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“THERE IS A FALLACY THAT KIDS AREN’T READING AND WRITING ANYMORE. THEY ARE, BUT THEY ARE JUST READING AND WRITING DIFFERENTLY THAN WHAT WE’VE TRADITIONALLY DONE IN SCHOOLS” DAVID BLAKE (COLLIER, 2007, P. 8) New Literacy Studies focuses on the fact that meanings of words, tools and technologies in 'new literacy' change based on how they are interacted with and developed. They go beyond “just using a digital tool –they involve, as well, ways of acting, interacting, valuing, believing, and knowing as well as often using other sorts of tools and technologies.”(Gee, 2009, p. 10). Technology does not develop these languages, the communities of practice who interact with it do.
Humans live in a briskly changing world, where digital technologies are constantly being developed. To function as a member of the 21st century, people need to be able to confidently use an emerging assortment of technical tools. Digital literacy, however, is not so much about competency using these tools as it is the ability to use problem solving, critical thinking, and social skills to incorporate meaning making and design in digital spaces. These skills can be defined as ‘digital literacy’ Lankshear and Knobel (2008) define digital literacy as “a shorthand for the myriad social practices and conceptions of engaging in meaning making mediated by texts that are produced, received, distributed, exchanged, etc., via digital codification” (p. 5). The capacity to adapt and acclimatize to the ever-changing landscape of the internet and the technologies it affords us, is an essential skill for all members of society now, and well into the future. Watson (1997) suggests that “our ability to adapt to the Web as it adapts to us will determine its future and our own” (Watson, 1997, p. ix). Students today, and in the future, are required to use the multimodalities of the internet to assess, use, disseminate, and design content using digital technologies (Cornell, 2015). Students of today, and the future need to be literate in how to use the internet through the frameworks, platforms, and multimodalities that it provides us. Educators’ role, through the four components of multiliteracies pedagogy (New London Group, 1996), is to provide students with a set of physical, and critical thinking skills that allow students to use these tools to discover the endless possibilities that digital mediums provide them. Watson (1997) suggests that “If we can help our students live up to the potential… we can hope one day that a final media/communication merge will erase the distinction between what it means to entertain and what it means to inform” (p. ix). Teachers need to be implementing a digital literacy curriculum for students to engage with the tools of technology, through writing, designing, presenting, posting, and sharing information. “Posting information about yourself or others online are all a part of your day-to-day life, and all of these activities require varying degrees of digital literacy” (Cornell, 2015). Knowing how to do these things, is not enough, students need to be critical about what they are posting and which modality is useful and appropriate (Cornell, 2015). |