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The article, Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century, is arguing the point that the types of literacies are expanding every day, and people need to be kept up on them. The authors, Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne Flannigan, state that to be a fully functioning member of society, you must acquire and understand a new literacy; a digital one. They also state, "Today, we still seek better communication methods, only now we have myriad more choices, along with new tools and strategies and greater knowledge of effective communication". Technologies will not just be used to communicate though anymore, it is being to "create, to manipulate, to design, to self-actualize". In the New Literacy and Education paragraphs, it is stated that classrooms today are less advanced for the students who are being put in them. Almost all of these students are digitally literate, but teachers are presenting ideas in the ways they always have. Maybe, it is not just the classrooms that need remodeling, but the teachers need to attend workshops and become more accustomed to dealing with these new types of literacies. Schools who are looking to hire teachers need to look at what background the interviewees have, or require a pre-requisite for computer literacy. The authors also state that today, students are "digitally savvy". They don't believe that teachers should be re-typing overheads into PowerPoint's. There are so many different technological ways to teach things to students. It just isn't the same anymore to just use a whiteboard and an overhead projector. "As an example, now teachers can do a PowerPoint presentation with streaming video, instant Internet access, and real-time audio-video interaction, and they can do it with relative speed and ease".

Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne Flannigan in their article "Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century" state the reason the definition of literacy has gradually changed through time, will always be changed, and that the history behind why it has changed leads to the definition itself. They assert that through the technological advancements the thought processes in the humans mind have drastically changed; and in order for literacy to keep up with this rapidly changing "E-generation" Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan express that our minds need to be open to this change. They state that "vision combined with practical, recognizable goals and incentives that encourage people to embrace new digital and visual literacy skills individually and collectively" will allow there to actually be a change universally.

This article discusses how literate once meant a person's ability to read and write. Now that technology is rapidly changing, our society is learning to adjust to it. Now, literacy has a new definition. According to the authors, "Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments." Older generations are having a more difficult time adjusting to it than the teenage generation. Learning technology is starting to seem like learning a new language. Although, it's a priority for society to learn to acclimate to these changes in order to learn and communicate effectively.

In the article "Serious Games: Incorporating Video Games in the Classroom", Leonard A. Annetta (and other writers) write about Generation N, "N" standing for "net". Annetta claims that this generation has grown up with computers, technology, and the Internet to the point were its just normal to have it around; they have never known a time without it. This creates a generation gap between student and teacher. The students (especially k-12) are becoming more and more interactive with computers and can relate to learning better through the use of technology. However, the teachers often lack this technological knowledge that the students share, leaving the teachers in a game of catch-up. But according to Annetta this is a game well worth playing.

in this article, Anderson and Balsamo spreads the idea of our digitalworld and how we are surrounded with the use of this digital technologies since we live in a digital generation. The whole idea of technology can be used for educational goods or bad depending on how responsible the students use it and with the support of teacher helping the students to understand technology use for useful purposes.

One question that I wanted to find more information on was what types of digital media can be used in a classroom. I found a online video clip at http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-new-media-classroom-tips that had seven different clips with six different authors who were educators themselves using technology in their classrooms. Each clip talked about some type of way to communicate to students by using technology and they explained their way of teaching in four minutes or less. It seemed like these people were trying to get teachers comfortable with the media world and letting them know that in order to have a good connection with your students you are going to have to get on their level.

No Child Left Behind has been a catalyst for collaboration between general education, special education, and all aspects of the education system

In this video Yi talks about the increase usage of google and how it has improve over the years and had been made easier for everyone to use. But he states a problem about how frequently everyone uses it without evaluating to see if the informations are actually accurate.

Now the rules that I'm talking about are constantly being monitored by the culture. We're being corrected. And the primary policemen are women, because we are the carriers of the tradition. We pass it down from generation to generation. Not only, we always have this vague notion that something's expected of us. And on top of all off these rules, they keep changing. (Laughter) We don't know what's going on half the time, so it puts us in a very tenuous position.

In this video, Larry takes about 3 stories that generates to one argument. Larry is a Harvard professor and is one of TED's authorities that knows a lot about the copyright issues. He talks about how the user generated content was created to be.

In Yasmin Kafai's article Playing and Making Games for Learning, Kafai claims that if one individual were to write a history on the development of child education, they would be forced to include the impact video games have made on child learning. Kafai writes that teachers have picked up on the fact that video games capture children's attention and have tried to use this to their advantage by incorporating video games into their teaching style. There are many ways to incorporate video games into the classroom, but Kafai generalizes that there are two main categories of thought when it comes to teachers integrating video games into the curriculum: instructionalists and constructionalists.

They have even looked at a study called "Mistakes Are a Fact of Life: A National Comparative Study" and have found that the number of errors found in writing has remained the same for around a century. In this study Andrea and Karen Lunsford found that the number of errors was in the range of 2.11 to 2.45. The type of errors has changed though. Spelling errors have lessened and wrong word choice has taken the top spot. One explanation for this could be spell check not catching the wrong usage of nouns. Technical writing and composition professor Cindy Raisor said that the only change that she has seen is that students have stopped caring if they make mistakes.

"The entire educational community must share responsibility for the development of literacy skills for the older student. This requires a paradigm shift from common practice where literacy instruction has been viewed as the sole responsibility of specialists instead of general educators. "

It talks about how our generation is different and why teachers need to change. It also discus ways to use video games in school to help students learn.

This article spoke about how scholars believe that children who are read to by their family members will most likely have better literacy practices. They have greater tendencies to try and read without any formal instruction compared to those who wait for instruction. They believe that the "comfortable atmosphere" of their own hom and the soothing voice of their mother (or in some cases their father, grandma...etc) generates as reading being something calm rather than a task. Children get to learn about all new things and can be explained to in a way that they can understand. Their parents are able to speak to them in a language easyly understood by their children and be able to meet their unique needs. The connection between real life situations and that of a storybook are made which makes it more simple for a child to understand and actually be able to personally relate to.

Digital identity, like that presented on Facebook, thrives because it is temporal. You can change your identity, you can become a liberal or conservative change your interests and hobbies at the push of a button. The point is, you're always presenting the identity you want to present you never have to worry about the identity you used to present. Students disclose lots of real information, but they also disclose lots of false information. The reality is, is that you can always change the fake information. Facebook is no longer just a current method of identity presentation; it is an archive of our digital identity. People love exploring each other, but we don't want to leave traces behind. We don't want people to be able to see if we've viewed the profiles of others. We don't want people to know if we decline their friend requests. Facebook, like it or not, has brought to bear a very real issue in online identity.

Boys, masculinities and literacy: Addressing the issues This article is from the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, written by Wayne Martino. Through interviews, gathering data and reading over 30 books on boys, masculinity and literacy, he discusses these problems while offering solutions for the "underachievement and lack of engagement" with literacy for boys. (9). Right away Martino explains that not all boys are underachieving but overall test scores have shown a general pattern of boys struggling in literacy practices. He offers many reasons that may be causing this literacy crisis for males, as well as solutions that need to being in schooling.

The article focuses on the increased popularity in online social networks like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, social media, and user generated content. The author states that these sites have redefined the way the Internet functions because they incorporate the features that allow Internet users to publish opinions, connect, build community, or produce and share content. Video sharing is the fastest-growing platform in history, according to the author. The author also explains how this social revolution is impacting the field of marketing research.

This article talks about how "we" our generation has cause CD's to go out of business. Record companies are not selling much anymore because we now get our music freely as we like of the internet. Torrents, Limewire, Itunes all are site we can access music.

"As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited."

Research examining friend networking sites has greatly increased in the past several months exploring topics related to general use, psychological well being, and content analysis of profiles to name a few. The current study sought to identify dimensions of uses and gratifications for users of friend networking sites. Results identified the following three dimensions: the Information Dimension, the Friendship Dimension, and the Connection Dimension. Sex differences also existed with regards to use of friend networking sites