NCTE 2.0: The 'Age of Composition'

The National Council of Teacher's of English have embraced the notion that writing is different in the 21st century.  To the organization's credit, they are making the claim that schools must adapt in turn by developing new modes of writing, designing new curricula to support these models, and creating plans for teaching these curricula.

Going further they have coined the current age as an Age of Composition where writers become composers not through "direct and formal instruction alone (if at all), but rather through what might be called an extracurricular social co-apprenticeship."

Wow.  Good stuff.  If any doubt remains abou the NCTE's motives, they are immediately put to rest when an exmple of such writing is cited.  In the citation a young girl was credited for saving her neighbors life by 'composing' multimedia-rich e-mails to alert neighbors and authorities that some people were stranded in high water as the result of a hurricane.

We may take from this, quite, literally that new modes of writing (reading and learning, by extension) are necessary for our future survival.  I, for one think so.

There's also this small organization called the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) that ran a whole issue of Educational Leadership devoted to LITERACY 2.0.

(this article partially adapted from E-School News)

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