From DigitalRhetoricCollaborative

Revision as of 16:26, 30 November 2015

A model for digital literacy Image by Future Lab

According to the National Council of Teachers of English, Digital literacy encompasses many skills used to comprehend and utilize knowledge and information gathered from digital sources or technology itself. These skills are defined by the NCTE as:

• Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;
• Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes;
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information;
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts;
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.^[1]

Literacy has evolved with technology as there is now a need for students of English to work with technology and treat it as another medium for their work. Now people must be able to interpret media, create multimodal texts through the use of digital skills, manage data, and have a certain mastery of technology related to their needs.^[2].

History

The traditional definition of literacy is "the ability to read and write" or "knowledge that relates to a specific subject".^[3] The concept of digital literacy has evolved in the 21st century to include technology. In order to be successful in the digital world today, literacy goes beyond the ability to read and write. The term “digital literacy” has been used since the 1980’s but in a narrower sense of being able to effectively use computers, such as in one’s work^[4]. Paul Gilster, author of digital literacy texts, expanded the concept in 1997 by describing it as “… the set of attitudes, understanding and skills to handle and communicate information and knowledge effectively, in a variety of media and formats^[5].” Gilster’s idea was broader and not constrained to a specific set of skills, attitudes, or competencies in the definition of what it is to be digitally literate. However, a modern sense of the definition is seen as a combination of cultural, cognitive and technical resources, exemplified through Futurelab’s (the British educational research organization) definition (2010): “To be digitally literate is to have access to a broad range of practices and cultural resources that you are able to apply to digital tools. It is the ability to make and share meaning in different modes and formats; to create, collaborate and communicate effectively and to understand how and when digital technologies can best be used to support these processes^[6].” The evolution of what it means to be digitally literate reflects the change in how information is processed, delivered, and received in the digital age.

Digital literacy refers to the variety of literacies that are associated with use of digital or “new” technologies, including:

• mobile devices (mobile phones, smart phones, laptops, tablets, etc.)
• desktop computers
• data logging equipment
• interactive whiteboards
• digital recording devices (cameras, video recorders, voice recorders)
• general resources on the internet
  • Wikipedia
  • wikis
  • Skype
  • Dropbox

Key Frameworks

In his 2004 book Experiments in Digital Literacy, Yoram Eshet-Alkalai^[7]developed a digital literacy framework that specifies five skills:

• Photo-visual skills
• Reproduction skills
• Branching skill
• Information skills
• Socio-emotional skills

Another definition comes from Wan Ng. In a 2012 article^[8]Ng lays out a digital literacy framework that draws together all of these definitions and groups them into three dimensions:

• Technical
• Cognitive
• Social-emotional

Use in Education

Today students are wired to learn digitally and are immersed in the digital world with technology always within reach. Schools on all educational levels are continuously updating their curriculum to adopt and promote digital literacy in order to keep up with accelerating technological developments. This often includes the use of computers in the classroom, the use of educational software to teach the curriculum, and the course materials being made available to students online. The concept of eLearning has become popular due to the of convenience, allowing learning to take place at a time and location that’s better suited to the learner’s needs^[10]. In order to effectively utilize the tools associated with eLearning, there must be a corresponding level of digital literacy.

What does all of this mean for teaching? According to the National Council of English Teacher's, the integration of multiple modes of communication provides a deeper connection to the material, and a better overall understanding of what is being taught. Multimodal literacy is a skill children acquire effortlessly. An over-emphasis on testing can deprive children of these multimodal experiences they need^[11] . The integration of technology and the classroom is the simplest way to provide children with these multimodal experiences. This is because computers support software that allows nearly unlimited creative outlets for students, as well as the internet's ability to provide information instantaneously.

There is a downside to this, but it is one that is easy to combat. Children are better at learning certain things than adults,^[12] including in most cases technology. Because of this, it is more important than ever for the teachers to be at least somewhat as digitally literate as the students. According to the NCTE, students who feel as though they know more than their teachers are more likely to find school irrelevant or boring^[13]. Due to these factors, teachers should be prepared to devise ways to include those students that are more technologically advanced than most.

Fair Use In Education

Educators and learners in media literacy often make use of copyrighted materials including audiovisual and digital material to convey facts and information in the classroom. Such uses, especially when they occur within a restricted-access network, do enjoy certain copyright advantages. As a practical matter, they may be less likely to be challenged by rights holders. More important, however, if challenged they would be more likely to receive special consideration under the fair use doctrine – because they occur within an educational setting.

From the beginnings of fair use in the courts, judges have drawn the connection between this special doctrine of copyright law and the central importance of education in the American republic. The word "education" appears prominently in the preamble to Section 107 of the current Copyright Act, where the doctrine is codified. In addition, educators who rely reasonably on fair use are insulated against statutory damages in Sec 504(c)(2). However, there have been no important court decisions – in fact, very few decisions of any kind – that actually interpret and apply the doctrine in an educational context. This means that educators who want to claim the benefits of fair use have a rare opportunity to be open and public about asserting the appropriateness of their practices and the justifications for them. This code is intended to support such assertions. It also means that educators seeking to arrive at a reasonable and balanced understanding of the doctrine, like the authors of this code, need to reason from first principles. ^[14]

Use in Society/Workplace

Digital literacy is an important topic and skill because technology is developing more rapidly than society is. Because of the unprecedented capabilities and environments that technology provides, appropriate behavior and use in these digital contexts is a work in progress and may be unknowable in certain situations due to a lack of experience. Previously concrete and well-established ideas such as copyright, academic integrity, and privacy are now difficult define or in constant flux^[15]. On a cultural level, digital literacy helps people communicate and keep up with societal trends. The use of eLearning in the workplace is particularly advantageous for large organizations that have a multitude of employees working in different locations working on projects and processes that require communication and collaboration with one another^[16].

References

1. ↑ "The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies." NCTE Comprehensive News. National Council of Teachers of English, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.
2. ↑ "Digital Literacy Definition and Resources." University Library of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 15 Oct. 2008. Web. http://www.library.illinois.edu/diglit/definition.html
3. ↑ "Literacy." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
4. ↑ Mohammadyari, Soheila, and Harminder Singh. "Understanding The Effect Of E-Learning On Individual Performance: The Role Of Digital Literacy." Computers & Education 82.(2015): 11-25. Academic Search Complete. Web.
5. ↑ Gilster, Paul. Digital Literacy. New York, 1997. Print.
6. ↑ http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf
7. ↑ Eshet, Hamburger. "Experiments in Digital Literacy." (2015) Web. http://www.openu.ac.il/Personal_sites/download/eshet&Amichai2004.pdf
8. ↑ Ng, Wan. "Can we teach digital natives digital literacy?" Computers and Education 59. (2012) Web.
9. ↑ Mohammadyari, Soheila, and Harminder Singh. "Understanding The Effect Of E-Learning On Individual Performance: The Role Of Digital Literacy." Computers & Education 82.(2015): 11-25. Academic Search Complete. Web.
10. ↑ Mohammadyari, Soheila, and Harminder Singh. "Understanding The Effect Of E-Learning On Individual Performance: The Role Of Digital Literacy." Computers & Education 82.(2015): 11-25. Academic Search Complete. Web.
11. ↑ "Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies." NCTE Comprehensive News. National Council of Teachers of English, 1 Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.
12. ↑ Lucas, Christopher G., Sophie Bridgers, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Alison Gopnik. "When Children Are Better (or at Least More Open-minded) Learners than Adults: Developmental Differences in Learning the Forms of Causal Relationships." Cognition 131.2 (2014): 284-99. Science Direct. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
13. ↑ "Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies." NCTE Comprehensive News. National Council of Teachers of English, 1 Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.
14. ↑ http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/fairusemedialiteracy
15. ↑ "Digital Literacy Resource - Introduction." Cornell University Digital Literacy Resource. Cornell Information Technologies, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. https://digitalliteracy.cornell.edu/welcome/dpl0000.html
16. ↑ Mohammadyari, Soheila, and Harminder Singh. "Understanding The Effect Of E-Learning On Individual Performance: The Role Of Digital Literacy." Computers & Education 82.(2015): 11-25. Academic Search Complete. Web.

External Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_literacy

--Samantha Lipkin April 22, 2015