Add-Ons for "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” by The New London Group

While in the second lesson, discussing our first reading, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” by The New London Group (NLG), we were told to think about some of the stuff written in it. Then, we were told to think about the issue of drawbacks, & I realised drawbacks were actually not astated in the article.

All the time the NLG talks about how good it will be for teachers to provide all forms of new technologies for the students but it all seems very idealistic if one is to think about it. It sounds almost Utopian to be able to achieve all the things mentioned in the article, for when we look at reality, we see articles about how pervasive pornography is on the Internet. In addition to that, there are many paedophiles lurking around on the Internet, constantly on the prowl for the next victims. And how can we ignore the fact that students, especially teenagers, with hormones raging and experiencing puberty, will actually make use of what is available on the Internet to source for “unhealthy contents”, or worse, chat up some strangers and engage in activities that are deemed undesirable by our society, such as, taking drugs, engaging in sex, and whatever not.

In fact, I have attached an article from the Straits Times in this blog entry (below), found in the 18 December 2008 issue, which talks about children “losing their ways” in the virtual world.

Apart from the abovementioned, there is also cyber-gaming which is really rife now. Cyber games like “Warcraft” and “Maple Story”, amongst the likes, are making their ways into the lives of some, if not most, of the teenagers nowadays. Some of these gamers can even chalk up 18 hours a day just to train their games’ characters to gain levels. These are the things which are not mentioned with regard to what the advanced technologies have brought along with them as well, aside from the good stuff mentioned in the article. Thus, we cannot ignore the fact that the Internet may be misused by the students at any instance.