Transliteracy

1) How does transliteracy change your current thoughts on the content you deliver?

Apparently the content is irrelevant per M. McCluhan, so I guess the content doesn't really change. As much as I would like to get off easy with that answer, I should consider other possibilities. We recently sent out a request for parents to complete a survey about their experience/take on our schools and had the most responses ever since we sent it out via text. What does this tell me? It tells me parents want to know what they are engaging with quickly before investing themselves. They want information on their cell phones which makes it convenient and portable. Brevity is king, rendering effective messaging all the more important.  Whether good or bad, it worked from a quantitative standpoint. What it means qualitatively has yet to be determined. 

2) How do see the incorporation of transliteracy teaching methods increasing student inclusion and engagement?

The obvious answer is that it opens the door to other methods for students to demonstrate their literacy as well as for teachers to engage students by delivering instruction in a manner that is appealing to all. Again, that is the obvious answer, but digging deeper we know that all students are becoming more and more adept at receiving information. If we fail to present information and accept alternate forms of literacy, we are allowing parts of the student brain to atrophy from the monotony of our practices. Hell, no wonder they turn to youtube and snapchat, it is always something new and re"freshed." Another way to look at it is through the lens of value. Many students see what they learn as semi-antiquated or at least not relevant to the professional world. Changing the frame of reference from learning to becoming literate is an interesting next step.

3) Your own thoughts...

Thanks for the wide open prompt. Here goes: Evolution and Survival of the Fittest have scientifically been defined as mere adaptation and the subsequent proliferation of the adapting entity. These universal concepts to the scientific world transmutated themselves in the historical analogs in the form of Social Darwinism and Civilized versus Primitive cultures at the benefit of those who applied the labels. Despite the preposterous historical end to the near irrefutable scientific means, science has potentially wronged humans by applying a fixed definition to evolution, excluding progress and humans as the right tail of development.
 
We know life began with the most simplest of forms and that humans are recent additions to the animal kingdom; to this I have no qualms. But what is adaptation? If adaptation is the rudimentary ability to acclimatize, acculturate and/or physically morph, which when partnered with Darwin’s concept of a struggle, then why can we not term survival’s current end product as progress, the winner in the struggle for life? I can understand that numerically speaking humans pale in comparison to their bacterial brethren, but as supply and demand determine, the value associated with bounty is less than items of scarcity. To simply flip and extend this argument in terms of other, less represented members of the animal kingdom who possess even longer gestation periods with fewer offspring would be a disservice to the analogy, for there is a point at which a balance occurs, both economically and in terms of survival and progress. Granted, it is sapiens-centric to consider humans as the point where having gone any higher marginal cost would exceed marginal benefit and where marginal benefit, having gone any lower would lose out on the prospect of progress, but why not?
 
Adaptation is verified in both scientific and historical journals, but I propose that mere adaptation has been surpassed. We have transformed unintentional adaptation to deliberate modification and manipulation.