What's your Credo and Vision Statement?

Credo

• What are 3 of your fundamental beliefs about learning literacy?

1. I believe learning literacy relies upon the student's creativity
2. I believe learning literacy relies upon the student's motivation to understand. 
3. I believe learning literacy relies upon the student's employment of critical thinking and understanding.

• What are 3 of your fundamental beliefs about teaching literacy?

1. I believe teaching literacy relies upon the teacher's creativity
2. I believe teaching literacy relies upon the teacher's motivation to understand the student's place in literacy and the literacy itself. 
3. I believe teaching literacy relies upon the teacher's employment of critical thinking and understanding.

• What should be 3 key goals for literacy education in a digital age?

I will only provide one goal as it will encompass and satisfy all others: shrink the digital divide of technology literacy in order to provide equal opportunity for literacy to all. 

• What should be your basic approach to teaching literacy? What role should technology have in that teaching approach?

My basic approach to literacy is to understand where the student is in literacy ability, activate the student's creative juices, and present an environment of motivation for the student (finding themes/ topics that are relevant and interesting to the student as an individual). 

• How should literacy pedagogy respond to today's technological world and to today's digital learners?

Current day pedagogues should be creative learners themselves who demonstrate excitement and innovation in preparing lessons that utilize technology in effective and interesting ways to help students transfer technological knowledge from "entertainment" purposes to "learning" purposes.  

• Discuss how your vision responds to the challenge of the "digital divide," a challenge that says we must worry about providing equal access to technology and information.

This question connects back to the question as to my goal for literacy education in a digital age.  My vision is to help shrink the divide by recognizing and addressing student tech literacy needs.  For instance, I was teaching a class where the objective for the day was to work on the topic sentences of the student drafts in order to better argue the paper's position.  We were doing this through google docs so that I could monitor the students' writing process and progress.  I was advising a student to "drag-and-drop" a line from a previous paragraph to be the topic of the next paragraph.  The conversation took over 15 minutes, and when I finally got to the root of the problem, it was that the learner did not have the technical skills or vocabulary to know what I meant when I stated "drag-and-drop".  A seemingly simple tech skill and vocabulary phrase hindered a student's progress and understanding in writing.  Identifying and understanding these gaps of knowledge will enable the teacher to demonstrate TPCK (technology practice content knowledge) skills and help bridge the gap of student technology knowledge.