Article: The New Digital Divide

The chosen article this week has to do with digital literacy and teachers. Over the past number of years the focus was on infrastructure and access to technology in schools. Now schools are typically well equipped close to a 99% connectivity rate for all public schools having a connection to the internet and significant funding increases to grow and maintain digital access. However, according to the article, there is still an issue districts need to overcome, there is a measurable skills gap which needs to be addressed with teachers and digital literacy.

The deficiency in digital literacy is not due necessarily to the lack of teacher drive to learn and assimilate technology but a lack in standardized digital-literacy curriculum and training for the students and teachers. Teachers are typically training through a mixed variety of resources and tools without guidance for quality and grade appropriateness resulting in unequal instruction from classroom to classroom. What districts and faculty are now looking for is to adopt or create standardized curriculum and training to implement so the students and teachers are all brought up to a basic level of digital literacy to enable success.

Oelrich, K. (2017, June 23). The New Digital Divide. Retrieved June 25, 2017, from https://www.languagemagazine.com/2017/06/new-digital-divide/

Article: How Your Brain Understands Visual Language

The article I selected this week has a throwback to my design classroom. The article is about how people interpret and make associations to things they are familiar with in communication when objects, symbols, or sounds may be used to reinforce or clarify what is being communicated to a viewer. Through life experienced associations people can interpret information based upon what prior knowledge they have about a subject and how that prior knowledge can be used to assist in creating understanding. The author discusses how we have communication centered on literacy and numeracy but not as prevalently recognized is communication with graphics, referred to as graphicacy. In the author’s view,“ understanding and conception of the visual—becomes of equal importance with that of literacy and numeracy in today’s learning process” (Kahane, 2017). Graphics can carry meaning beyond the typical initial literal word representing the idea. Symbols representing icons like an old phone handset from a rotary dial phone are symbols still used today and are understood because of their historical and cultural origins and tend to transcend time. Even though the phone no longer looks like the symbol it is still recognized and understood.

Kahane, J. (2017, April 28). How Your Brain Understands Visual Language. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.fastcodesign.com/3047340/how-your-brain-understands-visual-language

Article: Augmenting Ability: Microsoft Using AI, Smart Glass Tech to Aid Differently-Abled

My alert for this week is not so much about English as a Second Language but something that I think will become a big deal in the future, Artificial Intelligence and communication. The article I read discusses a collaboration with Microsoft and the Chinese Science Academy and Peiching Union University who have created an augmented reality prototype to translate spoken word to sign language and sign language to spoken word through a smart phone or smart glass app. The article cites Microsoft’s continued focus on breaking down barriers with assistive technology like that which Microsoft integrated in its OneNote software for dictation and text-to-speech. It will be very interesting to see how Artificial Intelligence could begin to assist in ways never thought possible before. 

Article: Why the 10th Birthday Is Critical for Predicting the Career Paths of Immigrant Students

An article came through my alerts, which I found to be interesting to me, has to do with at what age ESL children determine their career pathways. Students who have immigrated into the United States around and after the age of 10 years (which is the age of my son currently) tend to focus on math, engineering and physical based careers. This seems to be due to the development of language skills in children which peak prior to 10 years old. After 10 years old students do not have the language learning interest to develop new language communication with others rather, concentrating on learning language skills for the purpose of learning information. It is interesting to find things like this, which lend to the root cause of how students perceive information and reading and how it determines what they choose to focus on in their learning.