Hidden Literacies

Being the die-hard Nets fan that I am, I usually read about ten articles a day that pertain to my favorite NBA basketball team.

As I read through the articles on the Nets Daily website today, one, in particular, stuck out. This article is one that investigates the weird hobby that reserve center Mikki (pronounced: Mikey) Moore has. Mikki has six different snakes which he loves. This is interesting in itself but not what I decided to write about today. No, the most interesting part of this article was in written, in extremely small print, at the bottom of the page.

After reading the article, which was very intertaining (a word that I’ve decided to create, a mix between ‘interesting’ and ‘entertaining’) in itself—how could it not be with all of those Snakes On A Plane jokes—I noticed that there was small print after the article that read:

To find reference information about the words used in this article, hold down the ALT key and click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.

Why not give it a whirl, right. It was awesome. It’s like every single word on this page was a hyperlink to some New York Times database. I can’t help but think how this new kind of literacy could be intensely handy in a classroom (and out of the classroom for that matter). It’s a new way to learn which would appear (at least in my case) to be very efficient.

Very interesting… more coming later. Cheers.