Danielle Fahser-Herro and Constance Steinkuehler
Literacy skills honed from reading books and writing papers has long been recognized as invaluable to building and sustaining intellect. Educators are charged with strengthening literacy programs, and they typically rely on conventional practices and increased time focusing on text-based media to do so, yet their efforts have not significantly increased test scores (Baer, Baldi, Ayotte, & Green, 2007; U.S. Department of Education, 2005).
At the same time, these traditional classrooms neglect the rich digital literacy opportunities Web 2.0 tools offer to improve literacy programs and meet individual needs. This paper explores issues surrounding definitions of “new literacy” practices as they relate to Web 2.0 tools while drawing on pertinent, emerging research to discuss the value of integrating digital literacy applications in K–12 and higher education classrooms. (Keywords:
digital literacy, Web 2.0, teacher education, new literacy practices)
-authors suggest a need exists to further examine the potential value of incorporating digital media to augment curricula while acknowledging current research offers no clear-cut method to determine best practices.
-Although many examples of Web 2.0 technologies’ use in educational settings are gaining
recognition, few are studied, signifying that its novelty precludes a firm solution providing researched, credible professional development models to emulate.
-Although students may learn to decode in the early grades, this often fails to translate into reading for meaning. Without question, schools are concerned with improving literacy practices, yet increased time with texts and writing in schools has not consistently improved literacy rates.
-21st c skills movement literacy had moved beyond reading, writing, speaking, and listening to
expansive “information and communication technology” literacies including researching, evaluating, creating, collaborating, and integrating information “in order to function in a knowledge economy”
-Change increasingly defines the nature of literacy in an information age. Literacy is rapidly and continuously changing as new technologies for information and communication repeatedly
appears and new envisionments for exploiting these technologies are continuously crafted by users. (Leu, 2000, p. 743)
-New literacies can be defined as “the ability to solve genuine problems amidst a deluge of information and its transfer in the Digital Age” (Holum& Gahala, 2001, para. 3)
-Internet—real-time information, virtual environments, and wide-reaching exchanges of knowledge—can intensify communication and comprehensionand ultimately change literacy
-no firm definition of Web 2.0, a capacity for high user engagement, intellectual rigor, frequent updating, and collective knowledge sharing based on an underlying technological infrastructure of blogs, wikis, podcasts, photosharing, RSS feeds, social bookmarks, and the like (O’Reilly, 2005; Anderson, 2007)
-highly participatory culture with broad access to media production tools, meshed with ubiquitous, inexpensive, or free tools. Users capitalize less on consumption and retrieval and more on creating content
-Web 2.0 technologies relocate “expertise” by broadening the range of information sources available and encouraging collective intelligence through distributed practices of winnowing and
sifting rather than single sourcing
-Instead of standardized, individually focused, teacher-mediated curricula, literacy practices surrounding Web 2.0 technologies call for knowledge construction in a collaborative, production-oriented, somewhat nonlinear manner with access to knowledge mediated by its users.
-there is a lack of teacher pre-service that adequately deals with teaching how to integrate social media into learning, and this is also happening in the school system
-In terms of infrastructure, student-to-computer ratios as well as Internet access and
speed are greatly improving in school, yet they lag in their ability to keep pace with new digital affordances
-overall disconnect between readily available technology tools and in-school digital literacy practices remains discouraging
-The expansive influence Internet technologies have had on everyday users has outpaced education’s ability to sustain the Internet’s newly afforded literacies
-the contrast between use of the internet in the classroom and the internet at home is one of a text-privileged, teacher-guided, production as evidence of consumption vs collaborative, participative, production as genuine contribution.
-one-computer classroom controlled by the teacher, often used as a “center” for drill and practice, information retrieval, or finishing work started in a lab setting, continues to be the
prevailing reality in many new-millennium classrooms
-without a solid body of research augmenting instruction to incorporate digital literacy practices inK–12 classrooms, along with supportive teacher education and training programs, a large-scale shift in practice seems unlikely
-How do K–12 districts change practice to incorporate digital literacy skills? The answer may lie in a structure analogous to Web 2.0 itself. Grassroots efforts encapsulating collective intelligence may be teachers’ best bets
-The group decided to rework its technology program to infuse opportunities for Web 2.0 into a scope and sequence of student competencies that were not software or “tool” specific, but instead open ended and research and project oriented. They intended to thread ethics, safety, and responsible computing into the entire K–12 curriculum. When compared to district- and state-level library, media, and technology standards, the student competencies, if satisfied, exceeded standards expectations
-Jenkins et al. outline 11 new media literacies. Defined as “a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (p. 4)
•Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models
of real-world processes
• Appropriation: the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Judgment: the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information
• Transmedia navigation: the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
•Negotiation: the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms (p. 4)
-District administrators have used concern over online safety and intellectual property rights/fair use, for example, to justify a surge in Internet filters, Internet safety, responsible-use education, and desktop “locks” on computers, creating apprehension in schools
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