Monday, July 9, 2012

Ubiquitousness of literacy

I am sitting on a train from Sheffield to Brighton in the UK writing a blog. I am able to post it online as I ride along admiring the English countryside. I am amazed at the ubiquitousness of literacy practices and the availability of new literacy technologies. Who would have thought this would be possible even just a few years ago. Certainly the early Britons whose homes and roads I can see from my window would never have imagined writing to the "world" while traveling. I have to say I am having a blast!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Traveling while literate

I'm traveling to the UK today to give a talk at a literacy conference so am doing a lot of thinking about literacy while moving about. Airports and airplanes are full of rich and intensely multimodal literacy practices. They are fairly exclusionary, however. An African family had difficulty knowing which train stop to get off at Dulles because they don't speak English or at least they couldn't understand the computerized voice that told them what stop we were coming to. Frankly, native English speakers have a hard time understanding that voice. They don't have a written display as a compliment either. Lots of reliance on oral modes that, if one is Deaf for example, you wouldn't be able to hear. Seems like having written displays would be more inclusive.