What’s up with African American literacy rates? David L. Horne, PH.D. | 10/3/2013, midnight

In the world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other quick strike information processes, why is there a definite lack of evidence of a steady upward progression of reading and writing skills among African American contributors?

Post secondary education statistics continue to demonstrate that far too many African American students who finish high school do so as functional illiterates—that is, they cannot read and write at a basic level requisite for functional participation in modern life. In California, both the California State University system and the University of California system still annually allow (and mainly require) a significant proportion of incoming freshmen to register for developmental English courses—sometimes called “dumbbell” English— in order to assist the students in preparing to take regular-level freshmen college basic education courses. These developmental courses generally do not count toward a student’s graduation but must still be paid for through regular tuition. Both university systems realize this is not a very efficient use of taxpayer dollars, however, the literacy levels of the students coming to them out of high school require this kind of intervention. As of 2009, the Department of Education reported that literacy rates for more than 50 percent of African American children in the fourth grade nationwide was below the basic skills level and far below average; and by the ninth grade nationwide, the situation had gotten worse, with the rate dropping below 44 percent. Yes, there is still an unemployment crisis in the nation’s Black communities, but what is feeding and ensuring the longevity of that crisis is the ballooning illiteracy rate among Black youth and adults. What happened to that post-antebellum slavery zeal that put educational attainment, including reading and writing skills, as the sustained priority for advancement in American society? How did we drop that ball? These are bedeviling questions especially with Sept. 24 labeled National Punctuation Day, and it was accompanied by a broad national reflection on the lack of proper writing skills among modern American youth. Officially, NPD, “is a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.” Giving even a casual glance at regular comments typed into Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook pages, American youth are in deep need, accompanied by deepening denial, of literacy help. And, citing the old chestnut, “when White folks sneeze, Black folks catch the flu,” where there is this dire a problem among America’s youth in general, African American youth are staring at death’s door regarding functional literacy in America. What can be done about it, if anything? Where there is still parenting going on, we need to encourage the love of reading (not just urge our youth to read so-called great books), and we need to encourage African American youth to actually write sentences in letters, notes, homework assignments, etc. We might even spend a little time checking—proof-reading—their material ourselves. African Americans simply cannot afford this self-imposed hump onto already overloaded backs. It’s one thing to still have to fight everyday acts of random racism in our lives. That’s the nature of the beast we deal with. It is another thing altogether though, to handicap ourselves. Suicide has never been our favorite or most popular response to oppression, but we have to call this literacy problem what it is—cultural and political suicide. C’mon ya’ll. Let’s get with it. Forward not backwards. Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.

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Source: http://ourweekly.com/news/2013/oct/03/whats-african-american-literacy-rates/

This article discusses an issue that has dogged that African American community for centuries.

Funnily enough, I've been on an intellectual bent in the other direction: that we've poisoned our thinking in terms of systems, for the worse. This shows up when trying to communicate about the Web, for example.

It's surprisingly difficult to get anyone to conceive of the Web as a medium suited for anything except the "live" behavior exhibited by the systems typically encountered today. (Essentially, thin clients in the form of single-page apps that are useless without a host on the other end for servicing data and computation requests.) The belief/expectation that content providers should be given a pass for producing brittle collections of content that should be considered merely transitory in nature just leads to even more abuse of the medium.

Even actual programs get put into a ruddy state by this sort of thinking. Often, I don't even care about the program itself, so much as I care about the process it's applying, but maintainers make this effectively inextricable from the implementation details of the program itself (what OS version by which vendor does it target, etc.)

This is an incredibly important fact. It's gone even further with additional advances in advertising and social media not to mention the slow drip mental programming provided by algorithmic feeds which tend to polarize their readers.

People simply aren't actively reading their content, comparing, contrasting, or even fact checking it.

I suspect that this book could use an additional overhaul to cover many of these aspects.

But it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modem communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world in which we live.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I sort of want the ability to more easily capture audio, annotate and save it while I'm listening to radio or even television. Pausing the media and having the ability to reply it (TIVO and some DVRs provide this capability) and do other things with it would be truly fantastic, especially for saving tidbits for later use and consumption.

This was apparently true in the 1940s and 1970s. Have things improved measurably since?

The world could benefit from a curated set of bookmarklets in the style of Smalltalk ("doIt", "printIt", etc buttons) that you can place in your bookmarks bar (or copy into a bookmarks document and open in it in your browser), where the purpose would be to allow you to:

1. access a new scratch area (about:blank) for experimentation
2. make it editable, or make any given element on a page editable
3. let you evaluate any code written into the scratch space

scratch.js aims for something something similar, and though laudable it falls short of what I actually crave (and what I imagine would be be most beneficial/appreciated by the public).

Great. This is something that I advocate for technical people to put forth as a "serious" solution more often than I see today (which is essentially never). But next time, save it as HTML. (And ditch the stylistic "rubbish"; don't abuse "the sanctity of the written word by coercing it to serve the vanity of a graphic artist incapable of discharging his duty as a mere lieutenant".)

This is probably the least flawed claim in the entire piece.

Early writing systems used thousands of symbols and were thus incredibly complex and required heavy memorization. This may have been easier with earlier mnemonic systems in oral (pre-literate societies), but would have still required work.

The innovation of a smaller alphabetic set would have dramatically decreased the cognitive load of massive memorization and made it easier for people to become literate at scale.

Nevermind LibreOffice Draw, you can use LibreOffice Writer to author the actual content. That this is never seriously pushed as an option (even, to my knowledge, by the LibreOffice folks themselves) is an indictment of the computing industry.

Having said that, I guess there is some need to curate a set of templates for small and medium size businesses who want their stuff to "pop".

this sort of language will help make the document become outdated.

Indeed. Web literacy among the masses is pitifully low. Browsermakers are certainly to blame for being poor stewards. Hot Valley startups are responsible as well. (See https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/.)

Slides from

Panel: Digital Literacies

How do the collaborative and multimodal qualities of social annotation encourage digital literacies? Join an expert panel of educators and researchers as they share their projects and perspectives, as well as discuss how social annotation exemplifies creative and interactive digital literacies. The panel will be moderated by Mary Klann (History, UC San Diego/San Diego Miramar College) and features speakers Jenae Cohn (Academic Technology, CSU Sacramento), Cherise McBride (Education, UC Berkeley), and Paul Schacht (English/Digital Learning, SUNY Geneseo).

are note-taking skills taught at all?

teaching how to read is an ongoing project. Digital reading techniques need to be introduced, reinforced and practiced across courses.

I feel like Western culture has lost so much of our memory traditions that this trite story, which I've seen often repeated, doesn't have the weight it should.

Why can't we simultaneously have the old system AND the new? Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale touch on this in their coinage of the third archive in Songlines.

This guy gets it.

Read, K., Gaffney, G., Chen, A., & Imran, A. (2021). The Impact of COVID-19 on Families’ Home Literacy Practices with Young Children. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dvcqm

Great way to put it. One thing that I keep trying to hammer is that the "minimum thing" here looks more like "open up a word processor, use the default settings, focus on capturing the content—i.e. writing things out just as you would if you were dumping these thoughts into a plain text file or keeping it to, say, the subset of Markdown that allows for paragraph breaks, headings, and maybe ordered and unordered lists—and then use your word processor's export-to-HTML support to recast it into the format that lets use their browser to read it, and then FTP/scp/rsync that to a server somewhere".

This sounds like I'm being hyperbolic, and I kind of am, but I'm also kind of not. The process described is still more reasonable than the craziness that people (HN- and GitHub-type people) end up leaping into when they think of blogging on a personal website. Think about that. Literally uploading Microsoft Word-generated posts to a server* is better than the purpose-built workflows that people are otherwise coming up with (and pushing way too hard).

(*Although, just please, if you are going to do this, then do at least export to HTML and don't dump them online as PDFs, a la berkshirehathaway.com.)

Lack of literacy definitely does not mean lack of culture.

Reminder to self: I've got a strong suspicion that the Hebrew bible was transmitted orally for generations prior to being written down in a similar manner. I need to collect some additional evidence to build this case. The arc of the covenant is a first potential piece of evidence.

Alper, S. (2021). When Conspiracy Theories Make Sense: The Role of Social Inclusiveness. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2umfe

In fact, HTML makes it very easy (true for the reasons that lead Mark to write that it can be copied and manipulated). It's contemporary authoring systems and the typical author-as-publisher and the choices they make that are what makes this difficult.

The future of rich media lies in striving to be more like dead media (or at least mining it for insights by better understanding it through thoughtful study), rather than the misguided attempts we've been living inside.

(This is something that I've done a 180 on in the last year or so.)

It is exactly that "timid" ("tepid"?) attempt at dynamism that has led to these circumstances.

Helmus, Todd C., James V. Marrone, Marek N. Posard, and Danielle Schlang. ‘Russian Propaganda Hits Its Mark: Experimentally Testing the Impact of Russian Propaganda and Counter-Interventions’, 15 October 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA704-3.html.

Krupenkin, Masha, Kai Zhu, Dylan Walker, and David M. Rothschild. ‘If a Tree Falls in the Forest: COVID-19, Media Choices, and Presidential Agenda Setting’. SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 22 September 2020. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3697069.

Bergot, N. (2020, October 24). Battling fake science: University of Alberta launches free online science literacy course. Edmonton Journal. https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/battling-fake-science-ualberta-launches-free-online-science-literacy-course

Simone, Costanza De, Antonella Battisti, and Azzurra Ruggeri. “Differential Impact of Web Habits and Active Navigation on Adolescents’ Online Learning.” PsyArXiv, March 1, 2021. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hsvc4.

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘RT @UCLACOVID19: An informed community is a healthier community. Check us out at @UCLACOVID19 and @uclaaasc’s https://t.co/m0GTixM2jW for r…’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 2 March 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1321406774214336515

This is really interesting. I think we have got used to the fact that the internet is mostly a passive space - where we search for things. Perhaps we sometime ask questions. And there are only some spaces, where we are actually creative ourselves.

Hypothes.is is the powerful idea that you can annotate the web.

Solid is a more radical solution. It is the idea that you can also control what data you share with other.

We should be assessing how people use information to solve problems they care about, rather than whether or not they can recall information.

Der Guardian über das estnische Bildungssystem und den Covid-19-Lockdown. Rechtzeitige Digitalisierung hat dafür gesorgt, dass die Schulen so leistungsfähig geblieben sind wie davor.

Umfrage unter amerikanischen Wählern im Jahr 2020, die zeigt, dass die Klimakrise immer noch eine geringe Priorität hat und dass die meisten die Folgen von Temperaturerhöhungen nicht einschätzen können. Via Genvieve Günther auf Twitter https://twitter.com/doctorvive/status/1308760710470676480?s=21

This is the very reason I selected this paper. Digital literacy is also a factor in determining one's technological acumen.

This comparison takes a narrow view of digital literacy. Often the term includes the ability to critically evaluate digital content and to create digital media (see e.g. Perspectives of digital literacies. However, the concept of digital fluency is also useful and this definition includes useful elements.

Positioning digital literacy as an entitlement is useful language to persuade individual educators and institutions that digital literacy is core to 21st century education, not just an optional add-on.

People with poor numerical literacy “more susceptible” to Covid-19 “fake news.” (2020, October 13). The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/poor-numerical-literacy-linked-to-greater-susceptibility-to-covid-19-fake-news

Description: Silver-Pacuilla discusses the use of assistive technology in small tutoring groups. Students belonging to these groups are adults and have a learning disability related towards literacy. The conclusion was assistive technology can help bridge the literacy gap if used in small group settings

Rating: 6/10

Reason for the rating: Great discussion about students with learning disabilities. It tackles both the pros and the cons of technology, but this setting is for tutoring groups rather than classes.

Description: The authors discuss the use of podcasts to engage undergraduate students and aid in their test scores. The goal of the study was to have a teacher create podcasts of their lectures for students to listen to outside of class. Though the study found no correlation between exam scores and podcasts, the majority of the students did utilize them for studying and found them useful.

Rating: 8/10

Reasoning for the rating: The scope of my proposal will be using audiobooks or podcasts in a general English literature class. Though this discusses the use of podcasts for a large lecture based class, it is focused at biology rather than literature. Yet, the study is comprehensive about the influence on the podcasts on student's test scores.

Description: Researchers broke students into three different groups and presented the same information to students using different materials. One group was given only an e-book, another the audio-book, and the final group had access to both. They found no great correlation between comprehension and the modality which the information is given in.

Rating: 9/10

Reason for the rating: This test was given to college students about a non-fiction text which they were unfamiliar with. Students were randomly placed in their groups and the data analysis looks reputable. The information given in this text shows that audiobooks can be as effective as text in regards to comprehension. This will be valuable for the my proposal to incorporate audiobooks into English Literature classes.

Interesting section - one sided and lacking in nuance, but not untrue.

This is one of my favorite parts about my website and others supporting Webmention: the conversation is aggregated onto or more closely adjacent to the source. This helps prevent context collapse.

Has anyone made a browser tool for encouraging lateral reading? I'd love a bookmarklet that I could click to provide some highly relevant lateral reading resources for any particular page I'm on.

lateral reading, noun

When you open up the Hypothes.is sidebar on a website and read the highlights and annotations that provide additional context to the main context.

Oh! This is fascinating. Perhaps some interesting tidbits for my growing theory about the borders of orality and literacy could be hiding in some of her research?

Health signals der Erde, permanente Seite des Guardian

Bericht über die Studie zum Verhältnis von Klimabildung und Ideologie. Verweise zu den wichtigsten Forschungen in dieser Richtung

Studie über den Einfluss von Ideologien auf Bildung zu Klimathemen. Rechte Ideologien beeinflussen die Erziehung negativ.

Test

I find this quite interesting because of the analogies that are given. Many people find it hard or make it seem hard to investigate what is presented on the internet when in all honesty, the process will get easier to the point that it is considered a mirror check, something we humans do constantly.

Critical Pedagogy Wikipedia

Good jumping off point for various topics and avenues of research.

critical

• expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work of literature, music, or art.

literacy

• the ability to read and write
• competence or knowledge in a specified area

The education of individuals and groups in a way that lets them gain competence and knowledge in a specified field or area, while simultaneously being able to express or analyze the merits and faults of the current and previous works.

Sharing what they've found with one another Students getting really excited when they've found something, want to show teacher Once students get one part, challenge them to find something new Evaluate the information; what features make it good? What is definition of best? Synthesize what you are finding; bring in all the information from different sources Multimodal ways of reading

If this is included with literacy, schools and districts may think more about the new ways that our students are constructing learning

How do you ensure that students could still properly comprehend information under the SAMR model, particular in relation to literacy.

Participatory: web literacy

It is important to use critical and creative thinking, even if you can pass classes without it.

web-biggest misinformation engine as well as the greatest fact-checking resource

reading laterally rather than deep reading a website

Never ending array of content. No previous knowledge of sources.

Participatory Propaganda-doing our part to get our own message out there

Very thoughtful post about the importance of data literacy.

This is crucially important in the teaching of literacy and detecting the biases of a particular source.

These six facets are crucial for students to learn not only the facts related to a subject, but how to properly using analysis when learning and writing about the subject. This is especially crucial as technology has become more integrated into the classroom as well as the real world.

Very good definition for the term learning. As well, it seems as if UbD focuses on helping students learn in a way that is not just strictly reading and memorizing materials from the book. For me, I experienced the important of this when taking AP Euro in High School which focused heavily on analyzing source documents from history rather than simply regurgitating facts from the text. I wonder how integration of tech affects the ways in which students analyze and write for assignments in many subjects, particularly social studies.

I remember having to take a computer science course in high school/middle school, but it mainly focused on developing digital skills instead of digital literacies

Paakkari, L., & Okan, O. (2020). COVID-19: Health literacy is an underestimated problem. The Lancet Public Health, S2468266720300864. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30086-4

Brashier, N. M., & Schacter, D. L. (2020). Aging in an Era of Fake News. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 0963721420915872. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420915872

Bode, L., & Vraga, E. (2020 May 7). Analysis | Americans are fighting coronavirus misinformation on social media. Washington Post.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/07/americans-are-fighting-coronavirus-misinformation-social-media/

The Lancet Public Health, May 2020, Volume 5, Issue 5, Pages e235-e296. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/issue/current

The Associated Press (2020, May 8). UN Chief Says Pandemic Is Unleashing a “Tsunami of Hate.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/08/world/ap-un-virus-outbreak-hate-speech.html

Cavojova, V., Šrol, J., & Mikušková, E. B. (2020, April 15). Scientific reasoning as a predictor of health-related beliefs and behaviors in the time of COVID-19. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tfy5q

Munger, K. (2020). Digital Literacy and Online Political Behavior [Preprint]. Open Science Framework. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/3ncmk

dans une perspective nativement numérique, écrire et produire sont alors intrinsèquement liés.

par exemple: dans le modèle du manuscrit rédigé à la main ou tapé à la dactylo, le processus de production est au mieux analogue (consistant à reproduire des lettres que l'auteur a posées sur papier), au pire complètement hétérogène à l'acte d'écriture (il faut prendre le processus du début pour en faire un livre publiable).

cela semble insuffisant; il faudrait parler de digital competency, et de la possibilité d'exercer cette competency.

definition - liberal as in free, as in free from control of "clever men"

initial definition

Information has Value

These are the goals of digital literacy.

The achievement gap is multifaceted, so as educators, we need to attack it in more ways. Getting children library cards (internet access) and technology experiences from a younger age can help close this gap, but only if it is in a equitable way.

3 of these 4 are goals for my classroom without tech even on my mind, but with tech, they can transcend even further into the daily lives of digitally literate students

design, revise, remix, MAKE SOMETHING

searching, determining credibility, etc.

how do we make sure that students are not just "skimming" or doing #2???

all things that can easily be worked into any curriculum that involves technology

as teachers, we need to connect them to the world around them.. this world is digital in the modern age, so we can offer them not only the opportunity to do good for others but also for themselves

we can prepare them for the future workforce; many jobs require certain skills with tech - managing social media, programming, contacting customers via chat and phone, etc.

sometimes tech isn't much of an improvement >> we need to channel to the special abilities of growing tech -hashtags, hyperlinks, interactive games and level checks, etc.

I love how digital literacy allows so many to have access to so much and to communicate easily with others. But there is a definite dark side to sharing in any digital format and many don't think about that.

This website provides technology teaching resources as part of the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Center for Teaching Excellence. Users can find informational links to various technology tools that can be used for enhancing teaching and learning in online, hybrid, or face-to-face courses. On the right of the page under "Technology," users can click on the tech tools for additional resources/research on their implementation. Examples of these technologies include Blackboard LMS, PowerPoint presentation software, Google Suite products, blogs, and social media sites. Rating 8/10

This website outlines digital literacy initiatives provided by the Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS). The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) implements these intitatives to aid adult learners in the successful use of technology in their education and careers. Students have free access to learning material on different subjects under the "LINCS Learner Center" tab. Teachers and tutors also have access to resoruces on implementing educational technology for professional development and effective instruction. Rating 8/10

This website outlines Section 1.5 of Angelo State University's guide to instructional design and online teaching. Section 1.5 describes key characteristics of online learners, as well as the technology and computer skills that research has identified as being important for online learners. Successful online learners are described as self-directed, motivated, well-organized, and dedicated to their education. The article also notes that online learners should understand how to use technology such as multimedia tools, email, internet browsers. and LMS systems. This resource serves as a guide to effective online teaching. Rating 10/10

Learning the basic about computers is essential to employers.

This website is the "Resources" archive for the IgniteED Labs at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. The IgniteED Labs allow students, staff, and faculty to explore innovative and emerging learning technology such as virtual reality (VR), artifical intelligence (AI), 3-D printing, and robotics. The left side of this site provides several resources on understanding and effectively using various technologies available in the IgniteED labs. Each resources directs you to external websites, such as product tutorials on Youtube, setup guides, and the products' websites. The right column, "Tech Literacy Resources," contains a variety of guides on how students can effectively and strategically use different technologies. Resources include "how-to" user guides, online academic integrity policies, and technology support services. Rating: 9/10

Definition of digital literacy.

Among both students AND instructors. Instructors teach what they know, and if they do not feel comfortable themselves working in these environments b/c they lack digital skills, then they will not encourage students to work openly.

from certainty to decision making - moving from simplicity to complexity, from knowing what to do to knowing ways to do things

Interesting question: does language shape reality or does reality shape language?

literacy can be used as a motivating factor

even in ancient times literacy was being utilized. not necessarily in the traditional sense of the word that we always think of, but literacy was found in private and public life. interesting way of thinking about literacy

Literacy seems to be strongly embedded in the education of an individual. Education being a way of achieving growth in reading and writing ability, speech, and listening skills.

I believe literacy is the ability to understand, speak, communicate, etc. but also the continuous learning and practicing. It is important to be literate in almost all real-life situations and it would be impossible to fulfill your potential if you were illiterate. It gives us opportunities to connect and further educate ourselves to be successful.

When thinking of literacy many people are just thinking of reading and being able to understand language. But there is so much more to being literate in a language.

How can this encompass digital literacy and non-printed texts; how does being literate change as the world of tech is constantly changing?

This is a focus on text in literacy.

How would this have worked in pre-literate societies? Examples?

"the whole social body" also reminds me of the idea of the "Great Chain of Being" to consider how differences in annotation may change and evolve in societies over long periods of time. I can't help but consider Richard Dawkins' original conceptualization of the "meme" and how they move through societies with or without literacy skills.

These are great tools and can help teachers find tools for an array of projects.

Great examples of remixes in the real world

I love the idea for my students coding and creating games. I bought a robot to start getting students to code and start engaging in other ideas.

I love the view the student has on feedback. Knowing what constructive criticism is really helpful is great growth-mindset. Using peers to give constructive criticism is a great way to help students out.