Literacy of the 21st century learner

     Literacy of today is so different!The learners of today have to be able to use new technology and under the literature of the past.  It takes skills to make meaning of the text and be able to decipher different types of great Literature works.  Then they must be able to use inquiry based learning to answer questions they may come up with.   The article What Do We Mean by Literacy by Jerome C. Harste from Voices from the Middle, Volume 10 Number 3, March 2003 addresses just that!  As an educator we must take what a student knows and work to incorporate needed materials.  In today’s society we are better able to do this with technology such as you tube, blogs, and investigations on line into certain works written and of different genres.  Students are not exposed to all the great works as we are when we are being educated and readied for our job!  The more we expose them the more their eyes are opened to a different part of this world they know nothing about.  A student who may not understand about the reason being a Moore in Othello is different then today’s times.   Why the language is so different in an acrostic poem or why we can translate poetry in many different ways. The language used to text is not that of an elegant letter written long ago and may seem to be a foreign language.  We must expose them and allow them to feel that they can ask questions and use the work to get answers