In a field that is rapidly evolving to keep up with a technological landscape that defines itself by constant revision and disposal, it is not surprising that the language surrounding digital literacy has, itself, not settled down. Alvermann uses literacy as an adjective, speaking of “literacy practices,” or “literacy skills” or “literacy instruction” (Alvermann, p. 12), but when using literacy as a noun, it becomes plural when referring to multiple types of media or a range of settings: “out-of-school literacies,” for example. In the article by Lankshear and Knobel, the plural “new literacies” seems to refer to the numerous interpretations and definitions of literacy as much as it does to the multimodal nature of our redefined conception of literacy. Using a plural designation is also a way to underline the fact that we once thought of literacy as a very specific, singular thing - the ability by an individual person to accurately decode printed text. The plural “new literacies” makes it clear that literacy is not about just one thing, one viewpoint, one medium, but many. Hammerberg leans more toward using the singular form of the term literacy, but wants to expand its meaning to be one driven less by a skill or activity and more by the purpose of comprehension. To that end, “reading” itself becomes a much broader term as well. Coiro’s use of “new literacies” seems to indicate that she sees them as multiple approaches that all fall under the broad umbrella of literacy.
Some aspects of the new literacies are truly new, others are new-ish, and others are not new, but are only recently thought of as literacy. Hyperlinks are most often contained within text, and online search results are often composed largely of text, but they are new expressions of information for most people in the past 25 years or so. Recorded audio and video formats have been around for longer and have been the subject of study for some time, but it’s relatively recently that we’ve been able to access them easily in a format that marries them with text. In the case of video, its study has typically been tied up more with the delivery mechanism of television or cinema. Now the delivery mechanism (a computer device) has many different genres and formats together in one place, making it easier to evaluate the piece for what it communicates rather than for its format or how it’s distributed. Some “new literacies” are older than printed text, but are newly thought of as an academic literacy, such as “reading a situation,” as Hammerberg points out (p. 649), or engaging in code-switching, by being aware of socio-cultural contexts. Other new literacies are due to the ease of production. In the past it was too complicated or expensive for the average person to create multimedia, so it was a specialized ability. The logistics of collaboration was more difficult in the past, but now it’s simpler to accomplish, so many people need to know how to use collaborative features in digital tools. Literacy, as a term, tends to connote an agreed-upon basic level of competence; it has an air of daily necessity about it. Some skills were once too difficult or expensive for most people to engage in, so they couldn’t be considered something that one could expect most people to be able to do, but that has shifted rapidly.
When one speaks of “online reading comprehension” and “digital inquiry” as somewhat equivalent terms, many would be confused. Reading, to most, still means decoding of text, and “digital inquiry” seems to be directed more at the process than at the hoped-for end result of comprehension. “Online reading comprehension” is about fully understanding what you encounter online, whether it’s text or videos, audio, or hyperlinks. Using “online reading comprehension” to indicate a range of literacy activities seems not that hard to grasp, while “digital inquiry” refers more to an activity (inquiry) that one engages in as part of the process of trying to comprehend online information. And when you throw in the use of upper- and lower-case terms to mean different things, it muddies the water even further for the majority of people. Personally, I prefer “digital literacy” in most usages. Digital is fairly easy for the layperson to understand -- it’s anything that is encountered with a computer or similar device. And it’s not a huge jump for literacy to be expanded to include more. I also like the idea of trying to achieve “digital fluency,” since literacy has typically suggested a fairly low bar to clear.
Implications for Teaching and Learning
Are digital literacy skills, strategies, practices and mindsets more or less important than traditional ones? I don’t think you can divorce then from one another, so you need to give them equal importance, although the balance of time spent may shift over a student’s career. The basic building blocks of vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge, and fluency are needed regardless of whether you are reading online or off. Newspapers didn’t go away when radio came in, radio didn’t go away when TV came in, and printed books continue to survive (although I suspect periodicals’ days are numbered), and even thrive in some categories. Printed books continue to be a preferred manner of introducing literacy to small children, for a variety of important emotional, eduational, and logistical reasons. For early readers, the straightforward and usually linear nature of picture books is a powerful entry point to literacy -- for most. That being said, understanding literacy in a broader sense could help us to reach a wider audience and leave fewer children behind. The “new literacies” offer affordances, capabilities and enticements that could draw a larger percentage of our children into self-directed inquiry and literacy activities at a younger age -- before they, their parents or their teachers decide that they aren’t “readers.”
The greatest challenge, to most teachers, is finding the time in an already over-burned day to address both traditional and digital literacy. Teachers need professional development not just to acquire the digital skills, but also to learn how their goals and standards are embedded digital literacy activities like inquiry, collaboration, and communication. Moreover, these are all skills that are needed for lifelong learning and in the 21st century workplace. And to get that professional development there must be buy-in on an administrative level. Districts must give teachers time to learn the skills and to adjust lessons, and they need to give teachers time to collaborate and teach one another and to share. Digital literacy approaches should be used to provide improved professional development. We need to use the same approaches in teaching one another that we know we need to use in the classroom, moving away from the sage-on-the-stage to the guide-on-the-side model. Just as digital literacy integrates well with many curricular goals, it also dovetails with other educational priorities like SEL (social-emotional learning), inclusion, engagement, authenticity, and giving students more voice and choice, project-based learning. Digital literacy is not an add-on, it supports and extends a lot of what we are already doing or need to do. In addition, most teachers about elementary levels do not consider literacy something that they think they need to integrate into their instruction. But if being truly, fully literate in the 21st century means mastering many of the traditional skills as well as the new literacies, we need teaches to understand what that continuum looks like. Perhaps in the younger grades the greater amount of time should still be spent on offline-type reading skills, with some age-appropriate digital skills integrated, but as the child progresses through the system, the balance should shift to more time spent on the digital literacies, continuing into high school and even college.
There are big remaining questions about assessment. How can we assess deeper learning in the classroom in a useful and objective, or at least non-biased, manner? So much of what we do in the classroom is driven by the needs of standardized assessment, from state tests like the Massachusetts MCAS, national exams like the SAT, and international ones like PISA. If these tests integrate measurement of digital literacy in an effective manner, then classroom teachers will be forced to address these skills. But this is a challenge because the very nature of digital literacy means that students work in a collaborative manner to deeply investigate authentic issues. By its nature standardized tests are not collaborative, don’t allow for in-depth work, and are the very opposite of authentic.
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