David Crystal: Texts and Tweets: Myths and Realities

In this video, David Crystal speaks to some of the questions I had about digital literacy. Some notes: David Crystal: Teachers are the managers: internet management is rarely taught in school. The teachers are alert to the need to try to balance the two kinds of cognition needed to remain literate in both worlds. Use the technology so that the reading of the novel is made motivating to them. Book as central, technology as marginal. For young people it is switched around. Part of the curriculum, but part of English instruction in schools? yes, already happening... Also happening in English as a foreign language as well...major development in english language teaching curriculum over the past 20 years has been to inculcate into kids this notion of the appropriateness of language. replacing the older black and white, correct/incorrect concept of language by a more sophisticated notion that every style of language has its purpose, but you've got to see what the purpose is. The best way of seeing what the purpose is is by contrasting it with what it is not. A typical exercises in these schools that do this now, are ... take an essay and what would you have to do in order to turn it into a text message, and conversely, take a text message and turn it into an essay. And, are there certain subject matters that work for the one, but not for the other? The answer is yes, so let's find out what they are. What sorts of information are usefully communicated by text? What sorts of information are usefully communicated by essay?