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Digital Literacy

Accidental Digital Literacy?#

In Technology and Literacy Education in the Next Century:  Exploring the Connection Between Work and Schooling, Labbo, Reinking, and McKenna present five key concepts surrounding digital literacy in the context of the workplace and as a consequence, in the context of education as a way to prepare individuals for the workplace.  The second of these concepts is: Digital literacy acquisition and development often occur in the pursuit of other goals. The authors wrote:  Digital literates in the workplace seldom study computer programming or devote themselves to studying the use of technology applications as an end unto itself.  ...solve problems related to their communication goals... ...a tool that can augment thought... ...students may be provided with increasing opportunities to engage in processes of digital composing and reading that will aloow them to discover their ideas, to realize communicative goals, and to develop digital fluency.  ...computers should be viewed as thought processors... ...permit fingertip recursive revising and editing promote a fluid movement among ideas, enabling authors to take new perspectives and have unique encounters with their own thoughts. We believe that educators need to create opportunities for students to digitally encounter, discover, and articulate their thoughts through digital composing and problem solving. According to the authors, people who are digitally literate and fluent acquired those skills by using technology to solve problems.  This isn't a novel idea at all.  We know that most true learning arises out of questions that articulate problems.  It is in the solving of these problems, the answering of these questions, that we have the potential to become digitally literate. What fascinates me about this section of the article is not that we learn when we have a need, or that we become more digitally literate by using digital technologies in functional ways.  No.  What fascinates me about this section is the notion of computers as thought processors.  The suggestion here is that by being digitally literate and by using computer tools to solve problems, our thought processes can, and do, change.  The ease with which I can change my words (thoughts) on the computer screen or surface multiple thoughts suggests a way of thinking that wasn't easily accomplished with traditional tools of words and thought (pen and paper) and therefore I can become much more fluent in moving my thoughts around in various ways to suit myself.  I can look at them, discard them, move them to the bottom of the page to examine later, or keep them.  The fluidity I find in my writing (typing) of my words (thoughts) translates ultimately into fluidity of thought.  I'm must more creative in my thinking now than I used to be.  I'm much more fluid and flexible, being able to immediately grasp numerous perspectives and "see" them.  I know that the way I think, how and what, is different as a result of technology and this is something I'd like to explore even further.  Another aspect of this section of the article that I'd like to explore is simply the notion that in the using of the technology we become experts with the technology.  Not a novel idea at this point (although I most likely was at the time of the article's printing) but certainly one well worth remembering.  I didn't set out to become an "expert" in anything.  I just wanted to first understand the whole organizational scheme of the Internet, then the organizational scheme of the MOO, and so forth.  It strikes me now as I sit here and write this that I have demonstrated this tendency, no - it's more than a tendency - it's a need, to dissect things in order to understand their organizational schemes my whole life.  When I clean even, I begin by dismantling the space I want to clean.  Then, I put everything (almost) back in...sometimes in the same order, other times in a very different order (this happens when the current organizational scheme isn't really making sense to me).  Ultimately, everything gets touched and re-arranged, even if some of it ends up back in the same place.

Posted by Karen McComas on 9/30/04; 6:55:44 AM to the Digital Literacy Department
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