Overall Response: Week 1

     After reading all of the readings for this week, I find myself questioning my own literacy. Specifically related to language, I am literate of mostly the English language and customs related to the language; English is the norm for me. I feel that my reading and comprehension fits snugly in the box of what Western thinking and academia would condone as being conducive to learning. As I read and understood in some of the readings, though, literacy is an animal that is tough to understand. The implications presented by Daniell and Scriber, for example, are mind boggling. The mechanics of understanding language and literacy are deeply rooted in culture and societal practices of literacy define it culture to culture. A lot of what is considered "book smart" is just that: Learning from a book of accepted symbols and meaning and taking what those symbols encode. This is only one end of the literacy spectrum, though. Being literate of not only an alphabet, but the knowledge understanding a system of symbols can lead to understanding the part of life that is metaphysical. Conversely, however, as Scribner's study of the Vai people proved, a written language is not necessarily the apex of literacy, however. At least, that's what I took it to mean.
        Lastly, I would like to briefly address technology and literacy. As seen in one of the videos we watched in class, vocabulary is changing and increasing to facilitate the age of technology. There are probably vast amounts of words that a Harvard English graduate, circa 1985, would have no clue how to interpret. Does this mean that the well informed and read Harvard graduate is glib? No. The lexicon is changing and we need to adapt; Past paradigms of literacy aren't in need of an upheaval, but at least a renovation.The wealth of knowledge available to people is astonishing, but kids in America and all around the world are still illiterate. It's hard to say if this epoch in which information technology is so prevalent is degenerative to traditional, reading and writing literacy or if it can serve as a savior of sorts. There is so much to be said on all of these topics and I will have to further my reading and knowledge to understand the topic to further understand literacy.