Gunther Kress Chapters 1-2:

The first two chapters of Kress’ Literacy in the New Media Age were eye opening to me. In the first chapter “The Future of Literacy: Modes, logics, and affordances,” Kress examines the difference between the mode of writing and the mode of the image showing t

hat “The world told is a different world to the world shown.” He argues that the distinction is in that writing relies on the logic of time and sequence, and that a viewer can only make meaning from the mode of writing through the letters and words relation to one another. Meanwhile, the mode of an image is already filled with meaning and our imagination focuses on arranging the elements in the image to comprehend its meaning. The distinction Kress makes here is significant because it reveals the importance of the individual mode and sets up the affordance technology and multimedia offer in a modern world where literacy is anywhere.

Kress states that his book is about the alphabetical writing, but arrives at a time when four major changes are taking place simultaneously: “social, economic, communication, and technology.” While traditionally “the dominance of the book was at the central medium of communication, the screen has now taken that place. -- the screen is the contemporary canvas” ( 9). This got me thinking about what it means to be literate in the modern age. My fifth grade’s community service project is rooted in the theme “literacy for all children.” During the school, my students spend eight weeks tutoring first graders at another neighboring school, and the project culminates by the students making books for their little buddies. Kress’s argument made me wonder how I could improve upon this project to help my students see literacy beyond reading books, and how we could use multimedia and technology to further our concept of what “literacy for all children” means.

Kress’s chapter also reminded me of a card a student gave me at the end of this year. This student’s clever composition highlights the way our books and even our students work are “ beginning to resemble, more and more, both the look and deeper sense of contemporary screen” ( 6). The student displays a sense of ‘interactivity’ as visibly corrects his own errors as though he is the teacher.

I admittedly often find myself expressing great concern over the growing dependency on social media, both in the classroom and in my own life. However, I am beginning to feel that this concern is wasted energy and rather than fighting something that is inevitable, I should be spending more time showing my students the power they hold within the realm of technology, and helping them harness skills to be more conscious digital citizens. “Change is not neutral, nor is it the same at all times in history: it is always change of a particular kind, moving in particular directions, favoring one group rather than another. The real difference between times of seeming stability and times such as this is that now, we-- unless we are politicians -- can neither pretend that this is stability nor demand it, other than as an ideological act” (11).

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