The Need for Literacy - Twice

The New Media Consortium (2005) defines literacy as “’the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms’” (p. 8). Thus, students need to be literate in two ways: traditionally in the textual sense and digitally, a newer type of literacy that is part of a participatory culture (Jenkins 19). In a paper on digital media and learning entitled “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” Henry Jenkins defines as one:
1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at least they care what other people think about what they have created).
Jenkins further notes that in participatory culture, all must believe they can freely contribute and that what they contribute will be valued. Thus, the focus of literacy in such a culture shifts from individual expression to one of community involvement.

Some may believe that with the Web 2.0 culture, one that is certainly participatory, that traditional literacy emphasis in education would shift to a “newer” form of digital literacy to assist in fostering digitally competent communicators – students. The belief of a shift in literacy is false. Traditional literacy, students being able to read and write, is crucial for digital/media literacy and engagement in such a participatory culture. Research argues that “ the new digital cultures provide support systems to help youth improve their core competencies as readers and writers” (Jenkins 19).

In my use of a classroom blog, my intent is to use a participatory cultural trend – a blog – as a means of improving writing – in style, quality and depth. In Carrie Windham’s article “Reflecting, Writing, and Responding: Reasons Students Blog” (2007) she notes a students response to classroom blogging. The student says that “the paragraph long responses weren’t much different from the mile-a-minute typing she did each day communicating with her friends using e-mail and instant messaging. The blog posts didn’t take very long, calming her work that the exercises would be boring and monotonous”.

In my short experience using blogging with my students, they have found the process quick and easy. Typing is a natural part of their existence. On days when we are not even blogging, students often say they think better while typing. Perhaps this is true as the responses I have seen on the blog have increased the level of engagement with a topic. I have taken this “need” to type into the computer lab in the school. For a particular assignment, I had students type at the computer rather than writing on paper. Students were more focused, wrote more in a shorter period of time and had fewer questions. Just as students are more comfortable communicating in their mother tongue, perhaps so too is the case with digital natives – the fluid ability to communicate via technology as opposed to the foreign “pen and paper”.