Digital Literacy: an analysis of social practices in cyberspace from the accessibility and frequency of use

This paper discusses the Digital Literacy and the importance of social practices of reading and writing nowadays. The research aims to analyze the accessibility of Digital Literacy of the residents from the satellite cities in Distrito Federal and the frequency of use of cyberspace to conduct reading and writing activities. According to Levy (1999), the transmutation of various means of communication (telephone, printed newspapers and post office, for example, in chat, digital newspapers and email, respectively) enabled the synchronous communication, interactivity and sharing of information between people from different places in the world, whether in oral form - as in video conferencing and telepresencial classroom - either in writing - as in most digital genres. It is this latter method - the writing, and hence the reading on the Internet - which has guided our discussion. According to Soares (2002), we live in a era of changes in the practices of reading and writing due to new forms of interaction between reader, author and text provided by the communication in the global computer network. Nothing better, therefore, than investigating how the user handles literacy in this new environment. The Digital Literacy, according to Xavier (2005), requires new ways of reading and writing. This means that time-honored practices of literacy, for example, should be rethought and reformulated in order to insert new ways of understanding the learning process - from handling the text to your perception, through the reading of written texts, engravings and icons linked to the electronic sphere. In this sense, the Digital Literacy, associated with multimodal genres, is present in the daily lives of several people from different social classes - particularly in large urban centers. So, facing this situation, we investigate if the residents of the satellite cities of DF have easy access to digital literacy and how often they make use of texts in cyberspace.

FEATURES OF THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE IN GOTA D’ÁGUA

This paper aims to analyze elements of the play Gota d’água, written by Chico Buarque and Paulo Pontes from televised script by Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, based on the tragedy Euripides’ Medea. The work preserves the central plot of the Greek text, but presents aspects of Brazilian reality and strong social content, dealing with themes that remain fairly current, such as right to housing, the situation of dependence of the poor class, the search for survival and maintenance power of action and decision in the hands of those who hold the capital. In the plot, recreated in suburban Rio, the representation of poor Brazilian workers emerges, with poverty being approached from a different profile than that spread by recent works of national literature, in which another facet of the lower social classes is highlighted, linking them to crime and violence, as well as the representation even more common, with an emphasis on black or northeastern origin. To this analysis we have purposed our considerations are guided primarily by studies of Antonio Candido (1970, 1989 and 2006) and Roberto Schwarz (1982 and 2000), joining artistic text and social series via character category, with characterization, a priori, through labor relations. Our approach lays not on Joana, representing Medea, the protagonist of that Greek tragedy, but especially from Egeu, minor character in the Euripides’ play, who, however, plays an important role in that modern version, being imperative in the wake of reflections of Brazilian society. On the other hand, we have observed that the entrepreneur Creonte Vasconcelos, who represents the power of capital, and Jasão de Oliveira, a dubious character, who suffers more transformations during the plot, hesitating between the miserable universe of his origin and the economic power, rising socially, becoming a product of the cultural industry and leading us to think about the use of the most capable people by the capitalist system.

"SHE WAS ALWAYS BY OUR SIDE": PERCEPTIONS OF INCLUSION BY VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENTS IN ENGLISH CLASSES

ABSTRACT: Educational policies in Brazil, in the past few years, have recommended the inclusion of visually impaired students in mainstream schools. Considering Vygotsky’s (2000;2008) cultural historical theory of learning and development; Maturana’s (2002) and Tomasello’s (2003) studies on social cognition, this article aims at analyzing the way two students conceive the process of inclusion in an English language classroom. An interview with the students made it possible to observe the positive impact that didactic strategies and the teacher´s attitudes had on the way these students faced learning and the foreign language. KEY WORDS: foreign language learning – blind students - affectivity