Technolandy

Day 92 (of 2025/26) #literacyweek classics – readin’ n writin’ vs new medias of social media as poetry & YouTube as prose

This week we are highlighting some of the varied ways to take on literacy week. I like to say you can put the librarian into the principal chair, but because you can’t spell librarian without the IAN (my first name), I love to dust off some old habits and do a read aloud aka Read Dahl Loud (a pun of how the wordings sound alike Rea-D ah – Loud) though I have learned that for some, it is better to listen to the oral story with the written text to reference (kind of like using subtitles while watching the bigger screens…). Here’s todays read: https://youtu.be/IazuPOVlaEc?si=vRlGKLsFgMNwHPHYThe

It also lets us work on two of the three key traditional literacy skills:

Aural/Oral – listening and talking – the og methodology of story telling, getting information, sharing knowledge… before that fad of ‘reading text’ started (seriously, the first books were decried for being distractions and ruining the ongoing ways of sharing and doing…) The key skills having us focus on being able to listen and process words at the pacing of someone else.

Reading/Viewing – I agree with the Science of Reading that we need to focus on phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Essentially knowing the sounds of the letters in our language… how they work on their own and when combined with others… how the letters blend to form words and then how the words interact with each other to create sentences, and so on and so on (admittedly VERY brief). The 2 main parts that I find SoR misses in it’s push to ‘learn to read so that you can read to learn’ is that Reading and Viewing are:

1. The Joy of Reading – there needs to be something beyond reading to respond to questions and ‘reading for meaning’ – the joy of reading… but:
2. Not all brains process words the same. For some of us, the words create pictures and moving images in our brains – but others only process words as… words… which means there are probably still other ways that text gets processed that haven’t been widely shared … yet…

The next traditional literacy skill in Reading is to get to Writing: writing is the skill that is connected with reading text… I have a friend who says “we gotta read to lead (education)” and we have long said that the more you read, the easier it is to get into writing. Exploring non-fiction formats; seeing different ways that grammar, conversations, and styles of prose work and can be used – we teach a lot of rules, but most of those are more guidelines than actual rules…

But what about the ‘new’ medias….

First some guidelines when approaching the social medias and the youtubes – I know many just want to ban them, but they are affective/effective modes of communication that are still being worked out how to best be used effectively – please not that many formats of poetry, and even dance (especially ballet), were banned early on because of how they would corrupt the youth!

Suggestions on how to work with social medias and screens include some good ones from https://apple.news/ANoSP4betRHCijHA9fuFNTw Washington Post:

1 open honest conversations

2 adults modelling (good for all desired habits – especially reading writing and mathing) 

3 boundaries need to be clear AND flexible 

That then lets us explore media such as YouTube as a new version of prose (haters gonna hate) as long format sharing is enabled – and helps take away the main reason that humanity experimented with movable text on printing presses: to communicate and share stories, thinkings, and knowledge. Imagine Plato and other Elders being able to share their conversations around the world with speech (and in real time!) rather than have Johnathan Swift and Charles Dickens rely on having to write – and then hoping the government enables more people to learn how to read… skip the middleman of big publishing!

I once said that twitter was poetry (compared to the prose of the WordPress) and have only seen growth of this experimentation with short format videos on Instagram and others – each with their pros and cons, but also with considerations for audiences (and even YouTube has their Shorts section) to enable a variety of composition/creation and exploration – some creators copying others; some trying different approaches; and a range of reasons to look into the content – from getting information to entertainment – as on paper tablets, so too on etablets!

Literacies – there’s only more to explore and work with! Happy #LiteracyWeek!