from their cell phones, instead of writing and t...
