My colleagues and I have been grappling with the idea of what it means to be a literate person in the new millennium. The discussion began in the fall and has carried through the Digital Commons tailgate and the latest All-ID meeting. It's been an interesting and lively discussion in part because we're all coming at it from different perspectives and are arriving at an understanding that is multifaceted to say the least. What follows is an attempt at organizing my thoughts into a coherent understanding of what I think of when I think of 21st literacy.
Digital Literacy is an understanding of how we communicate in the 21st century where conversations are very likely to take place in multimodal formats using personal, mobile devices in conjunction with collaborative webs tools. The definition of digital literacy is similar to the definition of literacy as designated by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which states, "'Literacy' is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." The shift occurs at the end where "printed and written materials"" are replaced or supplanted by multimedia formats such as video, audio and images used in conjunction with text in an electronic format. So a definition of digital literacy could be "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use multimedia materials in varying contexts.
Being digitally literate requires the ability to both consume and create information using digital media, both hardware and software. Hardware items include computers but, perhaps more importantly, personal mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and iPods and other MP3 players. Hardware items also encompass the means of transporting data such as mobile broadband networks and bandwidth limitations. Due to their cost and improvements in the user-interface and application capabilities, personal mobile devices are quickly becoming the preferred communication platform. Software primarily refers to the collaborative web-based tools that are, for the most part, free and require no installation of an application or drivers on the part of the user.
What are the characteristics of Digital Conversations? Instead of a one-way conversation that was primarily text based, new conversations now take place that combine multiple modes of communication including movies, images, audio, and text. These conversations involve participants who are actively involved in the information creation and response process where they build upon or interpret each other. People respond to each other by taking the original content, interpreting it, and then creating a new meaning and making it available for additional review and interpretation. These conversations tend to take place in open forums where anyone can participate. Social networks are then formed around people with similar interests.
As educators we need to understand the interrelationships between user-hardware-software that enable this type of conversation to take place. This involves an understanding of both the hardware, in particular the trend of hardware to become smaller, more personal, and handle increasing amounts of computing power, as well as the web-based software applications that enable multi-modal kinds of conversations. We also need to begin to shift perspective from a conversation being organized around a single application to an network organized around the interest of its members.
Digital Literacy is an understanding of how we communicate in the 21st century where conversations are very likely to take place in multimodal formats using personal, mobile devices in conjunction with collaborative webs tools. The definition of digital literacy is similar to the definition of literacy as designated by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which states, "'Literacy' is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." The shift occurs at the end where "printed and written materials"" are replaced or supplanted by multimedia formats such as video, audio and images used in conjunction with text in an electronic format. So a definition of digital literacy could be "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use multimedia materials in varying contexts.
Being digitally literate requires the ability to both consume and create information using digital media, both hardware and software. Hardware items include computers but, perhaps more importantly, personal mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and iPods and other MP3 players. Hardware items also encompass the means of transporting data such as mobile broadband networks and bandwidth limitations. Due to their cost and improvements in the user-interface and application capabilities, personal mobile devices are quickly becoming the preferred communication platform. Software primarily refers to the collaborative web-based tools that are, for the most part, free and require no installation of an application or drivers on the part of the user.
What are the characteristics of Digital Conversations? Instead of a one-way conversation that was primarily text based, new conversations now take place that combine multiple modes of communication including movies, images, audio, and text. These conversations involve participants who are actively involved in the information creation and response process where they build upon or interpret each other. People respond to each other by taking the original content, interpreting it, and then creating a new meaning and making it available for additional review and interpretation. These conversations tend to take place in open forums where anyone can participate. Social networks are then formed around people with similar interests.
As educators we need to understand the interrelationships between user-hardware-software that enable this type of conversation to take place. This involves an understanding of both the hardware, in particular the trend of hardware to become smaller, more personal, and handle increasing amounts of computing power, as well as the web-based software applications that enable multi-modal kinds of conversations. We also need to begin to shift perspective from a conversation being organized around a single application to an network organized around the interest of its members.
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