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Comparison of Digital Literacy Development Between Children and Adolescents

By: Christopher Ruckdeschel

The ultimate goal of education must be, in part, the production of individuals that after completing their formal course of study, continue to research curiosities that emerge in life and inquire with a spirit that not only aims at discovering the correct answer but one that searches for the foundational precepts that served to create the given subject of investigation. For truly this purpose, and not the mere accumulation of meaningless and disconnected facts, presents us the spring of education, that beautiful grafted apple tree that yields two types of fruit: the scientific method tempered with reason and the eternal ethical conversation informed by faith. These goals, however, are not the sole purpose of education for they require an examiner who possesses the ability to balance thoughts that appear as words and phrases, the skill to organize these thoughts effectively in a logical manner, and the proficiency to voice these thoughts in the way in which the surrounding society communicates. These powers are the central goal of literacy development. Clearly, as the mode of communication shifts and advances within a society, so too must the nature of literacy and, therefore, the instruction of literacy skills shift and advance. Our time is immersed in an age of rapid digital progressions and with these new technologies, comes the need to examine the nature of literacy development in childhood and adolescence and adjustments and modifications that must be made to encourage and refine the current methods of communication education so that students have the ability to effectively converse in our world.

As intimated in the introduction, the development of a thoughtful individual with effective literacy skills is dichotomous, containing interacting but separate entities. Vygotsky believed that "thought and speech have different roots in humankind, thought being nonverbal and language being nonintellectual in an early stage. But their development lines are not parallel - they cross again and again" (Schutz, 2002). As the child continues to grow, he/she "realizes that everything has a name, each new object presents the child with a problem situation, and he solves the problem by naming the object. When he lacks the word for the new object, he demands it from adults. The early word-meanings thus acquired will be the embryos of concept formation" (Schutz, 2002). Though these foundational developments occur generally before children reach school age, the keystone concept which fuels future development is clear: "Language is not merely an expression of the knowledge the child has acquired. There is a fundamental correspondence between thought and speech in terms of one providing resource to the other; language becoming essential in forming thought and determining personality features" (Schutz, 2002). Similarly, Piaget believed "cognitive development is facilitated by providing activities or situations that engage learners and require adaptation" (Genetic Epistemology, 2003). With these theories in mind, it is clear that the nature of the literacy development activities both at home and later at school impact not only the skills that develop but also the very nature of the student's thought.

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