Conclusion

= Conclusion: = Having read through the information about **Culturally Responsive Pedagogy**, **Funds of Knowledge**, and **Web 2.0**, you might find yourself remembering the home page declaring this an inquiry project for a “Literacy Studies” class and ask yourself what does all this information about technology and culture have to do with literacy? The answer is EVERYTHING! First, what is important to understand is that “literacy” does not mean just “books”. The term “texts”, in literacy studies, does include books, but also encompasses movies, plays, speeches, even people and events in your life. Reading about drug addiction and abuse could have just as big of an impact for somebody as seeing a movie on the subject, or even witnessing the repercussions firsthand.

This enormous variety of texts is one of the biggest reasons why it is important to understand and practice culturally responsive pedagogy, explore funds of knowledge and use Web 2.0 to its fullest. You cannot expect one group of students to respond the same to a particular book as another group of students. Even if an assignment works really well with your class one year, you must still assess what type of students you have the next to determine if that lesson is the best suited for that group of students. Perhaps one group responds really well to watching movies while reading classic literature, but another prefers research and making websites. Maybe your students come from families in which one subject has more dominance in their lives than another. Instead of fighting against these natural differences, it is important that we work with them; if we are constantly turning school into a negative space for these students where their home lives are ignored or even devalued it forces them to choose between their families and their education.

Instead, we should learn who our students are not only as learners, but as people in a community. Connecting assignments back to the communities in which students live will not only help them become interested, but will help them see the life of their assignments past the classroom life. Incorporating Web 2.0 has a similar function; simultaneously, students will be getting instruction in Internet skills and putting their work onto a more widely accessible platform that could encourage them to work harder and take more pride in what they do.

Overall, it is important that we, as future educators, be willing to constantly be learners ourselves; we have to take genuine interest in our student’s lives and find out what they are interested are, what types of families they come from, what skills they hold and what their goals and ambitions are in our classes and in the long run. Once we have this information, we must not ignore it; it is important that we assess what we feel is important for our students to get out of our classes and find a way for it to work with the things that the students bring to the class. Together, they will learn from us, and we will learn from them. We just cannot forget that the most important thing is not to shove our students into a mold that we have set out for them, but to use **Culturally Responsive Pedagogy**, **Funds of Knowledge**, and **Web 2.0** to fit out curriculum to our students and the things that they bring to us and hope to get from us.

=Contact:=

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Thank you for visiting my Literacy Studies Inquiry Project. I hope you learned as much exploring the topics as I did compiling them. If you have any further questions, please feel free to e-mail me at **MKrisko@mail.csuchico.edu**. Thank you!=====