Literacies Old and Young

In the digital age, new digital literacies are a cornucopia of opportunties to motivate students. In his article “Video Games, Learning About Learning” James Paul Gee tells of his experience with his son being highly motivated to problem solve while playing certain video games as a child. Gee was often surprised by the complexity of the challenges put before his son, particularly as his son grew in age. Where he would once play these games before his son so he might coach him, he now finds that his son is much more adept at quickly navigating the many challenges put before him. Gee’s experiences reminded me of my own son and how impressed I was that he would spend as much time as I would allow on a video game that taught phonics by having him move the cursor over onsets and rimes until he found the correct combination. As he moved the cursor, a cartoon mouth would pronounce the sound of the onset or rime and my son would have to click on the combination that would match a picture. Brilliant. And now, at eight, I teach him how to be a patient teacher as he teaches me how to play some of his more complex games (Dad makes sure he steers our purchases toward games that involve strategy and problem solving).
Though not a very complex insight, it is certainly one that invites a teacher or parent into the potential not only for such engaging new literacies, but for the opportunity for our students and children to be empowered as they teach us these new literacies in exchange for the training in the skills of more traditional reading and writing. There are opportunities here in the bridges that educators can create between these literacies, new and old. My son may have begun his training in decoding on a computer screen, but he now itches to page through the next Harry Potter.