After I went through the whole article, one of the Elizabeth Hill’s main points I think is that the way of recording and expressing information is not just alphabetic writing. There are tons of other ways can do that, such as pictures, maps, music, etc. I strongly agree with her idea and I believe the rest of the methods play a very important role in the literacy of people, which is far more significant than alphabetic writing.

Obviously, new technology has pushed the improvement of extending the range of literacy. If we didn’t have such a broad field of expressing information, we’ll never reach the high standard of living nowadays. That’s because we can use those methods to learn something and to share with others more efficiently. Here’s a concrete example:



There are two different signs on the road. The one on the left shows a clear white right turn sign with blue background, and the one on the right indicates several alphabetic words. If I never learned English, I’ll probably ignore the right one but turn right when I see the left one. Let’s suppose the right sign contains very important information. The audiences of that must be less than the left one, and the efficiency of expressing information is also lower than the other one.

In fact, using “visual signs” in modern society is becoming more and more common all over the world. People are also glad to accept this kind of method because it contains the most natural sense that almost everyone can understand and share with others. With this method, people would also create new things without having any specific knowledge of that, which made the transmission of information easy to achieve.

In my point of view, the higher writing system is not necessarily the best way of recording and expressing information. It may be more efficient to record but not always a good way to express. Like the example I have mentioned above, no matter how important information has been indicated on the sign, if no one can understand that, the consequence is zero. Therefore, alphabetic writing is not the only way to record and express information and not the best way to do that as well.

Technology Shift

After reading “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology” written by Dennis Baron, there are so many technologic methods have been created by people in order to extend the range of literacy. All those improved technology not only provide us a better environment to interpret, creative and understand the things related to our life, but also give us more opportunities to know the world and ourselves.

With today’s high speed Internet, we would find the most recent news in the world and also added comments that everyone could share their ideas with it. With today’s GPS and satellite system, people could observe any interested places on the earth without travelling. In addition, with today’s photography and video technology, we could also record and save every precious moment in our life. Take me as an example. If camera had not been created by people, I’ll never find out what my passion is in my life. I used camera to record the world in my eyes. I took a lot of pictures and shared my thoughts with my friends. But more importantly, through using my camera to create works, I learned a lot of things that I had never touched before. It gives people another eye to see through the world, which I think is one of the positive results of today’s technology shift.

Visual Performance

In modern society, there are numerous kinds of media and technology that contain a large amount of information can be spared into a huge scale. Among those methods, I think the most impressive way must be visual performance, like videos, movies, dramas, etc. I always like something that’s moving instead of staying. I’d like to track the movement of objects or predict the ending of the story. However, the things on the screen are always changing, and you’ll never know what the next scene is going to be. That’s the part really makes me excited and forces me to watch until it ends. Also, it’s the easiest the way to persuade me. It’s because the sound, music, images, scenes, and all kinds of effective methods composed together in order to lead audiences’ mind into the place where the author or director wants them to be.

In ancient time, the nature of human is to seek movement. We hunted moving animals. And, the faster they were, the more valuable they were. Just like the moving objects on the screen, our nature doesn’t change. Therefore, if someone had to make a project for me, I’d like to have a video performance.