A happy New Media Birthday to me.

I am a big believe in celebrating birthday weeks. One day is just not enough for recognizing the day a person was born. My birthday is November 18th and the past week was devoted to celebrating it. On Monday I took three wonderful Peabody women to a Regina Spektor concert. As girls do, we drank cocktails, bitched about men, and enjoyed laughing with each other. As we made our way into the Ryman, we happened upon an unfamiliar opening act. The band used an old television set as an advertisement for their name. One of my new media classmates leaned over and shared, "what a great use of technology. We should totally blog about this!" I could not agree more.

Tuesday, I ran to my best friend in Nashville's house after a long night of work in order to bring in the actually birth day with some beer and bad TV. While I was watching trashy reality television. All through the program, the reality stars used abbreviated language to indicated feelings and words, "OMG! Did you just see that?!" My friend and I turned to each other and simultaneously exclaimed, "New Media!" Then we fell over in drunken giggles at our revelation.

Wednesday. My actual birthday. It consisted of class, more class, a tattoo, and a party. I figured it was time to cross another thing off my 101 things to do in 1001 days list and finally get the tattoo that I wanted. As I was clenching onto my friend's hand for dear life I could not help but wonder how a person begins to learn how to do tattoo art. Imagine the different literacy that goes along with learning the trade of implementing permeant ink on a person's body. Not only do you have to learn how to use the tools, but you also have to learn how to create the design in a way that fits the person's personality. For the pussy that I am, my artist knew to outline the easy stuff first in order to get me acclimated to the process before moving onto more complicated things. Thankfully, it is in a place that I will never have to explain to a future employer.

Thursday and Friday passed. Saturday I journeyed to Atlanta with a friend in order to catch another birthday concert. All along the way I was joined with a recognition of new media.

Sunday rolled around and three of my favorite people came with me to see one of my favorite indie musicians, Imogen Heap. The greatest thing about her is that she uses overlapping sound-bites in order to create the background for her music. Her whole concert is filled with technology because that is the only way to make the type of music she makes with only one person. A friend and I looked at each other and I knew what we were both thinking - New Media! I kept wondering how does one learn how to make music like that using those tools. There were sound boards everywhere and the music had to be played at just the right time in order to make it all work. Not to mention, one must learn the literacy of the actual instruments before every creating music with it. Imogen Heap knew I whole different language that I was not even remotely familiar - the language of sound editing.

New Media is all around us. The more I look around, the more I understand the importance of teaching it in the classroom. As I put the finishing touches on my inquiry project, I have discovered that it is not enough to teach using new media. A good teacher must teach the literacy surrounding new media. We must teach this new language that comes with the technology. I can make all of the powerpoints I want about books we are learning in class, but I need to know how to use and teach the language of powerpoint. I need to be able to teach the language of technology along with the English language. Book literacy and new literacy go hand-in-hand now. It is up to us as teachers to recognize that and pass that on to our students, so that one day we might be able to celebrate our birthday at a concert where a former student is creating music with the written and technological language that we taught them.