Literacy

A new EDC study has found that training Head Start teachers to enhance literacy activities in their classrooms translates into measurable vocabulary gains for their students.

In our introduction to this issue of Mosaic, we referred to Paulo Freire’s description of literacy as “reading the word and world.” That same phrase-with its dual emphasis on the concrete and the abstract—can be used to characterize EDC’s definition of mathematical literacy.

Speech recognition technology is a relatively new word processing software. Rather than typing in your words, you speak into a microphone and the text appears on screen.

When Sara was in the first grade, her teacher discovered that she had weak writing skills. No matter what techniques they tried, the teacher saw no improvement. Throughout her elementary school years, Sara made little progress in writing and often felt embarrassed about her handwriting. On occasion classmates ridiculed her.

The diffuse ways we develop IT skills may mean that traditional models of literacy and skills development are ill-suited to the natural, and rapid, evolution of IT skills.