What does literacy mean in my own experiences

The term literacy is not limited to the ability to read and write and the definitions of literacy are expanded by numbers of scholars. Additionally, literacy is not necessary restricted to print text. The literacy can be in the forms of media, signs, and digital text, for example, media literacy, computer literacy, and digital literacy. Based on my own experiences, literacy mostly occurs in formal education and, thus, need formal instructions. According to my literacy practices when I have higher education, literacy is not only the ability to read text, but to analyze and criticize. I do not learn only to read text for understanding but also b able to deconstruct and examine the content of the text. The ability to analyze and criticize I have received from literacy practices at school.

I partly agree that literacy is a gatekeeper to have a good occupation. The more education we have, the more likely that we will have a well-paid job. This is not the case in my country, Thailand. Having a PhD in teaching does not guarantee that a person will have higher salary than an owner of a grocery store earns. This issue needs to be discussed in more details.

In the 21st century, we are in the age of information and anyone who can access to more information is more advantage. Information is not only in the form of hard copy or print text, but also in digital through the Internet access. However, we all realize that information appears in websites is not always reliable. We must filter and evaluate the flood of information. Without computer literacy such as knowing basic skills of computer such as turn on/off, using keyboard, and access the Internet, a person might have be left behind as opposed to people who are computer literate.

As an literacy teacher, what should our goals be? What are we trying to do when we teach literacy?

As a literacy teacher, my goal is to have my students be exposed to multi literacies, for example, computer literacy and media literacy. My interests include technology literacy which I will apply the knowledge to my English classroom in Thailand. I want students to be comfortable with technology. More importantly, the students should understand the meaning of literacy in their own terms and how literacy is important to them.