Rick Kern, UC Berkeley
Technologies and Literacies and Language Education: Looking beyond communicative competence
Since the origins of writing, technology has always given people new ways to use and learn languages. This talk will present examples of some ways that digital technologies are currently shaping language and literacy practices in multilingual contexts. These changes raise important educational questions about how to deal with new kinds of learners, new technologies, and new environments for language teaching. Rather than attempting to distinguish between “new” literacies and “old” literacies (linked to “new” and “old” technologies), I propose an approach that brings attention to relationships between current and past literacy practices in order to prepare learners for the future. This approach involves reflection on how technologies and mediums influence the design of communication and embody values and fundamental ideas about what communication is. The presentation will develop a set of principles and goals for this educational approach, then propose ways to achieve those goals through a “relational pedagogy” that focuses on how meanings emerge from interactions among material, social, and individual resources.
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Friday, April 15, 2016
3 – 5 pm
B-4 Dwinelle Hall