8/29 blog comments on “Future of Literacy

In DeVoss’s “Future of Literacy”, DeVoss focuses his article on different people’s experiences with technology and how they were able to use skills they learned through technology to help them excel. He emphasizes the importance of thinking of literacy as a broad spectrum and not limiting it to conventional reading and writing.
The first flashpoint I encountered was introduced in the beginning of the chapter and remained prominent throughout the read. DeVoss wrote; “They must be prepared not only to work with students and their new literacies in productive ways, but also to modify current curricula to account for students who spend as much time reading the texts of coded simulations or visual arguments as they do the pages of novels” (pg 396). DeVoss then went on to explain his point in an unconventional way. Rather then simply picking a few quotes DeVoss used other peoples experiences to prove the evolution of technology and the importance of advancing education with the times. I believe DeVoss’s project in this was to make a point of the effectiveness of being relevant to the reader when producing a piece of literacy . Rather then bore the audience with a dated research paper, DeVoss takes an interview based approach to the paper.
The second flashpoint I found was when Devoss was telling the story of Joseph Johanson. Joseph stated that “writing…[was] a little different, I know my parents valued communication and understood that writing was important for good communication, but honestly I didn’t enjoy writing until my senior year in high school or later , I never did well in English courses as a younger child, I would pull a C, maybe an occasional B, but usually nothing more”(pg 401). This flashpoint is important because it shows that people learn in different ways and the educations systems, and society in general, need to adapt as the technology becomes readily available. Teachers need to be educated to use new styles of literacy and to open education to new forms of communication.
I also agree with kemoller21 that the title is a flashpoint. Titles are the first thing a person reads when they read text and DeVoss uses the title to tell the reader that he too agrees that the education system is outdated. The title introduces DeVoss’s project before the reader has began reading the text. In making the title “The Future of Literacy”, DeVoss makes the point early that literacy as defined as “reading and writing written texts” has become obsolete.