- Students need to know/use digital technologies because that’s what they will use in their day-to-day lives once they leave our institution.

I think that you (at least seem to) use technology in the following way:

- My students need to become literate and, in this, I plan to use whatever technological tools that will encourage that literacy. This might mean using pens and paper, wikis, blogs, or videos – if it lets my students become critically aware of their surrounding environment, then I want it in my classroom!

Thus, I would suggest that you are encouraging ‘digital literacy’ (i.e. awareness/use of digital toolsets) in order to promote your wider project of critical understanding. Your concern (as it seems to read) is that by using digital tools too heavily, we risk undercutting the benefits that are realized from other ‘modes’ of literacy, and that by overweighing digital tools we enter an environment where those without access to those tools are classified (rightly or wrongly) as ‘illiterate’ for the modern/postmodern era.

If I haven’t missed something critical, I think that the latter restatement of your position would be how I have been struggling to articular my concerns regarding literacy-general, versus the modes of becoming literate.

My concern right now – which is what inspired these posts on literacy – is that learning with technology is being afforded, by some, a, dare I say, evangelical status…”if only everyone would teach with tech, teach digital literacy, then education and our children would be saved! If only!”

Could this be because it is internalized for me (I’m thinking out loud here)? I don’t see it as a radically different way of learning/teaching/thinking because it is integrated into how I do things?

I think that it’s helpful to remember that when a new technology ‘arrives’ it is something that is foreign, but something that over time we realize as having radically affected how we live our lives. The microwave oven and instant-cooking foods are great examples; when they were first sold they were revolutionary, they contributed to a ‘new’ form of cooking, whereas now we see them just as elements of the (typical) Western home-cooking process. I think that the same can be read/said about digital literacies. Given that digital technologies are fresh, we see them as separate because of a normal need to identify, categorize, and recognize as different. While these new technologies are different, they’re only different for so long as we are operating with a pre-digital mindset; once we recognize digital-analogue hybrid life as ‘normal’ at a core level (i.e. once we have internalized the digital, which is happening as people recognize wikipedia and Google as core knowledge discovery tools) I think that the notion of ‘digital literacy’ will again be compressed into ‘critical media awareness’. Given time, digital literacy will be seen as a facet of this larger class of literary experiences, but it will take a few years *grin*

Christopher Parsonss last blog post at http://www.christopher-parsons.com/edublog..Risk-Based Education and IT

You sum the conversation up really nicely for me with your last line (and I’m finally realizing that we have been talking about the same things all this time)

…perceiving it as one facet of a larger discussion of critical understanding.

As tech gets folded into our lives, into our understanding of the world around us, it will become the contemporary wheel or electricity – a part of life that can allow us to achieve our understanding in different ways than before…but not the understanding itself.

I am, indeed, finally getting to my feed reader (stage one of the move out West was a little more involved than first imagined *grin*), and wanted to comment on the notion of ‘digital literacy’.

Digitization (the shifting of information into digital bits) is a pretty new phenomenon – this isn’t surprising, as computers are (relatively) new to the world. I think that something that is instructive is that, when each new form of ‘world-shaping’ technology is birthed into the world there are heralds claiming that it will save the world, that all must become ‘literate’/'knowledgable’ about it in order to function as a member of society. Vincent Mosco, a Canada Research Chair at Queens, put out a book that explored this phenomenon a few years ago.

Mosco looks at how ‘important’ it was for people to understand electricity in order to unlock its hidden potentials. With electricity, famine, education, and disease would be solved – electrical power was THE panacea! This, of course, hasn’t been the case. Indeed, we didn’t really REALIZE the power (forgive the pun) of electricity until it pretty well receded into the background of our lives; only once technologies become ubiqutious are their respective possibilities realized.

Of course, electricity has changed our lives, but not in the ways that were first imagined. While there are individuals who understand how electricity works, and how it is generated, those who are genuinely ‘literate’, or critically aware, of how electricity works are few and far between – literacy as it pertains to a new technology isn’t a necessary precursor to realizing its benefits, or integrating it into one’s life, and I don’t necessarily think that this lack of full awareness of new technologies is an inherently bad thing (though I would go so far as to say that it’s not good).

The notions that ‘new’ media types would totally change how we understand and operate in the world also came with television, radio, etc. While these new media types changed the face of the world in substantial ways, I wonder if whether or not we should focus on the specific technologies in question (media literacy as it pertains uniquely to text, radio, TV, the ‘net, etc), or instead look to a larger, overarching set of meta-principles to make clear what is occurring in these divergent media environments. These principles might provide a way of understanding and talking about new technologies, and the ajoining skill shifts that accompany them, so that rather than talk about ‘digital literacy’, we’re able to talk about a broader notion of literacy/critical understanding and recognize ‘digital literacy’ in an analytic sense (i.e. a useful division for discussion an ajoining skill set, and ways that approaching that skill set diverges from, say, cursive literacy), while simultaneously perceiving it as one facet of a larger discussion of critical understanding.

Christopher Parsonss last blog post at http://www.christopher-parsons.com/edublog..Risk-Based Education and IT

Thanks for adding to this conversation.

I think I agree with Scott. There’s no question that the kids needs these skills to be viable participants in the economy. If I know that and they don’t, I really don’t feel guilty about explaining it to them (or to their parents). I work in a school where 90-some percent of the kids live below the poverty line. If the kids I teach today don’t acquire technology skills, we’ll still be able to describe them that way a generation from now. On the other hand, geography has been the economic enemy for ages now and technology can negate that as to some extent here in Central Appalachia.

I AM concerned with terminology in the larger discussion. IN ADDITION to technology, my kids need strong literacy skills. Sometimes I get the impression that people think that technology skills will make them employable DESPITE weaknesses in literacy. “Digital literacy” may not be an oxymoron, but it is a misleading term when it gives people the impression that there are more important skills in our society than READING..

I have been feeling for some time now that we are allowing the cart to pull the horse.

invokes the sentiment that spurred my latest post, and what I wrote as a comment there as well.

Thanks for joining in.

Steve Ransoms last blog post at http://ransomtech.edublogs.org..Learning Motivation and Technology