TRANSLITERACY—N WHAT IT MEANS FOR INSTRUCTIO Reading is now unpredictable most reading is done outside Oi school on an electronic medium and is now three dimensional. Hyperlinks can bring students deeper or foster surface skim- ming, depending on tbe skills and speed that the reader applies to a website. LITERACY AND TRANSLITERACY decoding and encoding to new content Two hundred years ago, when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote our founding documents, platforms, such as video, Skype, blogging, literacy meant being able to read and write. The literacy rate in America was low, and no one cared and online discussions to become productive about cultural literacy, family literacy, financial literacy, technology literacy, or information literacy. Our members of society. Doug Ackerman suggests founding fathers wanted education to be accessible and to help develop productive members of society. that teachers may be "less literate than their students" as students are able to adapt more Today we find ourselves with many literacies in a nation that is considered ninety-nine percent literate. readily to new transliteracy models. Therefore, The plethora of literacies has just given birth to another term—transliteracy. Transliteracy is the ability we must make an effort to embrace this new to read, listen to, view, understand, synthesize, and apply what we gather across differing platforms. mode of operation. This new label is important to cultural literacy, financial literacy, technology literacy, and information literacy as we teach flat-world students. LITERACY AND THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS For years librarians have supported and Transliteracy is a term that was born out of a need to describe how communication has changed. enhanced literacy instruction, but now the Alan Liu and Susan Thomas were some of the biggest advocates of the idea that communication has warning bells are ringing: New literacies officially evolved into a new multi-communication modality. We have traveled down a communication require focused awareness across mediums, so road that has grown from orality to art, to print, to movies, to musical messages, to multimedia we must teach students differing techniques presentations, and to combinations of all of the above. Our mode of communication has officially for analyzing and synthesizing information. changed. Print is no longer a dominant force. However, our instruction still is anchored around print Race to the Top (RTTT) has given literacy a literacy as that is the biggest building block of communication. prominent role as a Common Core objective. The Common Core states, literacy is not English We now have to read across electronic platforms, apply previous knowledge to a new application, class. "Pedagogy focused only on 'higher-order' broaden our scope of reading to include critical evaluation for credibility, and apply rules of or 'critical' thinking is insufficient to ensure 44 7. LIBRARY MEDIA CONNECTION October 201] e Jaeger TRANSLITERACY REACHES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM media. Media must be decoded, analyzed, and Literacy reaches across the curriculum and synthesized also, but this comes naturally to this should be everyone's focus. Since all disciplines media-focused generation. now use technology, we need to focus on transliteracy. Reading is only half the problem- It is almost common knowledge now that we have reading for meaning is the missing half. Reading lost control of reading. David Warlick rings this for meaning is manifested in differing forms. We warning bell in most all his work as he encourages must embrace the same reading principles of educators to teach children how to control their coding and decoding information on different reading and information. Students need to learn platforms. The old keystone of education— to set direction for reading on the Internet. literacy—has evolved into an animal with many Inquiry-based learning will guide students to diseases, disguises, new forms, appendages, and evaluate all the information gathered for meaning offspring. Reading for meaning, understanding, and synthesis. Much like the way a GPS works, we and application is now more difficult and more must suggest that students have a destination— that students were ready for college and important than ever. Therefore, the role of the careers" (Common Core State Standards 2). librarian in the transliteracy process is now imperative as we teach students to critically Common Core Standards acknowledge that evaluate material for meaning as well as students arrive at college unprepared to read and credibility, accuracy, reliability, and bias. "Teachers If your vital signs comprehend difficult text. Our goal as educators who weave this 'deep understanding of literacy is to graduate college-ready and career-ready issues' into frequent instructional collaboration show your circulation seniors, and we are failing this task (Jaeger). with teachers will influence literacy instruction Students cannot comprehend difficult material. among the entire teaching staff and contribute to is off, your shelves Please read the Common Core English Language the literacy gains of hundreds or even thousands Arts anchor standards regarding reading: of students each year," says Doug Ackerman. are plagued with old "10. Read and comprehend complex literary READIN6 PRINT VS,READIN6 ONLINE and informational texts independently and Skills needed to read online and read traditional books, you do not proficiently." print are significantly different. Traditional reading instruction was predictable. Reading was have much money to That is vastly different from the online habits top-down, left right, black and white. We read a we observe of "super-squirreling" and "website passage, found meaning, and were expected to spend on subscrip- kangarooing." We must model how to slow down, answer questions. Reading is now unpredictable read, comprehend, and analyze for credibility and as most reading is done outside of school on an accuracy on an electronic platform. We need to electronic medium and is now three dimensional. tions, and you are in teach students to be skeptical of all information Hyperlinks can bring students deeper or foster heard on the Internet so that they innately take surface skimming, depending on the skills a state of depression, the time to evaluate the source appropriately and speed that the reader applies to a website. (Jaeger). School librarians now have reason to Transliteracy is the elephant in the room. then your program ask teachers to avoid the "free for all" searching methods on the Internet because Common Core The fact that students operate in a virtual world, has asked us to focus on more complicated texts. more than print, should tell us that we need needs a prescription This does not align itself with the habits of the to understand this platform and use it in our hyper-connected! instruction. At any time, students are clicks away for change. from migrating from the printed language to October 2011 LIBRARY MEDIA CONNECTION 45 suggested by a teacher at an AASL conference in 2010 when we spoke on Marketing Information We must model how to slow down, read, Literacy. I returned and used this suggestion effectively to help students find meaning while comprehend, analyze for credibility and operating online. accuracy on an electronic platform. Know your destination. Reading on the Internet is akin to traveling down the road without rules. When your students know the purpose behind their goal oriented; otherwise there literally is no end. as evaluate. If they are speeding they are not taking information exercise, chances are they have a target If there is no question, how will a student know the time to decode unknown vocabulary words. to reach, a question to answer, and information when to quit? Therefore, students must have a to find and make sense of. When a student is question to answer... inquiry-based learning. I told my students that their success or failure guided by a question, the time they spend on the relates to the quality of information they find Internet moves from entertainment to searching SLOGANS TO KEEP STUDENTS FOCUSED on the Internet. Holding up a copy of the New for meaning and understanding. The student has to To help foster stronger transliteracy skills in York Times and the Weekly World News (with believe there is meaning in why he is searching. our students, we "sloganized" working mantras. some alien form on the front page), I asked them, The following slogans were used for print as "Which paper would your teacher want you to Where's your knowledge mode? The Pew well as electronic environments. We actually use for your report?" They got the point. The Internet Study reports that our teens exceed five printed many of these in plastic banner format New York Times might get them to college when hours on the Internet every day. If we assume and hung the slogans in classrooms, the library, the Weekly World News will only engage them in that most of that is for entertainment, then it is and computer labs. Slogans are effective and the task. imperative that we point out to our students that the students absorb the concepts through this their "research" time is not entertainment. They guerrilla marketing tactic. We need to read, not speed. Students spend only actually need to be reminded that, while they may two seconds to evaluate or assess whether an work in entertainment mode at home, at school Pick, don't click. Point out that, unlike reading a article or website is worth their time. To counter their time should be spent in knowledge mode, book, which is linearly organized by page numbers, this tendency, we taught students to slow down. moving from entertainment to engagement. information on the Internet spreads out from your We would announce periodically in the lab, "We library to the moon. If you remind students that need to read—not speed." Print is important. This generation is infested they are responsible for evaluating which page with media from dawn to dusk.