reading » Genius On Hold

A Collection of Meaningful Glyphs

learning

Mar 262012

I was forced to sit through the cartoon Viva Pinata a few years ago. (Hey, the requester was cute. What was I supposed to do?) Despite assurances that the last 32 episodes would be less brain cell-killing than the first five, I found myself trying to decide just how badly I wanted to stay on this guy’s good side…right up until I noticed something interesting: I was starting to count how many times I saw a pinata with either a newspaper or a book in his hand. The pinatas’ written language was this bizarre boxy set of shapes, but it made total sense to them and my inner teacher could see how it might encourage kids who didn’t read to give reading a shot.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about language as a bunch of nonsensical shapes. When it first really started sinking in as a teenager that there were people older than me who couldn’t read, I started wondering what my books must look like to them. I failed at trying to put myself in their shoes because I could read and couldn’t convince my brain otherwise. It understood that those letters had meanings, and that arrangements of letters had meanings, and it wasn’t keen on forgetting that knowledge for even a few minutes.

I have been fascinated by alphabets for as long as I can remember. I was constantly trying to learn to recognize them when I was a kid. I didn’t get very far, and I was never able to make the connection that what I was doing was like what someone goes through when learning to read English until I started making friends who write quite a bit in their own language. What makes perfect sense to them is to me a collection of symbols that has no meaning to me whatsoever. It’s like staring at a pinata newspaper.

Written language is a collection of symbols that has meaning to us only when we learn what meanings have been associated with each glyph. Until then, we’re just as lost to translate as someone who is illiterate in their own native language. It really makes you think…

The Power to Interpret Information

learning

Feb 092012

It may seem like I’m often on certain warpaths, but it’s only because every time I read something related to one of those warpaths, it sets me off again. For example, I’ve read a number of articles in recent months that go on about how the internet, by way of mobile phones and tablets, will replace the current education system. It’s a great theory, really, especially to someone who grew up dreaming of PADDs (who may or may not have bought a Palm Pilot the moment she could afford one just to pretend she had something that cool).

The problem is that just we like have to find a way to impart to children how to read and how to compute, we have to find a way to teach them how to interpret data. In fact, part of the reason we teach children to read and compute is so they are enabled at a basic level to interpret data. It’s crazy how interlinked the two are, really. And we certainly aren’t born with the innate ability to read or compute. There are people who go their entire lives without learning to do one, the other, or both. But if we aren’t born with the ability to at least recognize data, why would anyone think we’re born with the ability to interpret it?

Information literacy really refers to a set of skills including recognizing valid sources, separating unbiased reporting from opinions, recognizing plagiarism, and being aware of copyright. Actually, there is no set list of information literacy skills. If you look it up, you’ll find dozens of different skills grouped together in dozens of different ways. At its core, though, information literacy supports a student’s research activities in any class. When the student develops these skills, they become more skilled at distinguishing between primary and secondary source materials, or how to use non-primary sources to locate the primary source. The student also learns to look at a source and decide if there is a bias, where it is, and how that will affect their research.

Information literacy is also where a student learns about copyright and plagiarism. The student learns (or should learn) what copyright is and how it applies to their research materials. The student should also learn about plagiarism, including what it is and why it’s a bad idea. A copyright/plagiarism lesson is the ideal place to teach the student the art of citation, regardless of the format you’ll use for the project. It makes them aware of how to minimize plagiarism in their own work.

In a culture where we are bombarded with information from all directions, it’s useful to arm students with the ability to sift through and find what they really need to know. When done correctly, that’s ultimately what education is and should be: enabling children with the basic skills to consume information, reflect critically on it, and make appropriate decisions about it so that they can continue to learn and interact with their world as adults. That’s why we need to teach them information literacy skills.